Mel Parsons is an award-winning indie folk and alt country singer, songwriter, and guitarist based in Lyttleton. She is touring her seventh album Castle Hill, currently number one on the Official Top 20 Aotearoa Albums Chart.

This show, which included the whole new album and many older favourites, was a revelation. The interaction between Mel and the band and the audience was natural and encouraged. The vibe was fun! The superb band – drummer Jed Parsons, guitarist Josh Logan (also the album producer), and Aaron Stewart on double and electric bass – all provided impeccable backing vocals.

The first set of all 10 songs from Castle Hill opened with the hauntingly beautiful Grain by Grain. After the second song Not Enough, Mel said she was experiencing sound issues, but the sound balance was superb for the audience. After Caravan, she mentioned she had been trying desperately not to bring up the fact that the new LP went to number one, and that she had been absolutely insufferable!

Prior to Be Here Now, she described how she was trying to be more present with her children in these days of cell phone overuse. The tone became sombre with Don’t Leave the Light On, a heavy song about psychological domestic abuse. The upbeat Post High Slide, featuring full harmonies, finished the set.

Set two started with Alberta Sun from her 2015 Drylands album. The stunning 5432 featured haunting melodies. Then came Circling the City with its beautiful a cappella ending. A three-song semi-acoustic bracket followed, including Aaron’s gorgeous double bass on Down So Long, and the bluegrass vibe of True Story featuring a brief double bass solo!

After Jed’s solid drumming on Little Sadness, with its catchy chorus, Mel gave a huge shout out to the sound man, backstage crew, and everyone involved with the tour. Driving Man featured Josh’s very tasteful Mark Knopfler-esque guitar licks, followed by the upbeat and rocking Just ‘Cause You Don’t Want Me. The first encore was the mellow Don’t Wait, then sadly it was time for the last song Far Away, which sounded like an Irish reel, complete with loud audience clapping! A fun ending to the night’s sublime entertainment.

There couldn’t be a more apt programme title than Rhythm & Dance. It told me what to expect and describes what I took home.

20^th-century American music is one of my favourite genres and The Chairman Dances by John Adams is a great example of why. An ‘outtake’ from Adams’ opera Nixon in China depicting Chairman Mao dancing a foxtrot with his mistress could only have been written by an American during the 1980s while President Reagan was building a close relationship with the Soviet Union. Musically and politically clever, this was something majestic but also skewed, brought to life impeccably by Gemma New and the orchestra.

The first movement of Aaron Copland’s Clarinet Concerto is not easy to listen to. The mood is low, accentuated by shifting tonality and tightly woven clarinet and strings. That mood broke with the cadenza linking the two movements. Patrick Barry’s virtuoso clarinet playing was very clean, with a crisp, clear sound launching a jazzy liveliness, demanding energy and dexterity from the musicians. The eight bass players got to really strut their stuff with a great stomp.

Antrópolis by Gabriela Ortiz is a tantalising glimpse of Mexico City’s vitality and spirit. The surprising star? Timpani. In several brilliant, amazing solos, section principal Laurence Reese took centre stage like (but also quite unlike) the dancer who steals the floor and dazzles the crowd standing in the club.

New is celebrated for her attention to detail and texture, meticulous rhythmic control, and collaborative relationship with the orchestra. Leonard Bernstein’s Symphonic Dances from West Side Story demonstrated the extraordinary partnership between New and the NZSO. Together they brought us intense, hopeful teenage romance, energetic and vital dance in mambo and cha-cha, Cool young men circling, shouting, and posturing before the Rumble, and the tragic but powerful and emotional Finale. No words, outstanding musicians, great leadership. Unspeakably good.

A live music experience that takes us through the story of musician Bryony Matthews’ traumatic head injury and years of recovery, Brain Storm is an immediately striking show. Against a sparsely decorated stage backed by mesmerising visuals (visual art by Nicholas Ahu, Storm music video by Harry Knight and Maria Webb, Recovery music visualiser by Spencer Hall), performers Matthews and Joshua Holmes create an unexpectedly rich and immersive world.

Matthews’ story unfolds through original songs interspersed with narration. In the narrated sections, the stage falls into darkness as Ahu’s visuals bring the story to life. The imagery is hypnotic and evocative, moving between recognisable places in Christchurch and dreamlike recreations. During the songs, the projection shifts into something more like a concert visualiser, with engrossing, otherworldly images that sweep us up in the music.

