Mad March Gig Marathon*

I try not to make a habit of cramming concerts into short time-frames for the simple reason that tiredness tends to blunt your appreciation of the music on offer. The only times I’ve done this in the past were both in 2018 when I attended five concerts between 9th and 27th of March where the last three dates were completed in just five days and the travel included two separate trips to Italy, one in Claygate, Surrey and two in central London, then after a two-week break I attended three concerts between 17th and 23rd March, the first and last of which were in London, bookending another trip to Italy. My inability to appreciate the music at some of these gigs has previously been documented in these pages.
The trio of concerts reviewed below, three very different performances, just happened to be scheduled very close together. I didn’t imagine I‘d get the chance to see Weinroth-Browne perform but he was touring the UK; the ticket for The Watch was a Christmas present; and L’Ombra della Sera were holding an album launch. Unfortunately, I’m not responsible for organising concerts of interest to me but on the occasion of this concert marathon, I fully enjoyed every gig.

Leg 1: Raphael Weinroth-Browne and James Wilton Dance, Yvonne Arnaud Theatre, Guildford, Monday 23rd March
I'm genuinely not a fan of dance, and contemporary interpretative is probably my least favourite of all dance forms, but with prog-associated cellist Raphael Weinroth-Browne providing live music for the award-winning James Wilton Dance company, I suspended my prejudice and bought myself a ticket.
It was my first visit to the venue, a modern theatre complex set on the banks of the river Wey, named after Germaine Yvonne Arnaud, a French stage actress who spent around 50 years in England and who died in the town in 1958, age 67. I’d walked around the outside of the building on previous visits to Guildford and approved of its location and modernist profile; in a town where many of the old buildings are heritage listed, it didn’t come as any surprise that the theatre, opened in 1965, is itself grade II listed.
The steeply raked seating in the main auditorium provided excellent views of the proceedings. Unfortunately, the 580-capacity space was probably only a third full – there weren’t too many people sitting behind me in row J – but hosting contemporary dance in Guildford on a cold Monday evening was never going to be a sell-out, even though the town is home to the University of Surrey where I suspect, judging from the audience demographic, a fair number of attendees were engaged in study.
With subtle, effective lighting, a bare stage and Weinroth-Browne surrounded by pedals on a low riser, two dancers took advantage of the whole space to flow and otherwise interact with the music, as the cellist looped motifs and tapped out rhythms on his instrument. It wasn’t immediately clear to me what the dance represented, but the title of the event, Bach Reimagined, and the tour flyer – Guildford was the ultimate performance of a short UK tour– suggested it was an exploration of Bach’s composition as a form of divine worship and an examination of the scientific work of Bach contemporary Sir Isaac Newton; I think I could discern the discovery of gravity.
The music itself was reminiscent of his first solo album Worlds Within which cycles through calm and chaos. I must have been the only person present for the music alone, but I could genuinely appreciate that the evening had to be experienced as an audio-visual event. And while I found the dance more enjoyable than expected, those who had gone to see contemporary dance evidently seemed to enjoy the performance, as the three performers were given a standing ovation.

Leg 2: The Watch, Brewery Arts, Kendal, Thursday 26th March
For me, travelling to anywhere in Cumbria is like going home. My northern accent resurfaces and I take special pleasure in interactions with locals. My first stop after getting off the train in Kendal was an independent coffee shop where I struck up conversation with a group at a table, before a woman at another table joined in by announcing that her father was the headmaster of my former senior school, a few years before my time!
I'm well acquainted with Kendal, originally getting to know the town when my father, an art teacher, would take us all off to Abbot Hall, a grade I listed Georgian mansion opened as an art gallery in 1962, then more recently when visiting my brother who works in the town and lives close by. I first attended a gig there in December 1983 when Fairport Convention played at the Leisure Centre, and in November 2024 I went to see The Watch, an Italian prog band who set out performing covers of early Genesis songs at Brewery Arts, a cultural centre covering live performance, exhibitions and cinema screenings housed in the former Vaux brewery.
I’ve got four albums of original material by The Watch, but they’d been billed as ‘plays Genesis’ on the two occasions I’d previously seen them live, although the first time, when they covered Foxtrot in its entirety, they also played a few of their own songs. The 2024 performance was dedicated to The Lamb Lies Down On Broadway and didn’t feature any self-penned music.
I think it's well worth going to see them for their Genesis tributes. This show covered a selection from 1970-1976 running almost chronologically, beginning with White Mountain, played very close to the Trespass version, followed by an energetic The Knife; The Musical Box preceded by the tale of Cynthia and Henry; I Know What I Like (In Your Wardrobe); Firth Of Fifth; The Carpet Crawlers; and In the Cage segued with the instrumental ending of The Cinema Show, misidentified by quite a few in the audience.
Following a short break they played Dance On A Volcano; Unquiet Slumbers For The Sleepers... ...In That Quiet Earth; Soaring On, a short original composition from the 2007 album Primitive, well received by the audience; One For The Vine; and Los Endos. The encore, Supper's Ready, was a brilliant way to end the performance.
The entire show was enjoyable. No one could complain about the choice of material and the musicianship was, as always, exceptional. I have to commend the sound, which was balanced and clear. The theatre had sold out and an extra five rows of temporary seating had been inserted by pushing back the stage; the attendance at the 2024 show must have convinced Brewery Arts that they could fill more seats.

