Buzz
Peter Culshaw
It’s the new(ish) big jazz venue, and it’s in, of all places, the wilds of Canary Wharf. It's curious, and encouraging, that anyone has the nerve to open a large new jazz venue anywhere, and in the midst of economic gloom, but they have. The venue for music is the size of Ronnie Scott’s but it is more than a mere music venue – it’s a good-quality restaurant with a cigar bar, a terrace (handy for smokers) and a huge whisky bar - an “amber wall of liquid gold” as they charmingly put it, from £5 to £2,500 for a Macallan 1937 double shot.The vibe is determinedly masculinist – stuffed deer heads Read more ...
theartsdesk
It’s competition time again. Last month we featured ELF’s Reflections, a new release on Nimbus showcasing the unusual and possibly even unique combination of horn, piano and flute. We have a number of copies of the CD to give away. All you need to do is answer the questions correctly and your name will go into the hat.Reflections was reviewed by Graham Rickson as part of his regular Classical CDs Weekly column, but it is stretching it to describe the music as classical. In their interview with Jasper Rees the component members of ELF – pianist Geoff Eales, horn player Dave Lee and flautist Read more ...
Veronica Lee
The winners of the 2011 Foster's Edinburgh Comedy Awards have been announced. The main award, worth £10,000, went to Adam Riches for his anarchic and intensely physical show Bring Me the Head of Adam Riches; the best newcomer award, worth £5,000, went to Humphrey Ker for Dymack Watson: Nazi Smasher!, a tall tale woven from his grandfather's real-life wartime exploits as an intelligence officer sent behind enemy lines.
The special panel award, also worth £5,000, went to The Wrestling, a one-off event during which 20 comics engaged in wrestling bouts with professional wrestlers.
Adam Riches: Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
The former Soviet head of state Mikhail Gorbachev was a ubiquitous presence in the British news last week, wheeled out for the 20th anniversary of the dismantling of the USSR. The anniversary, though, is not just about what went on within what is now Russia or at the Berlin Wall. Last night saw 70,000 gather in the Estonian capital Tallinn for the Song of Freedom event, to mark the country's split from the USSR. The Estonian Supreme Council declared independence at three minutes after 11pm on 20 August, 1991. Music was central to what became known as "The Singing Revolution". There was Read more ...
theartsdesk
Waiting for a plane has rarely been an amusing, surprising and enjoyable experience - unless a girl takes a flute out of her hand luggage and starts playing Ravel's Bolero. Ignore it, perhaps, but then a man going by pulls a clarinet out of his case and joins in. And then one notices the tapping sounds emerging from the soporific airport buzz. A bloke wheels up a drum on a trolley. Before people know it, they're witnessing a full-blown performance of Torvill and Dean's signature tune played by the Royal Scottish National Orchestra in front of their startled eyes.This is an unorthodox and very Read more ...
joe.muggs
At the start of September, the fourth Outlook Festival takes place in a 19th-century fort on the Croatian coast. Already this festival has become a vital point in the calendar for those involved with dubstep, grime and other UK underground scenes – not only a jolly in the sun (“dubstep's Ibiza”), but the one time in the year when everyone involved takes a break from international touring and comes together in the same place, a time to compare notes and take stock of the progress. Its British organisers make even bigger claims for it, though: they see it as drawing together decades' worth of “ Read more ...
David Nice
It's a bit late for a straight review, I know, as this Glyndebourne Festival Opera revival of one of the most ingenious and (hopefully) enduring productions the company has seen in recent years opened three weeks ago. I was down there yesterday giving a pre-performance talk, buoyed in the knowledge that Dvořák's heart-piercing tale of a water nymph betrayed in her quest for a human soul would once again have the benefit of director Melly Still's special vision. But could this year's soprano singing Rusalka and her tenor Prince live up to the white heat generated by their predecessors two Read more ...
Adam Sweeting
With theartsdesk readers still reeling from the demise of Italianate sleuthing series Zen, now comes news of the axing of glossy MI5 drama Spooks. The BBC has announced that the show's 10th series, starting next month, will be its last, though it seems the decision to pull the plug was taken by production company Kudos rather than by the Corporation."We didn't want to get to the point where the BBC said we really don't want another one," said executive producer Jane Featherstone. "We wanted to kill it off in its prime."
Spooks was originally launched in the wake of the 9/11 attacks in New Read more ...
alice.vincent
The round and the curtain are two of theatre’s oldest pieces of stagecraft. Yet architect and design legend Ron Arad has reinvented both in celebration of the Camden Roundhouse’s fifth birthday. The north London venue, which was transformed from a redundant 19th-century railway turntable shed into a famed music venue in the Sixties, was revamped in 2006 and has since become a hub of creative support for young and disadvantaged people in the area. Echoing these sentiments, Arad’s Curtain Call has been created with accessibility and opportunity at its core to try and bring art to the Read more ...
alice.vincent
With ReAnimate, the National Portrait Gallery’s Late Shift team were aiming high. The event sought to bring a free sensory experience throughout the entire building, promising to enchant the hordes away from Trafalgar Square and into a visionary evening of stimulation – not just of sight and sound, but also taste and smell.It would do so through the combined curative powers of Karen Pearson and her award-winning radio production company, and Martyn Ware, electronic music pioneer famed for founding The Human League and Illustrious Company, the tech-savvy sound technology and collaborative Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
Little Rock, the state capital of Arkansas, usually comes to mind in association with hometown boy Bill Clinton. Soul and funk fans, however, aren’t fussed with the sax-playing former governor and president and fixate on the city’s True Soul label, the home of a raft of rare and sought-after sides. Two volumes compiling the imprint have just been issued and include previously unissued tracks. The harmony-driven soul, Southern grooves and tight funk make a case for True Soul being an essential component of soul USA.Musically, Bill C’s sax was in keeping with Little Rock’s limited musical Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
Held each year at the Earls Court Exhibition Centre, the Great British Beer Festival is the top-drawer event in any British beer enthusiast's diary. Organised by CAMRA (The Campaign for Real Ale), it’s a mind-boggling, discombobulating overload of more beer than it’s possible to imagine. Every non-corporate brewer is here, from the heard of (Fullers, Thwaites) to the local and barely heard of. Beer is central, but there’s food and games too. People are here too. Masses of them. And they’re all happy, friendly and full of good vibes. This event has a great atmosphere.The chaps above bought Read more ...