Music: Martha Wainwright

Astor Theatre

June 22, 2013

When you rub the lamp with Martha Wainwright in it, you’re can’t be sure which genie will emerge. By the time her somewhat disorderly and sometimes – often – wonderful set at the Astor finished, we got to see a whole pile of them.

The intriguing question is whether they are competing for our attention, or her’s.

Wainwright ended her set with her mother’s last song, Proserpina. It’s not a great piece (Kate’s unbearably lovely, prescient elegy, Talk to Me of Mendocino, will always be the song to remember her by, and for), but, even if Martha Wainwright sometimes only grants two wishes, she’s a genie of surpassing magnetism and talent. 

Link here to the complete review in The West Australian

Here's Mendocino, performed by Martha, her brother and aunt.

     

PIAF: Martha Wainwright

Beck’s Music Box

February 21, 2011

Martha Wainwright’s career so far – the part of it that sells out two nights at Beck’s Music Box, anyway – has been a series of spectacular vignettes with a compelling back story.

Wainwright worked her way through 11 of the 15 tracks on her 2009 album of Edith Piaf’s lesser-known songs, Sans Fusils, Ni Souliers, á Paris. Two weeks ago, on stage in San Francisco, she conceded that they “get boring” after a while. She was right.

Things improved markedly when we were treated to some of her own material and a selection from her late mother Kate McGarrigle’s peerless repertoire. But there was too little of it, only a few songs, and we were back with more from the Piaf album to wind up the show.

I suspect, judging from the enthusiasm of the applause at the end and for the encore, that I may be in a surly minority of people underwhelmed by the show. I’m sad about that – I’m an unabashed fan and look forward to what Martha Wainwright does next.

But I’m more disappointed for the audience, not for what they were given, but for what they missed. 

Click here to read the complete review in The West Australian 

Music: Every mother's son

When Rufus Wainwright came to town for PIAF 2008, the great disappointment was the cancellation of his opening act; his mother and aunt, the evanescent Kate and Anna McGarrigle. Little did we know Kate was suffering the effects of the cancer to which she succumbed in January this year. This time it was Rufus who cancelled Australian dates, to be with her in the last days.
Rufus returns to the Perth Concert Hall on the back of his recently-released All Days are Nights: Songs for Lulu, an elegiac collection of songs in which the spirit of Kate is always present.

As well as Rufus, Kate and Anna's work, the Wainwright and McGarrigle clan's phenomenal collection of varied and engrossing music over nearly 40 years includes the arch observations of (sometimes estranged) dad Loudon Wainwright III and the insinuating voice of sister Martha. Coming up fast behind them is Rufus and Martha's half-sister Lucy, daughter of Loudon and Suzzy Roche who, along with her sisters Magge and Terri... and so on!
A couple of years back Lesley and I saw Rufus's massive star turn in front of 15,000 at the Hollywood Bowl, recreating Judy Garland's famous 1961 concert. The following night we caught his sister's captivating performance, from almost within touching distance, at a tiny cafe down the road from the Bowl. On both occasions their mother, looking diminished but obviously proud of her son's success and her daughter's talent, joined them for a couple of numbers. It was a privilege, after all these years, to see a woman we're admired so much for so long in two such different circumstances. We miss her.

Here's a lovely appreciation of Kate from The New Yorker's Hendrik Hertzberg, from which you can launch into other fine pieces.