Monday, 19 May 2008

Abdullah Ibrahim at the Barbican

“Work commitments” meant that I didn’t arrive at the Abdullah Ibrahim concert at the Barbican on Saturday evening until the interval – just under an hour into the programme.

I should have been alerted to what to expect when I went to pick up my ticket. The woman in front of me was demanding her money back, saying that she’d come to hear Abdullah Ibrahim, not a big band. At the time I understood her to mean that the sound mix was wrong, that the piano was drowned out by the surrounding orchestra.