Buzz
judith.flanders
This is the second part of a series that has passed a little too quietly for comfort. The V&A’s grand Diaghilev show has received all the noise in the press – “fabulous”, “sumptuous”, “exotic” – in fact, all the words that were used at the time to describe Diaghilev’s company. The only word that isn’t being used is “dancer” – we get relatively little chance to think about movement in South Kensington. However, Jane Pritchard, curator of that show, has now redressed the balance on the South Bank with a remarkable collection of films.
At first glance, the season might seem ordinary – Read more ...
David Nice
Eleven years is a long time when you're launching young talent on the world. Since 1999, BBC Radio 3's New Generation Artists have gone forth and multiplied. All the "graduates" have outstanding careers, and among them some of the names which will be most familiar with music lovers include trumpeter Alison Balsom, mezzo-soprano Alice Coote, Macedonian pianist Simon Trpčeski and three of the world's most successful string quartets (Belcea, Jerusalem and Pavel Haas).With a new intake of seven to the current 14 just announced, we had a chance to hear three of the group in action at the BBC Read more ...
joe.muggs
Dubstep is everywhere – and if you will excuse a little self-promotion I have, in my small way, helped this state of affairs come about. The bass-heavy, rhythmically exploratory and very British electronic dance music genre has now – via Magnetic Man and Katy B – proved it can produce bona fide top-10 hits, and it has become the de facto sound of every summer festival to boot, while still keeping both feet in the underground clubs from whence it emerged.Watch the video of "Katy on a Mission" by Katy B:
Regular readers of theartsdesk will know that I have written extensively about the Read more ...
mark.hudson
As Tate St Ives gears itself up for a major exhibition on the iconic Cornish painter Peter Lanyon – a show that will reinforce St Ives’s claims as a modern art Mecca – the artist’s son is responding with an exhibition that gently sends up the whole St Ives art mythology, while revealing a fascinating, but little known aspect of the town’s history.Born in 1918, Peter Lanyon created exhilaratingly airy abstract paintings, underpinned by a sense of something dark and primal beneath the surface of things – images that may have influenced the abstract expressionism of Pollock and de Kooning Read more ...
Peter Culshaw
This evening sees the first of an OUTERINDIA residency at Rich Mix in Shoreditch which will take place on the last Tuesday of each month. OUTERINDIA will, they say, “weave a web of intense links between London, the Subcontinent and the world, showcasing visionary artists in the musical, visual and written arts". It may well be, as they claim, both radical and magical.The first night’s line-up sounds intriguing, anyway, and features: Paban Das Baul – the Bengali maestro with his left-field take on the Mystic Baul tradition (see pictures of Bangladesh with Sam Mills and Paban Das Paul's " Read more ...
David Nice
For those of us who can't hear Vladimir Jurowski's intriguing LPO programme on Saturday night live - Gergiev calls over at the Barbican, in a typically frustrating London clash - all is not lost. We'll be able to hear it from 4 October streamed via the London Philharmonic website or the LPO iPhone application. Six more concerts can be heard this way throughout the season.As they say, there's no substitute for live concerts. But if you can't get to the event, this is a remarkable second best. And since we've been spoilt by being able to listen to every Prom as and when we wanted for a week on Read more ...
fisun.guner
A grisly "shadow portrait" of the late fashion muse and stylist Isabella Blow goes on show today at the National Portrait Gallery. Crafted from taxidermied animals, including a raven, a species of rat linked to the black death and a snake, as well as Blow’s trademark bright lipstick and a heel from one of her Manolo Blahnik shoes, the portrait shows the sitter’s head on a stake. Though the objects resemble a disordered, moth-eaten pile, a spot-lit shadow, which is projected on to the wall behind, shows a clearly defined silhouette of Blow’s uplifted head in profile. Famous for her Read more ...
theartsdesk
To most the music will be more familiar than the name. Geoffrey Burgon, who has died, devoted only a minor portion of his career to composing for television.He also wrote for piano, for trumpet (which he studied at Guildhall School of Music and Drama), for guitar quartet and all manner of chamber group. In 1991 he composed an operatic version of Dickens's Hard Times. Above all he composed for choirs - most notably his Requiem for the Three Choirs Festival in 1976.From the sublime he was quite happy to accept commissions with a more ridiculous flavour, among them Monty Python's The Meaning of Read more ...
theartsdesk
After Monday's report on the Royal Opera House’s new contract demands, a young composer alerted theartsdesk to an intriguing offer on the Covent Garden website - to "Create" a soundtrack for dance. This is a competition for new talent which will be judged by a team led by Deborah Bull, the ROH’s Creative Director: the winning entries to be shown at the ROH in November as part of the FIRSTS 2010 festival.
Create invites any composer over the age of 12 to create a new piece of music to short films of excerpts of existing choreography by two of the ROH’s associates, Will Tuckett and Wayne Read more ...
Jasper Rees
Koltai’s stage designs have been seen in countless operas and theatre productions around the world, and yielded many awards. Of Hungarian extraction, he was born in Berlin in 1924 and granted entry to the UK in 1939. He served with British Intelligence at the Nuremberg Trials before going on to train at the Central School of Art and Design, where he later became head of theatre design. He was created a CBE in 1983. At 86, he remains associate designer for the Royal Shakespeare Company.He now lives in France, where he takes objects found on nearby farms, predominantly metal but also wood, and Read more ...
Jasper Rees
Regulars of theartsdesk will be familiar with the work of Jillian Edelstein. Her portraits of cultural figures have adorned several of our series, theartsdesk Q&A. There is now a chance to see pictures from her most celebrated collection at a new gallery and bookshop in south London. Edelstein was the photographer charged with recording in her native South Africa the Truth and Reconciliation Commission hearings. Held all over the country across a four-year time span, the Commission afforded victims the chance to confront their perpetrators and through their confessions seek, if not Read more ...
sue.steward
Westminster Village hosted Open House last weekend and a significant attraction was at Portcullis House where two linked photo exhibitions, The Election Project and The Public Gallery are on show until Christmas. The main works, 25 large colour prints by British photographer Simon Roberts, follow the campaign canvassers around the UK during the final 25 days before the general election, while the amateurs’ collection is a frieze of 1,696 postcard-sized digital prints of images sent in response to requests made at each stop.Simon Roberts is known for epic, poetic landscapes serving as Read more ...