Features
Owen Richards
Writing something people want to stream one billion times is inconceivable for most of us. But then, most of us aren't Rock and Roll Hall of Famer Daryl Hall. Alongside John Oates, he is behind some of the greatest pop songs of all time: "Maneater"; "She's Gone; "Out of Touch"; "Rich Girl"; "I Can't Go For That (No Can Do)"; and of course, the billion-stream masterpiece that is "You Make My Dreams".Over 50 years after forming, the band are still finding new audiences. They've become a favourite for film soundtrackers and samplers. But they don't rest on former glories - Live from Daryl's Read more ...
Clare Norburn
Love in the Lockdown started out as my “Lockdown 1.0 project” - although, of course, we didn’t call it Lockdown 1.0 back then. We didn’t know other lockdowns would follow and that nearly one year on, here we would be, locked down again with theatres and concert halls still closed. It seems inconceivable now, but a year ago, I had never heard of Zoom. Right now, I live on Zoom: my online play with music is being rehearsed, directed and filmed over Zoom - and by actors and musicians on their phones and recording devices. The nine short episodes are directed by Nicholas Renton Read more ...
Nigel Hess
It has been well-documented over the last few months that there has been an upsurge in listener numbers for many radio stations offering classical music – notably BBC Radio 3, Classic FM and Scala Radio – and, during these unprecedented times it comes as no surprise to discover that so many people (of all ages) are finding solace in music which, in some cases, they are turning to for the first time.For me there’s a family resonance – my great-aunt, Dame Myra Hess, set up a series of lunchtime concerts in the National Gallery during World War Two for war-weary Londoners and she seemed to know Read more ...
Thomas H. Green
Interest in Britney Spears has not waned. The #FreeBritney movement, the new documentary Framing Britney Spears, and the ongoing controversy around her father’s legal conservatorship have served to put her back in the public eye over the last year. Not that she ever drifted very far away from it. She is, after all, Britney Spears. Eight years ago, theartsdesk offered an overview of her career via her videos. We now revisit it. Despite many dismissing her output as empty fluff, I argued then that “there's a rich story to be told, reflecting the paradoxical nature of the woman herself and Read more ...
Joe Muggs
Theartsdesk is a labour of love. Bloody-mindedly run as a co-operative of journalists from the beginning, our obsession with maintaining a daily-updated platform for good culture writing has caused a good few grey and lost hairs over the years. But it has also been rewarding – and looking back over the 10 years of Disc of the Day reviews has been a good chance to remind ourselves of that. One thing in particular that drew me into the collective when it was founded, and has kept me going throughout, was the understanding that artistic forms would be treated with equal respect and Read more ...
Mark Kidel
Writing for theartsdesk offers a freedom that I‘ve never experienced before. Encouraged by the much-missed Sue Steward and by Peter Culshaw, two of the website's founders, I started by writing solely about music – something I've done since I was a student. But very soon, I was covering theatre in Bristol, where I lived at the time, and I occasionally wrote about the visual arts, and then the cinema. What a joy, not to be bound by specialism but inspired by my enthusiasm and curiosity!With music, I’ve usually avoided going off-piste. I‘ve mostly selected albums by artists I knew, or who Read more ...
Nicky Spence
Forget the pandemic, it's Brexit which could ring the death knell for artists who are currently hoarse from begging to be taken seriously as a respected export. From Tchaikovsky to Britten, music itself has always been offered visa free but as the repercussions of Brexit are truly felt in the UK, the stories I've collected below from my singing colleagues highlight our increasingly vulnerable position as artists.Thinking back to summer jobs selling tequila on the strips of Magaluf and now selling a Schöne Müllerin to a tentatively packed auditorium in Barcelona, the annexes negotiated in the Read more ...
Sara Deborah Struntz-Timossi
Sara Deborah Struntz-Timossi is an international award-winning violinist who has toured with early music ensembles like the European Union Baroque Orchestra, Dunedin Consort and The English Concert, as well as performing across Europe as a soloist and chamber musician. She is also Artistic Director of the Spirit of Music Festival that brings music right into her east Hampshire community.Everything in my life as a musician and private person was facilitated by the mutual agreements within the EU. My studies in the UK as a German citizen were funded by reciprocal EU study regulations. Within Read more ...
Victoria Sayles
In March 2020, all my work in Australia and Sweden, where I had won contracts for several months to come, was cancelled on the day I was due to fly. Both organisations who had engaged me promptly honoured their contracts with me financially nevertheless. Thank goodness they did, because as UK tax payers and residents, my partner Roland Palmer and I have, for 10 months now, received zero help from SEISS and UC.Coincidentally, Roland (pictured below by Dan Wiebe) had a seat as the cellist and guitarist in the West End in a show that came from Broadway, New York, meeting with tremendous success Read more ...
Sophia Rahman
“Fuck business,” Boris Johnson is alleged to have said while Foreign Secretary. (He didn’t deny it). We have seen enough over the past three weeks of the impact of Brexit on fishermen, hauliers, wine merchants and a host of business people to know that he wasn’t joking.What of the impact on musicians?Some politicians and members of the public seem to believe that when we’re touring we’re on a kind of permanent holiday. We’re not. Music is one of the UK’s most successful exports. Yet the (cleaner but offensive in a whole new way) language used by Johnson in this “clarification” implies a kind Read more ...
Raffaello Morales
As this most remarkable year prepares to enter the history books, most of us who are part of the music industry have come to realise that the western world is desperately looking for solutions to an emergency of unprecedented dimensions in post-war times, and that music is not widely perceived to provide any. As unemployment rises and GDPs tumble across most advanced economies, concert halls sparsely populated with socially distanced orchestras and audiences end up being seen at most as a first-world problem of a nostalgic elite.Most governments have consistently demonstrated Read more ...
theartsdesk
"Ugh, I just feel so fat today," the woman near me in the locker room says to her friend as they get dressed after their workout. I look over – discreetly, as one does – to catch a glimpse of the grimacing side of her face as she zips up a pair of close-fitting blue jeans over a barely rounded lower abdomen, hip bones evident under taut fabric.As I sit putting on my socks, I wonder whether this woman, who has just complained of feeling fat, has even registered that there is an actual fat woman not ten feet away. While she "feels fat" as she frowns her way into her formfitting tank top and Read more ...