Dubai Chamber Orchestra autumn concert

The Dubai Chamber Orchestra held this season's concert today at a new venue: the Centre for Musical Arts at Gold and Diamond Park. The performance hall was fairly large, but extra seats had to be brought in to accommodate the turnout. Additional venue bonus: a metro station right next door.

Conductor Barnaby Priest led the orchestra through a three-part program, consisting of Mozart's Overture to Der Schauspieldirektor, Carl Nielsen's Little Suite for Strings, and a beautiful Symphony No 99 by Haydn. A subset of the orchestra also delighted with a special performance of a collaborative artistic piece composed by Priest, featuring the littoral-themed video art and haunting countertenor talent of Janet Bellotto and Rodney Gilchrist, respectively.

Acoustic afternoon with Fresh Sounds on The Grass

Scattered clouds and mild sunny weather gave Freshly Ground Sounds' Fresh Sounds on the Grass event the perfect atmosphere for a lazy afternoon of live, local, acoustic music.

Sara Aridi; MoFloh & JJ

Nadine; Steven John Bond and Izzy Abidi

Physical Graffiti; Peter Martin

We got to listen to several of the city's musicians playing and singing across a variety of acoustic music styles. The lineup was not exactly as on the poster, but it was a good show from all performers nonetheless.

Anant

The closing open mic call was answered by Anant's impromptu performance, winning all over with his peppy rendition of "Sexy and I Know It", and ending the event on an especially cheerful note.

While attending the event, I also happened upon the unexpectedly massive Dubai Flea Market nearby. I had never been to one of these before, and it was a nice trip down memory lane to see 90s laptops, modems and other antiquated items being hawked.

Four plays Under One Umbrella by Resuscitation Theatre

For the past couple of months, I'd been looking forward to seeing how Resuscitation Theatre would implement the Saleh Karama scripts I had been reading with them over the summer. And this weekend, I finally saw those Arabic-language original plays premiere on stage, and in English - which is no small feat, considering that these plays are, for the most part, very metaphorical, and Arabic is often difficult to translate to English for even mundane purposes. I know, because I read all of them with the group, as we went over them, line by line, to refine the translation and find the best English equivalents. So, yes, I did go in knowing the plot for each play.

In fact, I had already seen One More Try on stage, in the same venue, in the summer. It was about the same this time, except with improved sound, and a markedly better performance by Prabhath Dhevindra. Betina had been re-cast as well, with Darcell Castillo adding a pleasantly fresh chemistry to the relationship between her character and Baya.

Sea Breeze, replete with allegorical lines and symbolic actions, must have been particularly difficult to adapt. I think it turned out very well, though, thanks to the directorial vision of Robert Liddington and whoever else was involved in production. It was very physical, with Sanoop Dinesh fitting well into his part. The use of props and colors was very creative; Dinesh's "healer jailer", interpreted as some kind of fabulous witch doctor, was a particularly brilliant touch.

From the reading sessions, my favorite script was Evening Chat, and I was not disappointed. Some of the lines did seem rushed and mechanically paced, but it was a good experience in sum. I especially liked Syed Sameer Ahmed's acting; he played the character of Sibran to perfection through all his character's transitions. The use of children's toys as physical symbols gesturing towards the past and the background of conflict was a good idea.

My expectations for Mobius were completely blown out of the water by director Zakaia Cvitanovich and the production team behind this interpretation. What I thought would be a dark, slow play, turned out to be an extravaganza of music, world dance, inflatable animal wrestling, and a human maypole. Splitting the character of Rima into five, each with a different actor, was definitely worth the additional cast management and blocking entailed by this idea. A surprise winner of a production is what it was.

Sikka Score Vol 1 CD Launch at DUCTAC

Last Monday saw the launch of a compilation album of select works by the musical features of Sikka 2013. Since it was titled "Sikka Score Vol. 1", I'm guessing this is something that will happen again. I was hoping for something like this to eventually make it to production, as this year's Sikka featured a diverse selection of good local musicians. And it was really nice of many of the artists on the CD to come in and set up at the launch - held in a flattened Kilachand Theatre at DUCTAC - to perform for just a few minutes. It was a great evening, and an excellent showcase of some of the best Dubai (and Sharjah) has to offer in locally-made music, from classic guitar (Track 1, Valentin Spasov) to acoustic rock (Track 5, Harrison Rice) to beat-boxing (Track 8, Ray).

Track 9: Noush like Sploosh performed the moody "Lonely at Night", the music/art video of which was featured at Sikka in the video gallery.

Track 10: Sach Holden, supported here by Jeremiah and the Lucky Strikes, doing his folk rock piece. Ordinarily a solo artist with an acoustic leaning, his Sikka contribution was backed by an uncharacteristically large complement of collaborators from different genres.

Track 12: One of my new favorite local bands, Fables of Cantt, with their catchy synth rock sound.

Track 11: I'm always good for jazz, and Them had it going on. That's not bad grammar, by the way - the band is actually called "Them".

Track 13: One of the best (and most surprising) acts was Nada Dada's rendition of an original song about Sharjah in the style of a mid-20th jazz siren, here supported by Sikka music organizer Kamal Musallam. And it was not just the content; it was actually sung quite well, and in a very unique and pleasant genre of music. For someone who I thought was a visual/performance artist, she sure can hold a note.