At a time where ‘post’ seems to be the prefix on everybody’s lips when describing current music, Portico Quartet’s ethereal tunes have never seemed more relevant. With two stellar albums under their belt  and a third one in the pipeline, the guys who started busking on the Southbank four years ago might just be taking their ‘post-jazz’ title to new heights. The recent departure of hang player Nick Mulvey, has been ‘the catalyst for loads of crazy stuff’ says drummer Duncan Bellamy, as they’ve sampled the hang onto drum pads allowing much more creative versatility. ‘When it’s pitched down it sounds like a big gong’ says Jack Wylie the saxophonist.

Although Nick’s decision to explore the guitar instead of the hang has rendered the band’s name slightly redundant it also seems to have opened up creative channels for the group as electronic sounds and samples take on a bigger role than they did in second album Isla.  ‘There’ll definitely be a few tracks without the hang at all,’ says Jack, hinting at the sound of the forthcoming album which they’ll hopefully be recording in August.

Their relationship with the distinctive instrument – which sounds something like a steel pan – has been a complex one: it liberated them from the constraints of any specific genre but also threatened to ‘back them into a corner musically and conceptually’.

Having recorded their heavily praised second album Isla with the prestigious John Leckie in Abbey Road, the group’s creative process seems to have returned to its humble origins as they go into their East London studio individually to lay down compositional ideas. Discussing their influences it becomes apparent that diversity and eclecticism nurture their music.

Naming people such as Arve Henriksen, Radiohead and the experimental Steve Reich, Portico Quartet seem to draw their influences from everywhere and filter it down into their own distinct sound. The melodic and hook-based aspect of their music makes them wonderfully accessible and enables them to play gigs like Bestival and more traditional jazz concerts without any conflict.

There is however a feeling that at more upbeat festivals programmers ‘get confused with where to put us’, says Duncan, although the promise of ‘a bit more punch’ on the forthcoming album may change this.

Their assertion that ‘none of us wanted to make a repeat of Isla’ implies a further change of musical direction for the group and one can’t help but presume that their beat making flatmate Jamie Woon might have had a little influence in their decidedly more electronic escapades. Duncan and Jack and their friend Will Ward are also currently working on a side project called Circle Traps which fits the current surge of synth based electronica – albeit with inescapable jazz undertones – and have just released their EP on Opit Records.

As well as exploring different soundscapes, Portico Quartet have toured Europe and the States and have been met by devoted fans of all different age groups, although according to Jack, ‘inland America was pretty barren’. Out of their one hundred and seventy gigs last  year seventy were in Europe, and ‘everything’s just happened quicker over there’ says Jack about their rise in popularity.

Let’s hope that this speed translates itself to the rate of their production, as I’m not sure I can wait till next year for their next instalment. In the meantime Portico Quartet will be performing at Cheltenham Jazz Festival on May 2nd bringing the bank holiday to a beautiful close. When you coming to Oxford guys?

It’s not often you get to see the premiere of a lost Shakespeare play and, whilst that might be overdoing it a bit, it has to be said that this production has generated a lot of merited excitement. Of course the original Cardenio is unlikely to ever be rediscovered and the text as presented in Gregory Doran’s new play is not that penned by the Bard and Fletcher at the start of the 17th century. However, sitting in the audience at the newly reopened Swan Theatre in Stratford, it is easy to forget the ‘literary archaeology’ which has lovingly gone into restoring the only surviving possible adaptation of the 1612 original, Theobald’s The Double Falsehood, into a performable piece able to stand alongside those other tales of cross-dressing lovers so familiar to the RSC.

The plot is straight out of Cervantes’s Don Quixote. At the start Cardenio is on the verge of marrying his first love Luscinda. Everything is arranged but before he is able to obtain his father’s needed consent he is summoned to court. His role there is to be a check to the excesses of the Duke’s wayward son Fernando who has been relentlessly courting the modest but socially inferior Dorotea. Thus the two pairs of lovers – along with their fathers who, as always in Shakespeare, manage to upset everything through their folly – are introduced to the audience along with the oppositions of love and lust, trust and betrayal which drive the play.