The sound design (soundscape by Holmes, sound engineering by Marcus Winstanley) is excellent. Every element is distinct and beautifully balanced. The two guitars, Matthews’ vocals, and the supporting tracks all have room to breathe. Reverb gives the music an affecting spaciousness, while driving drums and melodies provide momentum. The result is haunting, ethereal, and dreamlike, with Matthews delivering a clear and moving vocal performance throughout.

But it is Matthews’ story that gives Brain Storm its emotional weight. There is real vulnerability in what she shares, but also an unmistakable sense of gratitude. She speaks from a place of feeling fortunate, and this makes the experience feel less like a performance of hardship and more like an invitation to understand.

At its heart, Brain Storm asks us not to judge others too quickly, as we rarely know what someone else is carrying. It also offers a gentle challenge to our instinct to push harder when things become difficult. Sometimes, Matthews suggests, the answer is to “do less”, to accept rather than force.

It’s a thoughtful, beautifully crafted show, and I would love to see Bryony Matthews performing live again. Brain Storm travels to Hamilton and Auckland in October. Catch it if you can; I’ve already added the album to my playlists.

Pedro Almodóvar’s latest film contains many of the hallmark features that make his cinema so discernible: vibrant colours, eccentric and strong female protagonists, queer themes, politics of the gaze. This time, however, he turns the camera on himself to produce a scathing self-portrait that deals with the problem of vampirism in filmmaking.

The story intertwines two parallel plotlines set 20 years apart. Characters and events tug at and mirror each other and are influenced by Almodóvar’s own experiences, making the way life informs fiction not just a fact but the film’s mechanism.

Raúl (Leonardo Sbaraglia), a film director (his hair impossible not to recognise as a nod to Almodóvar’s own shock of silver) experiences creative crisis writing his new script in the apartment he shares with his devoted (but mostly ignored) partner Santi (Quim Gutiérrez). Drawing from his own situation and the life updates from Mónica (Aitana Sánchez-Gijón), his longtime PA – on sabbatical to care for her girlfriend whose son is undergoing a life-threatening surgery – he writes into being the anxiety-riddled indie film director Elsa (Bárbara Lennie) who has been reduced to making TV ads and can’t shake terrible migraine attacks. She meets her partner Bonifacio (Patrick Criado) at a hen’s night, where he performs a quintessentially Almodóvarian striptease to Grace Jones’ Libertango, after which she invites him to feature in an underwear advertisement.

She too largely ignores her partner (a revelation of the director’s own dwindling feelings about Santi) and is inspired to write a new script based on the lives of two bereft friends she is caring for on the Canary island Lanzarote. When Mónica reads Raúl’s script she immediately recognises herself and her partner.

The film explores the ethical problem and betrayal of repurposing another person’s trauma to propel a story while also highlighting the way fiction can pick and choose, stretch and bend those lived experiences. It is a self-conscious critique of Almodóvar’s own cinema which is filled with stories about the lives of women – though the women who populate his films are one of the reasons I go back time and again to his films.

While I’m always a fan of the cerebral, the cleverness sometimes got in the way of me experiencing any real affinity or depth of emotion toward the characters, and I still can’t work out the title. But that didn’t deter my enjoyment of getting to step foot in the colourful and strange world of Almodóvar.

Judy Garland, “the greatest entertainer who ever lived – or probably will ever live” (Fred Astaire) made so many comebacks, “what more could you possibly want?” So quips a magnificent Ali Harper in Judy’s Encore, a night in concert with The Wizard of Oz star where the sequins are sparkling and the stakes are sky-high.

In August 1964, the stage and screen superstar was booed off the stage at Festival Hall Melbourne. Judy’s Encore imagines her redemption a few years later, before her death by barbiturate overdose in 1969. She returns to the venue to try to restore her reputation in this meta solo show where the audience is positioned as the sceptical Melbournites she is trying to win over.   

