GEOFF BOTTOMS appreciates the local touch brought to a production of Dickens’s perennial classic
HEARING the Bolton-bred clarinettist Arun Ghosh and his quintet, live again at the Vortex in Dalston, with the communal sounds directly outside the venue of Gillett Square’s talkers, declaimers, drinkers, skateboarders, eaters and dominoes virtuosi accompanying every note they created, was a wonderfully restorative musical post-pandemic experience.
They were playing tunes from their new album Seclused in Light. The beautiful melodism of Surrender to the Sea and Sister Green and the rampaging Sidney Bechet-like verve and rhythmic upsurge of cityscape sounds like Fiveways and Hanji!, fused in a surge of now-times sonic vision which made the heart and brain of Dalston shudder with joy.
CHRIS SEARLE speaks to saxophonist and retired NHS orthopaedic surgeon ART THEMEN



