Buzz
Kieron Tyler
Jet Harris was one of the architects of British rock'n'roll. His death rams home just how distant that era now seems. A former skiffler, he joined The Shadows after a spell backing Terry Dene, British rock's first bad boy. In time, Harris became a bad boy too, setting the template for the self-destructive lifestyle that would become a cliché. But his moody image will survive too. His rumbling bass guitar will forever be synonymous with those evocative Shadows' hits.The Shadows' world-changing moment came in August 1960 when they topped the British charts with “Apache”. Everything in British Read more ...
Ismene Brown
The Royal Opera has announced that Kasper Holten, artistic director of the Royal Danish Opera, has been appointed Director of Opera at Covent Garden, to succeed Elaine Padmore at the end of this season.A native of Copenhagen, 37-year-old Mr Holten has been the Danes' artistic director for 11 years. He is known as a fresh new voice in opera direction and has close ties with Danish broadcasting and digital opera transmission, and Tony Hall, the ROH chief executive, stressed in his welcome that this was a factor.“Kasper Holten has done some fantastic and innovative work as a stage director and Read more ...
Ismene Brown
Sergei Filin, one of the Bolshoi Ballet’s recent male stars, has been appointed as the new artistic director of the massive Russian company on a five-year contract. The appointment brings to a swift culmination a terrible week for the Bolshoi, where their second-in-command resigned after compromising sexual images were released onto the internet, just as the previous artistic director, Yuri Burlaka, had had his contract terminated. See theartsdesk report earlier this week.Filin was a much-praised star on several Bolshoi tours to London - notably popular in a crossdressing role in the Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
Arnaud Fleurent-Didier’s La Reproduction was one of the most striking albums of last year. The news that he and his band are playing the UK for the first time next week at the Institut Français is exciting as La Reproduction was more than great musically. It was also a cultural benchmark, putting the Mai 68 generation under the microscope and taking them to task for being inward-looking – they made great mayonnaise at the expense of paying attention to their kids.La Reproduction is Fleurent-Didier’s fourth album, his first for a major label. His songwriting draws on the classic romantic arc Read more ...
Ismene Brown
The Bolshoi Ballet's company manager, Gennady Yanin, has resigned after pornographic pictures appeared on the internet that were linked to him, just as he was being considered to take on the job of artistic director, which became vacant that day. As a result the world's largest ballet company is now leaderless, with an inexperienced dancer appointed to hold the fort. SEE LATEST NEWS: Sergei Filin appointed artistic director for five yearsThe scandal has left Moscow’s vast company reeling, with a prestigious Paris tour looming in May, and the reopening in October after long and Read more ...
Jasper Rees
The Sundance Film Festival: you have to pack moonboots, parka and thermals. The showcase for independent films, whose public face since its inception in 1978 has been Robert Redford, takes place each January in Utah. In April of next year it is setting up a new branch in the moonboot-free environment of the 02 Arena in London.Sundance London won’t confine itself to the movies. The multi-disciplinary four-day event will include not only screenings but also live music and discussions. One imagines that other festival directors in London will welcome it through gritted teeth. Raindance – an Read more ...
Thomas H. Green
One of the great adventures of the 20th century is the story of LSD. A warped, unlikely slice of history not taught in schools, it has flavoured many aspects of life to this day. The countercultural explosion of the Sixties influenced the broader Western world - art, music, politics, religion, social issues and much more - and at its vanguard were key figures who believed that enlightenment might be found through the use of psychedelic drugs. These utopian mavericks were from all sorts of different backgrounds and they wanted nothing less than to turn society completely on its head, to change Read more ...
Matt Wolf
The Andrew Lloyd Webber musical Love Never Dies emerged empty-handed at the 35th Laurence Olivier Awards, despite seven nominations, but it was a good night for Legally Blonde, Stephen Sondheim, and, so it seemed, pretty well any production lucky enough to play the National's Lyttelton auditorium. And for American playwriting, too, with Clybourne Park following last year's The Mountaintop as a States-side effort that was named Best Play Sunday night at London's equivalent of the Tony Awards.Indeed, Broadway's annual June pow-wow set a higher-than-usual bar for London's comparatively becalmed Read more ...
Matt Wolf
Ending speculation as to who will be the next numero uno at Covent Garden's small but mighty Donmar, Josie Rourke has been announced as artistic director designate of the 250-seater venue; she will accede to the hot seat next January, taking the reins at a theatre where Rourke first worked just over a decade ago, assisting on shows directed, as it happens, by both her predecessors: Michael Grandage and Sam Mendes.Since that time, Rourke has, of course, spent much of her time running west London's even smaller, not-quite-so mighty Bush, a new writing venue that Rourke later this year will be Read more ...
fisun.guner
Damien Hirst is finally getting his first UK retrospective in a public gallery next year, but the question seems to be, “Why now?” It seems both far too late and far too early, especially since Hirst has made no significant work in some years. That the Tate is organising it to coincide with the year of the Olympics, will, of course, be good for them: it will almost certainly see an unprecedented number of visitors, and tourists from around the world will flock to see it.But there’s no getting away from the sense that this doesn’t feel so much as a mid-career retrospective but a YBA autopsy Read more ...
Ismene Brown
The tiny theatre where the Oscar-vanquishing film The King’s Speech was spotted as a potential film project is working on a new script with the play’s author, and the film’s Oscar-winning scriptwriter, David Seidler.Last night at the Oscars, The King’s Speech director, Tom Hooper, taking his own Oscar for best director, told how his mother was at the 54-seat Pleasance theatre, Islington, North London (pictured below), in 2007 listening to a readthrough of the play. She rang her son and told him she thought she had found his next film project.
David Seidler, the playwright, had waited 30 Read more ...
Russ Coffey
The White Stripes may have just announced their retirement but theartsdesk can report that the boy/girl two piece is still alive and well in the form of She Keeps Bees, a Brooklyn-based band currently on a mini-tour around Britain and Europe. Here it’s the girl, Jess Larrabee on guitar, and boy, Andy LaPlant on drums. The sound is superficially similar to The White Stripes with Larrabee delivering gutsy blues rock guitar, but vocally she sounds more like PJ Harvey stranded in Tennessee during a full moon. The soon-to-be-released sophomore album, Dig On, was self-recorded in a log cabin in Read more ...