Features & Interviews
Filmmaker Darius Marder: 'Deafness is a culture. That's not being PC'
Saturday, 03 April 2021
Sound of Metal has been a long time coming. Director and writer Darius Marder faced years of delays ranging from casting changes to the whole world shutting down. Was it worth the wait? Well, six Academy Award nominations including Best Film certainly suggest it was.
Extract: TV by Susan Bordo
Tuesday, 30 March 2021
"Television and I grew up together." As a baby boomer born in 1947, Susan Bordo is roughly the same age as our beloved gogglebox, which began life as a broad box with a ten-inch screen, chunky and clunky and encased in wood. With the rapid changes in technology in the years since, "television", as Bordo points out, has become estranged from its material status.
First Person: violinist Abigail Young on getting...
Friday, 26 March 2021
February 2020: an item a long way down the agenda of the nightly news caused me to remark, fairly casually, “I wonder if that will affect me”....
Extract from Sauntering: Writers Walk Europe,...
Monday, 15 March 2021
Wandering, ambling, sauntering. The last, least heard of the three, captures a sense of leisurely aimlessness: a jolly meander unbound by destination...
First Person: Anna Lucia Richter on Monteverdi...
Saturday, 13 March 2021
It’s actually quite a strange feeling to know that my CD Il delirio della passione is now out. I recorded this amazing, all-embracing Monteverdi...
theartsdesk Q&A: Daryl Hall
Legendary singer-songwriter talks recording, vaccines and reaching a billion streams |
First Person: Clare Norburn on how she came to write her ambitious Zoom-era drama, 'Love in the Lockdown'
Writer-producer Clare Norburn elaborates upon her self-isolation online play |
‘The Healing Power of Music’: composer Nigel Hess on great-aunt Myra’s wartime concerts
Parallels between lockdown solace and a great Dame's National Gallery events |
Britney Spears (1998-present): The Video Special
Britney on video: 23 years of salacious self-objectification and hyper-kitsch |
Disc of the Day 10th Anniversary: the level playing field
Ten years of record reviews show how sometimes deranged variety works in our (and the records') favour |
Reviewing music off-piste: reflections on working beyond the comfort zone
The joy of adventure on unfamiliar ground |
Classical musicians on life after Brexit - 4: singers speak out
Top tenor Nicky Spence introduces five other distinguished voices on the visa debacle |
Classical musicians on life after Brexit - 3: violinist Sara Deborah Struntz-Timossi
Another previously free-ranging player adds her voice to individual stories featured here |
Classical musicians on life after Brexit - 2: violinist Victoria Sayles
First sequel to pianist Sophia Rahman's assembly of musical voices on the visa situation |
'The total confusion about post-Brexit rules adds to the distress': classical musicians speak out
Ten players and administrators on the fallout in government restrictions to EU touring |
'Having to establish a real conversation with the audience is a good challenge': Raffaello Morales on a possible musical future
Pioneer of a rare 2020 success story, the Fidelio Orchestra Cafe, on adapting to change |
Book extract: Fat by Hanne Blank
The multiple personalities of a public enemy, sexual fetish and essential organ |
Dame Fanny Waterman (1920-2020) - some recollections, with love and affection
The Leeds International Piano Competition's Artstic Director remembers its founder |
First Person: conductor Johannes Vogel on Beethoven’s Ninth as re-orchestrated by Mahler
The importance of celebrating the anniversary year’s end with a bang |
First Person(s): soprano Susan Bullock and baritone William Dazeley on filming Britten’s Owen Wingrave
Grange Park Opera makes the most of Covid restrictions by producing a TV opera |
Filmmaker Frank Marshall: 'People don’t understand what geniuses The Bee Gees were'
Director of the new Bee Gees documentary discusses the brothers' legacy in music |
Not-quite-solitude on the 34th floor: violinist Maxine Kwok on the short film 'Rising'
The LSO player relates her lockdown experience in the City of London she loves so much |
First Person: Avi Avital on 'Art of the Mandolin'
Master of an exquisite instrument turns to works written specifically for it |
‘Our whole industry is supported by vulnerable freelance creators': Chen Reiss on the artist in a time of Coronavirus
The soprano, now on screen in the Royal Opera 'Ariodante', on recognition for performers |
First Person: Paul Bullock on making BBC Young Jazz Musician 2020
The BBC Young Musician executive editor on the challenges of making the competition work for TV in lockdown |
Book extract: Nativity by Jean Frémon, with drawings by Louise Bourgeois
Reckoning with the question of how to represent Christ |
First Person: horn player Alec Frank-Gemmill on authenticity and enlightenment in lockdown
Treading a fine line in Brahms between historical evidence and creative freedom |
First Person: Jessica Duchen on writing about Beethoven's Immortal Beloved
Why her novel 'Immortal' became more seismic, and more relevant, than she expected |
'Josquin has defined our career': The Tallis Scholars’ Peter Phillips on the end of a major recording project
Celebrating an epic on the eve of the Renaissance Mass master’s 500th anniversary |
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Speaking to America’s Hit Parader magazine in August 1967...
Night in Paradise review - lukewarm bloodbath
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DVD/Blu-ray: Catch Us If You Can
Catch Us If You Can, the 1965 road movie starring Barbara Ferris and the eponymous drummer and guiding force of the Dave Clark Five,...
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Sequin is the screen name for the questing 16-year...
The Seven Deadly Sins / Mahagonny Songspiel, Royal Opera onl...
There are so many good ideas, so much talented hard work from the singers of the Jette Parker Young Artists Programme and two dancers, such a...
