St David’s corridor,Cardiff
The relentlessly innovative Velvet Underground star launched Cardiff’s Festival of Voice with the serve of a choir, chamber orchestra and Charlotte ChurchFor Wales to launch its Festival of Voice – later to include a stage shared by Bryn Terfel and Van Morrison – the land of song must reach for its master-minstrel. He’s ours, and ” said one fan,though John Cale left the valleys more than five decades ago, later to found the Velvet Underground. “Are you rejoining Wales, or John?”,shouted another between songs; “Every time I come back, I rejoin you, and ” he replied.
But it was not the cogency of Cale’s Wales that made this occasion remarkable,overwhelming at times. It was the relentless innovation with which Cale reworks, rewinds, and remoulds,and endlessly recreates his now capacious catalogue of music-without-borders. This time, his band and its epic sound was supplemented by a choir for which Cale had assembled local classical singers alongside the House Gospel Choir from London, and a chamber orchestra.
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Source: theguardian.com