Culminating in a breathtaking Somewhere Over the Rainbow, Harper performs 18 songs accompanied by Francis Meria (piano) and Blair Latham (horns). With music direction and arrangement from Tom Rainey, Meria and Latham play Judy’s loving but long-suffering band, who try desperately to keep her on track and out of the booze bottle. The concert takes place on a striking, shiny stage (set design by Ian Harman) that puts on the ritz, especially when paired with Roz Willmott-Dalton’s costume design, which nods to the poppy dress Judy wore for her first Sydney appearance on the ill-fated tour.

Judy’s Encore sees our hero, already frayed, start to come undone. Comically downing half a bottle of whisky set atop a table in a sweet and silly moment of lightness from Latham, Harper’s Judy is sensitively portrayed. She is not the butt of the joke, nor is she the tragic heroine she so hated being called in her lifetime. She is a person, buoyed and torn down, devoured and spat out again, by other people.

The first-person format of the show does have its limitations: there’s only so much a public figure will ever divulge about themselves, so Harper can’t tell us lots about Judy’s life while playing Judy herself. The more you already know, the more Easter eggs you’ll enjoy. Like me, you’ll surely be inspired to go learn more about a woman who “gave so richly and so generously, that there was no currency in which to repay her” (James Mason, A Star Is Born).

Welcome to Living Room Wall and the final concert by Bauble and Skump before the fumigators come to rid Rachel and Tim’s house of insects, these adorable ladybugs included. It’s a tragic premise for a delightfully entertaining show about bug life and human strife.

The music playing in the background (sound and lighting tech Jack McGee a.k.a. Moth) as we arrive and don pairs of antennae is appropriate – They Might Be Giants’ Doctor Worm and Owl City’s Fireflies are on the playlist.

Lia Kelly (Bauble) and Phoebe Caldeiro (Skump) are engaging and utterly charming performers, quickly bringing the audience into their world of insectoid musical magic. Their Flight of the Conchords-esque wit and lyricism (aided by co-writer and director Alayne Dick) is accompanied by adaptable and virtuosic playing skills as they flit between instruments and musical styles. Every song has us laughing out loud. It’s tough to pick a favourite but It’s Hard Being a Bug had me giggling insanely as Skump’s and, increasingly, Bauble’s obsession with lemons overtakes the existential dilemmas of arthropod life. Sadly, we don’t get to hear such bangers as Six Legs, Seven Things to Hold as the unfolding human conflict going on below – carefully scored on points by Skump – brings the fumigation ahead of schedule and we have to fast forward to crowd favourite Praying Mantis Wedding and a small-tear-inducing pair of songs about how the duo met and fell in love.

Kate Anderson’s set design particularly deserves mention as her backdrop evinces the top-down view of a suburban living room with simplicity and clarity. Her birthday card mini-set for It’s Your Special Day is inspired, has hilarious insect puns, and allows for funky head-bopping choreography from our performers.

From a clever homage to The Very Hungry Caterpillar, to the sub-plot of a failing human relationship, to the polished and clever anthems, Bug Songs Not Love Songs is entomological ecstasy from go to whoa.

The joy of improv theatre is that the unexpected can offer a great experience. It isn’t surprising that the experienced Best on Tap troupe deliver on that promise, but it is perhaps surprising that the story unfolding on stage reflected a drama built on well-realised characters and relationships, rather than mere comedic slapstick.

The performance is a gentle enquiry as to the nature of friendship and the different forms it takes. The audience is asked for only two prompts at the beginning of the show, and the story unfolds from there. The scaffolding might be minimal, but this was enough for this skilled troupe to create a coherent narrative.

The show’s title and theme Find Your Tribe lends itself well to an emotional journey and a reflective tone. I felt the performance began somewhat tentatively, but it didn’t take long for each of the five actors to develop distinct characters and relationships.

Wiremu Tuhiwai seemed to revel in creating outlandish cues for his fellow actors to follow (I couldn’t help feeling they were used to it). It resulted in drama punctuated with enough humour to provide contrast to its more reflective moments. Kate Whitaker added strongly to this emotional dynamic; we were taken from reflection to humour to sadness, and everywhere in between.

Improv theatre is inherently collaborative, and the performances and cues provided by Mary Little, Geoff Simmons, and Barry Miskimmin were all integral in adding further emotional depth to the show. By the end, the audience was fully invested in all the characters on stage.