Leg 3: L’Ombra della Sera, La Claque, Genova, Sunday 29th March
Multi-part dramas dealing with dark, esoteric, mysterious, science fiction and horror themes were staples of Italian TV in the 70s, transmitted in black and white because colour TV wasn’t adopted until the late 1970s, lagging about 10 years behind the rest of Europe. Many of these drama series have become cult classics and are frequently referenced by Italian bands on the dark prog sector of the musical spectrum.
L'Ombra della Sera take their name from the Etruscan statuette featured in Ritratto di Donna Velata (Portrait of a Veiled Woman), and in 2012 released an CD of progged-up versions of soundtracks from some of these TV shows, Gamma, Ritratto di Donna Velato, Cento Campagne from Il Segno del Comando, La Traccia Verde and Ho Incontrato un'Ombra.
The musicians, actually the band La Maschera di Cera, adopted the names of characters from the programmes as pseudonyms and following a few line-up changes and a well-received appearance at the 2024 Porto Antico prog fest, have just released an album of these re-recorded, re-worked themes under the title Segreti nel Nero, expanded with the addition of a few more tracks: Albert e l'Uomo Nero, Fantastic Fly from Racconti Fantastici, A come Andromeda, L'Amaro Caso della Baronessa di Carini. The album, available on CD and double vinyl (including a special edition with the CD and postcards) also contains a suite, created after diligent research, from the few remaining scraps of soundtrack to an unproduced TV series based on Giorgio De Maria's cursed novel Le Venti Giornate di Torino.
Having heard about the recording of the album in July 2024, for release on the Black Widow Records label, I’d kept an eye out for notification of the release, guessing that a February 2026 announcement that L’Ombra della Sera would be playing at Genova's La Claque at the end of March was likely to be the album launch gig. Scheduled for a Sunday, it meant I was able to get back from Cumbria on Friday, the day after The Watch concert, and fly out to Italy on the Saturday in time to stop off at the Black Widow shop, where amongst a few other purchases I bought the Segreti nel Nero LP.
I arrived at La Claque the next day about 10 minutes before the appointed start time of 6.30 pm and the venue was already mostly full. The club is set out with tables, cabaret style, and I was directed to a table roughly in the middle of the main floor. Something of a rarity for the concerts I’ve attended in Italy, the performance started mot long after half past six. First on the bill was Hamburger Train, a Krautrock-psyche-space rock trio of guitarist Massimo Perasso, bassist Roberto De Luca and Drummer Roberto Fiorello who were joined onstage by La Maschera di Cera’s Agostino Macor on keyboards and electronics and played a single song for around 40 minutes, building in intensity over a motorik beat before eventually resolving with a reprise of the introductory theme, all the while accompanied by a black and white film shot around a brutalist building.
Next to perform was Paola Tagliaferro La Compagnia dell'Es with a set presented in two parts, original material from a forthcoming album. and ELP and King Crimson songs dedicated to Greg Lake who died in December 2016; Tagliaferro is signed to Manticore Records, and Lake’s widow Regina was present in the audience. La Compagnia dell'Es were made up of drummer Andrea Orlando from La Maschera di Cera, La Coscienza di Zeno/Höstsonaten keyboard player Luca Scherani and Pier Gonella on guitar and bass, and though the self-penned music was well-written and played, the renditions of The Only Way, I Talk To The Wind, Epitaph and Lucky Man were the most enjoyable, powerful and moving.
In my review of L’Ombra della Sera’s performance at the 2024 Porto Antico Prog Fest, I commented that the original TV theme scores work very well with a prog-makeover, like Yes performing Simon and Garfunkel's America, where the band interpretations portray the appropriate darkness and drama. I'm unable to comment on how close they stick to the scores but the inclusion of a bit of funk on one track certainly ties the music to a particular time, contemporaneous with the era of the TV series. Though fascinated by the clips of the programmes showing behind the band, I tried to concentrate on the scores which easily fitted in with La Maschera di Cera's output, an updated version of classic 70's progressivo italiano mixed with an approach closely related to that of Van der Graaf Generator. I loved it.

I spoke to organiser Massimo Gasperini immediately after the concert, which he acknowledged was a great success, suggesting that something special about the venue brought out the best in the performers. He then introduced me to keyboard player and vocalist Alessandro Corvaglia (introduced as Marco Tagliaferri, a character in Il segno del comando) and woodwind player Martin Grice (Edward Forster, also from Il segno del comando), neither of whom could quite believe anyone from the UK would travel to see the concert when I told them how much I'd enjoyed the evening. Corvaglia explained that they’d grown up with the TV shows and the music which is why it was special to him, and Grice, who came from Birmingham but joined Delirium, a Genoa-based band at the forefront of the progressivo italiano movement in 1972, told me that even at the age of 81 his touring and recording schedule with Delirium, La Maschera di Cera and L’Ombra della Sera was keeping him busy.
I’m a big fan of album launch gigs. I'm glad I was there.