With such serious themes as rape and a plot driven by forcibly parted lovers there are moments when it seems unlikely that order will triumph over the chaos of Fernando’s making as he attempts to defile virgin daughters and nuns. However, a laugh is always soon provided by the indignant Don Camillo played by an excellent Christopher Godwin.

Amusement may also be found in the indoor fireworks which represent the consummation of Fernando and Dorotea’s ‘marriage’ – not particularly subtle but rather impressive none the less. Also very impressive is Oliver Rix (a graduate from Oxford) in his first major role as the eponymous Cardenio who manages to be engaging throughout – even whilst providing his lusty friend with practical (but rather boring) advice on the nature of love.

I immensely enjoyed Cardenio and found myself caring less and less about the authenticity of the text and the cleverness of its resurrection. Some of the views expressed may not find favour with modern youth or third wave feminist society but that just exemplifies how far this new re-imagining has been able to control those subtle anachronisms which could be generated not so much by ignorance but by intervening history and ideological change. It was beautifully staged and offered the viewer everything from fiestas to funerals, dances to disguises, along with one moment which made me jump out of my seat.

It may not be Shakespeare, it doesn’t seem to be able to attributed to any single playwright, but it is good fun. Forget the academic debate, Cardenio is pure entertainment.

Packed into the cosy lower levels of the Sheldonian Theatre, we welcome Anthony Grayling with a chorus of ‘Happy Birthday’, a simultaneously awkward and spirited moment he accepts with great stoicism. Known for his impressive canon of philosophical writing, Grayling today is talking about his latest work, The Good Book: A Secular Bible, a book offering the knowledge and understanding of non-theistic traditions from all over the world.

However, this is not simply a collection or anthology of disparate stories from these traditions. In his rewriting, defending his methods as ‘exactly how the Bible itself was compiled’, Grayling made them into a coherent whole. The ‘Parables’ especially are cleverly interconnected, while the longest section, the ‘Histories’, rewards being read as a continuous narrative of ‘the great war between the East and the West’ but can also be dipped into for individual tales. Grayling has also taken into account the importance of language, in the spirit of the composition of the King James Bible in its day. This is particularly apparent in the poetry of the ‘Songs’, which focus upon human relationships and those between man and nature in a way that is affecting, though unsentimental.

The Good Book, offering a secular vision of how the good life could be lived, is Grayling’s ambitious contribution to what some have disparagingly classified as the ‘New Atheist’ movement. But, as he is keen to point out, ‘it has no direct mention of atheism, or God’ in its 600-odd pages, in keeping with his belief that all books should be ‘positive’ and ‘offer some message of value’. Thus it appears on the other side of the atheist coin, as it were, offering an alternative to works such as Christopher Hitchens’ God is Not Great with its diatribes against all religious practices. Perhaps this approach is why Grayling has not yet been denounced as a fifth Horseman of the Apocalypse – in addition to the more often condemned foursome of Dawkins, Dennett, Harris, and Hitchens.

The structure of The Good Book itself is drawn from the Judaeo-Christian Bible, with chapters and verses within sections, and even begins with the story of an apple – the one that falls upon the head of Sir Isaac Newton. It has been, as Grayling himself is quick to declare, a ‘hubristic undertaking’, and its daring, its silent yet deliberate challenge to the major religions, could fall uneasily on some readers’ eyes. But there is nothing arrogant, only confident and quietly energetic, about the man himself. From the down-to-earth humour of his anecdotes about sceptical cabbies to the reflective allusion to David Hume and John Stuart Mill as important influences, every word Grayling speaks is full of intelligence and conviction. Moments of cheek, such as the joke of the apple, must be forgiven.

While answering questions from the enthusiastic audience, Grayling offers two pieces of his own wisdom. The first is that happiness ought to be a product of our actions, and not the intended target; the second is that the worst falsehood that has ever been told to mankind is that there is only one truth. The Good Book embodies both of these ideas in its wide-ranging content, offering example rather than commandment, and insight in place of injunction.

In the seventh week of last term, Etcetera Magazine, literary supplement to Cherwell, held their first Freestyle Writing Competition in honour of World Book Day. The competition came to a head on World Book Day, Thursday, March 3^rd at Oxfam’s flagship bookshop on St. Giles where eleven finalists were called upon to read their work to the assembled crowd.