Matt Hutton’s improvised live soundscape added further emotional context, responding deftly to the action on stage. My favourite sound moment was the beeping of hospital equipment somehow wrung from his Yamaha keyboard.

Quick-wittedness is a hallmark of improv theatre, and there was plenty of that on display from Best on Tap. Find your way to this show or their next for something beautifully unexpected.

I love books about writing and movies about cinema; they cut open the belly of the art form and expose its spleen and inner machinations. El ser querido (The Beloved) from Spanish director Rodrigo Sorogoyen does exactly this: a film set on a film set in 1930s Spanish-ruled Western Sahara, that is in fact being shot in Fuerteventura – another imperial outpost. This level of alienation plays out in other ways throughout, highlighting the power of cinema to deceive.

Javier Bardem plays Esteban Martínez, a controversial Spanish film director and celebrated Oscar and Cannes Palme d’Or winner who invites his estranged daughter Emilia Vera (Victoria Luengo) – whom he hasn’t seen for 13 years – to lunch and offers her a leading role in his upcoming film. The lunch is tense, setting the scene for what is to follow. Emilia accepts the role, but not without serious consideration of the trauma caused by her father’s drunken and often violent behaviour when she was a young girl – which Esteban flatly contests as fictions conjured up by her mother to pit her against him.

El ser querido might’ve been one of the best examples I’ve seen of actors having to act as though they aren’t acting. We see Emilia trying to keep it together when the camera is rolling. We witness Esteban’s controlling, anger-fuelled, and toxic manner on set, which is chillingly offset with sporadic bouts of charm that help maintain his mythic status among the crew.

While exploring a dysfunctional father-daughter relationship, it also lays bare the harsh and unglamorous realities of a film set, the power imbalances built into the industry, and the filmic devices that propel a story: narrative, scene composition, cinematography, sound. Scenes mirror or are pitted against each other (e.g. a tyrannical film director makes a film critiquing the Spanish Empire, built on the foundations of patriarchy). Fictive layers put reality on shaky grounds. The film switches between black and white, analogue, and colour, shifting mood and making the audience think about what function each camera serves. The sound at times is removed to strip a scene bare and home in on gesture and set. The same scene is performed over and over again. The sun scorches. The wind burns. The director always has the final say.

There were moments when the film lacked energy and I was hoping it would wrap up quickly. Whether this too was intentional, I wouldn’t be surprised.  

The driving rain of Wellington's dark streets is an appropriately dramatic prelude to tonight's concert. The previous evening, conductor Pietari Inkinen led the NZSO in an intense Wagner programme. I arrived expecting a gentler concert, only to find myself swept into an unexpected second epic.

With concertmaster Vesa-Matti Leppänen taking the role of soloist tonight, associate concertmaster Donald Armstrong stepped into the leadership of the first violins. Armstrong was the NZSO concertmaster throughout much of my childhood in Wellington, and it was a pleasure to see him leading the orchestra once again.

Sibelius' Pohjola's Daughter opens with the irresistible pull of a great tale, themes unfolding against a dramatic landscape of sound. Drawing on characters and stories from the Kalevala, a compilation of epic poetry from Finnish, Karelian, and Ingrian folklore, the music combines rich atmosphere with a sense of narrative momentum.

Following this with Lindberg's Violin Concerto No. 2 is an effective move. The more immediately accessible Sibelius provides a point of entry into a work whose contemporary language is often more dissonant and demanding, yet the two share enough musical whakapapa that clear lines of continuity emerge.

As violin soloist, Leppänen's playing is agile, vibrant, and entirely at home in the work's shifting terrain. His close relationship with the NZSO enables him to blend seamlessly into the orchestral texture before springing clear of it again. The passages shared between Leppänen and Armstrong are astonishing, their intricately intertwined lines evidence of the deep collegial understanding between these two outstanding musicians. Cellists Andrew Joyce and Ken Ichinose are similarly impressive.

The evening closes with Sibelius’ Lemminkäinen Suite, which draws on the same mythological source material as Pohjola's Daughter. The work also traces an indirect path back to Wagner, growing out of an operatic project that Sibelius conceived under Wagner's influence before ultimately charting his own course. Those musical and historical threads help to enrich the final leg of our journey, and send us back into Wellington's wet winter night feeling we have travelled further than we expected.