Review Classical MUSIC: Twisted Christmas | Jarvis Cocker | Patrick Wolf | Sandy Dillon

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The Review - CLASSICAL & JAZZ - with TONY KIELY
Published: 27 November 2008

Jarvis Cocker

Have yourself a very
Twisted Christmas...

PREVIEW: TWISTED CHRISTMAS
Barbican

O come, all ye faithless...
If the sight of Christmas lights flickering on the High Street, holly wreaths and red-nosed reindeers hanging on doors and a perennially sensibly jumpered Michael Parkinson flogging celebrity biographies on your telly sends you into fits of nihilistic anti-festive rage, this is one for you.
Far from the mulling crowd of carol singers, the Barbican is offering an evening of bah-humbuggery for “all those frustrated by the fey joviality of the modern Christmas”.
But Twisted Christmas isn’t just an exercise in knocking the most magical time of year. It’s a tongue-in-cheek take on Yuletide traditions that shuns fey sentimentality, opting for a darker take on classic Christmas songs and symbols.
And with the team behind the Barbican’s unforgettable Plague Songs revue leading the musical magi to the manager, there is an array of special guests performing their own versions of classic Christmas songs – for seasons past, present and future.
Leading man and likely the biggest attraction for the indie crowd is Jarvis Cocker.
Far from resting on his laurels since Pulp’s hey-day in the early 1990s, Cocker has since shown an insatiable appetite for experimentation, with a solo career now in the ascendancy and a critically acclaimed curation of the Meltdown Festival at the Southbank Centre last year.
Joining him in the mix are Patrick Wolf – a singer, songwriter and multi-instrumentalist who emerged from a background of violin lessons and church choirs to venture into the realms of white noise and electronica; avant-garde American blues songstress Sandy Dillon (who was mind-blowingly good in the Barbican’s Rogues’ Gallery show earlier this year); Daniel Knox (an Illinois native and stand-out performer at the Plague Songs show); Bonfire Madigan, Canadian singer-songwriter Mary Margaret O’Hara, The Smoke Fairies, Foy Vance, Kathryn Williams and Lou Rhodes.
There’s more – festive campanology (courtesy of the fantastically dextrous Inn Ringers) and the harmonies of the New London’s Children’s Choir provide a note of sweetness to offset the haunting shadow puppets of Matthew Robins,
Finally, Heston Blumenthal – taking a well-earned rest from cooking smoked bacon-and-egg ice-cream and reinvigorating Little Chef with Hunters’ Chicken – will be on hand to treat the audience to his deliciously nuanced “Aroma Of Christmas”.
It doesn’t get much more alternative than that.

• Twisted Christmas,
Barbican Centre, Silk Street, Thursday December 11 at 7.30pm. £13-£22. www.barbican.org.uk

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