Rock and pop

It is no surprise that Cold Heat, a new work by Swedish composer Anders Hilberg, opened the Tonhalle Orchestra’s Festival concert.

It is the day after the Edinburgh Fringe has ended. The streets are deserted and quiet.

Had Warpaint played Edinburgh twelve months ago, they would most likely have checked in at Sneaky Pete’s or Cabaret Voltaire.

It is one minute to midnight at the Fringe.

Kristin Hersh cuts a slight but forbidding onstage figure.

At only 19 years old, Rachel Sermanni has supported Mumford and Sons, KT Tunstall and Newton Falkner, and is taking the festival circuit in her stride this August.

This man is an original hoofer, a song and dance man extraordinaire, 66 years old and still built like a recently retired Chippendale. Melvin Brown strutted his stuff for a packed and very responsive audience. Admittedly the average age of the audience was sixty plus, but age is no barrier to enjoyment.

Returning to Edinburgh for the fourth year in a row this Australian comedy rock trio are continuing on their meteoric rise to fame.

Comedy + August = Edinburgh seems an obvious equation, but it’s twelve years since Mitch Benn last performed solo on the Fringe, and there have been some changes in the intervening years. One of which being that, physically, the Mitch known to those (including this reviewer) who remember him from his sojourn among us is a shadow of his former self, having lost over half his previous weight.

It was the Pleasance's turn to launch their programme yesterday (Saturday). Walking to the launch in Pleasance Grand theatre you get a real sense of just what an expansive complex the Pleasance Courtyard venue has turned into. 

Over a quarter century of the charity piling back all its profits into its operation means that there are now theatres and bars everywhere at Pleasance Courtyard.

Fringe minus 1. It's late, and a few hours from now more venues start rolling out their preview shows: Thursday sees previews from C Venues, the Bedlam, Zoo, and the Gilded Balloon to name a few. So I should be in bed.

The Scottish Power theatre in Charlotte Square Gardens is fit to busting with gentlemen of a c

A statuesque blonde Amazon prowls onto the small stage under the low dingy Underbelly ceiling, decked out in standard rock chick issue leggings and biker boots.  With her seasoned band of muso dudes behind her, she crashes into a furious angst-filled number while pulling every available rockstar pose.  Blonde hair flying, head banging and legs splayed, tonight is surely going to see Storm Large kick some serious rocking ass.

To a great build up and the promise of ‘musical madness’, the three very young and very smiley ukulele players took to the stage to play what the programme describes as ‘original

A friend and I caught the end of Kassidy’s set in King Tut’s on Saturday at this year's T in the Park.

Barb Jungr was ranked No 1 for The Best Cabaret 2008 by Time Out, New York, No 2, The Best Cabaret 2009 for ‘The Men I Love’ at the legendary Café Carlyle, and is a winner of num

If you’ve ever played dominoes, you’ll know that while the first number has to match with the next, the last may not match with the first.

Frances Ruffelle is a sparkling, shimmering star in the world of Musical Theatre, winning a Tony Award for her Broadway role of Eponine in Les Miserables, with lead performances in Chicago, Ll

Tiger Lillies. The name sums up what they are - a sharp combination of danger and sweetness.

Callum Bicknell and Emily Stanghan are 16 year-olds from Norfolk with the talent and ambition to come to the Fringe with a range of fourteen tracks. These range from opera all the way through to pop - a genre nowadays described as Popera.