The readings took place over the course of an hour and were extremely well attended to the point that the windows of Oxfam were all steamed up leaving passers-by wondering what was happening inside. 

Three winners have recently been announced and have received World Classics donated by the Oxford University Press. Jonnie McAloon took first place for his short story, Arthur and The Tobacchus. Antonio Di Fiore was awarded second place for his poem, God’s Work. Finally, Archie Cornish came in third with his poem, The Power Kite. 

The Etcetera team, who judged the competition, received over seventy submissions in varying forms of prose, poetry, and even song, making for some very difficult decision making. In the face of such stiff competition, Francesca Goodwin, Etcetera Content Editor and Events Organiser, said of McAloon’s winning story, ‘it embodies what we believe good contemporary fiction should be; original, concise, and entertaining’.

Similarly, Content Editor Becky Gardner noted that judging the competition was truly an inspiring experience in that ‘it just goes to show how much talent there really is in Oxford’.

All three winning submissions will be featured in Issue 22 of Etcetera which will be published in the second week of Trinity Term and can be found in copies of Cherwell. 

I’ve always had a secret desire to take a course in creative writing, so when I saw a copy of Initiate – the first anthology of work by graduates of Oxford’s Master of Studies in Creative Writing – behind the counter at Blackwell’s, I couldn’t resist picking it up. I vaguely recalled the media hype when the course was launched in 2005: the debates over how it would stand up to traditional ‘academic’ subjects, whether creative writing courses tended to produce a particular, homogenous style of writing, and if writing was something that could actually be taught. The showcase anthology seemed to have received few reviews, so I decided to judge it for myself to see how good these ‘initiates’ really were, and what I was missing out on.n

The quality varies as you might expect from a book that comprises work from a wide range of contributors, testing out a multitude of different forms and voices. I found some of the poems uninspiring: Alice Willington’s Dusk verges far too close to cliché, while David Shook’s images of ‘silverfish [mating] beneath the seminary pillows like sequins fucking’ seems a bit too self-consciously intended to shock. Some of the prose didn’t quite work for me either, such as A Malady of the Heart by Savyn Javeri-Jillani which contains lovely moments but has too much going on for it to flow together as a story.

Still, I couldn’t help but be impressed by Stephanie Chong’s The Essence of Sandalwood, a moving portrayal of the perspective breast cancer puts on the normality of ballet lessons and a career in law. Chong writes like she knows this world well – sure enough, her biography reveals that she gave up being a solicitor to take the Master of Studies. Sarah Darby similarly writes about what she knows, using her experience working in the NHS to create a tender tale of two boys joking about their crushes while waiting for heart surgery. And it’s not just the variety of contributors’ CVs that stands out, the cultural diversity of the cohort is also reflected in their writing. Manish Chauhan’s The Bloomers is a sensitive, unconventional take on arranged marriage, with some wonderful details: ‘They say that if your rotli are round, it means you’ll find a good husband’.

As for the poems, Roy Wooley’s 3am Garden is deliciously surreal, describing an ex-girlfriend who keeps a dragon ‘in an apple-crate with a brick on top’. There are some great titles, such as Questions to Identify a Pale Tongue, and arresting imagery: ‘I like music that wants to press / my cheek against its shoulder’. But the anthology isn’t limited to poetry and prose: I enjoyed Paula Bardowell Stanic’s drama, and a bizarre screenplay by Colm O’Shea. There’s work by more established writers in there as well, including One of those Days, a satirical screenplay by Mark Burton that I immediately had to look up on YouTube. Guessing who is and isn’t a creative writing graduate is part of the fun, and not always an easy task.

One thing is clear: graduates of Oxford’s Master of Studies don’t write like hackneyed clones, as criticisms of creative writing courses might imply. Whether I liked their work or not, they all demonstrated unmistakably individual voices and a willingness to experiment. Judging from the success of recent graduates, this seems to be paying off, although it is, of course, too early to tell whether Oxford will acquire a reputation for creative writing to rival that of East Anglia. 

So maybe I should start compiling a portfolio for my own application – I’m definitely tempted. But then again, a brief glance at the biographies at the back of Initiate or a consideration of the diverse career paths of famous authors such as Dick King Smith, makes me wonder whether a bit of life experience first would be more useful.