Showing @ The Playhouse, Edinburgh, Tue 13 Aug only @ 20:30

With The Rolling Stones headlining Glastonbury and Black Sabbath releasing a new album, an evening spent watching Patti Smith might not seem so anachronistic. Smith reads a selection of her own and Allen Ginsberg‘s poetry while Phillip Glass tinkles away on the ivories, lifting the words from powerful prose into a transcendent and intoxicating combination of ethereal melodies and rousing lyricism. A brief interlude, in which both performers entertain without the other, sees Smith sing some of her songs accompanied by a guitarist and Glass play a series of three compositions that blend into one another.

Despite her years, Smith is still a charismatic performer, holding the audience of teens to pensioners enthralled with her unpretentious but expressive tones. In between readings she is kindly and affable, joking with the audience, exuding an aura of a grandmother reading to her grandchildren. While her own writing is undeniably engaging, and when she sings you can see the glint in her eye that’s captivated viewers for decades, its when she reads Ginsberg’s material, especially combined with Glass’ signature haunting arpeggios, that the spinal shivers really begin to tingle.

With his universal themes of denouncing materialism and sexual repression while embracing a spiritual, pro-environmental perspective, Ginsberg’s poetry crosses generations as well as continents. At a time when the disparity between rich and poor is under scrutiny, one cant help being sucked up in the revolutionary musings of this now deceased proponent of civil disobedience, inspiring desires to go and join those protesting in Balcombe. Dwarfing the two performers is a stream of huge projected black and white photographs taken by or containing Ginsberg. Often depicting ravishing landscapes or oriental patterns and designs, these further enhance the imagery of his visceral language. Each of these pillars of their respective fields would provide entertainment enough when performing on their own, but when fused into a threesome it proves to be a heady and hypnotic evening of poetic empowerment.

Showing as part of the Edinburgh International Festival 2013