We in New York and New England tend to take a more diffident approach.
|
|
The humor in the new show is of a different variety, though — softer, more diffident, more resigned, with an ephemeral, storybook quality.
|
|
I interviewed the 6 foot 4 inch-tall singer-songwriter two years ago in Paris and he was more diffident, wary, hunched over in an old coat.
|
|
Rachmaninoff's 24 published preludes of Opp. 3, 23, and 32 have most often been recorded as a unified set of 24. He himself was somewhat more diffident: he recorded much of his own music, but only eight of the 24 preludes (C minor, G minor, G major, E major, G major, F minor, F major, G minor);The Performances of Rachmaninoff – A Discography, Notes from RCA's The Complete Rachmaninoff, 5 vols, 1973. and he never performed more than four preludes in any single concert.
|
|
After his release in 1946, he and Campbell, with other musicians, formed a band, the West African Rhythm Brothers, initially to accompany a ballet company, Les Ballets Nègres, who toured the UK. The group established a residency at the Abalabi club in Soho in 1952, playing a mixture of palm-wine and jùjú music but increasingly absorbing calypso and mento influences from musicians newly arriving from the Caribbean. With Campbell on vocals and Hughes on guitar, other members of the group included trumpeter Harry Beckett, saxophonist Willy Roachford, pianist Adam Fiberesima, and bongo player Ade Bashorun. According to writer Val Wilmer: > While Campbell was credited as the group's leader, Hughes's role was > important. He played an amplified instrument, sometimes in a harsh, > attacking style, and his confident, boisterous singing made a welcome > contrast to Campbell's gentler, more diffident manner.
|
|
Rachel Cooke of The Guardian later described his TV persona as "pugnacious, sardonic and seemingly super-confident", while noting the RADA training and that it was "not the real Jonathan Meades, who is an altogether more diffident and shy character [...] except when drunk". The series spawned four sequels: Further Abroad (1994), Even Further Abroad (1997), Abroad Again in Britain (2005) and Abroad Again (2007), along with several other series and stand-alone films, the majority of which have been archived on the website MeadesShrine. Preferring to be thought of as a performer rather than as a presenter, Meades has described his style as "heavy entertainment"; "staged essays" which seek to combine "lecture hall" and "music hall", Geoffrey Hill and Benny Hill. The 1998 film Heart By-Pass looked affectionately at Birmingham; particularly at how its architecture, transport system and ethnic mix have changed since the 1960s. It featured the music of many of the city's best-known '60s and '70s rock bands such as The Moody Blues, The Move, Traffic, Black Sabbath and ELO.
|
|