Buzz
Peter Culshaw
This week's birthdays include a trio of incandescent rock legends – Axl Rose musing about recording a triple album and sacking his drummer, Alice Cooper on corrupting the youth, and Nigel Tufnel, lead guitarist of Spinal Tap, pushing the amp up to 11. There’s musicologist Alan Lomax on prison songs, a clip of a film melodrama with violinist Jascha Heifetz, a tour of the world with Bob Marley on Google Earth from Trenchtown to Addis Ababa, and Barrett Strong, who recorded the original, terrific version of "Money" on Motown in 1959. All together now: “Your lovin' gives me a thrill/ But your Read more ...
Ismene Brown
The Victoria and Albert Museum intends on 22 February to disperse its collection of musical instruments to other venues, to allow more room for fashion and textile exhibits. Conductor Christopher Hogwood and composer Oliver Knussen are two more well-known names in the list of more than 5,100 signatories to the petition lodged at 10 Downing Street asking for the move to be prevented. theartsdesk invited big hitters on either side to debate the case - Roxy Music designer Anthony Price makes the fashion case, while conductor Laurence Cummings heads the musician's view. And we ask you: What Read more ...
Ismene Brown
The BBC launched today its own popular opera talent hunt (details below), while ITV's Popstar to Operastar has suffered heavy critical attack and disappointing public ratings. The BBC's Commissioning Editor for Music and Events, Jan Younghusband, added a private comment to our review of the ITV show here, pointing out: "My big struggle is how we bring this great entertainment [opera] to TV in a meaningful way without wrecking it."The BBC's Passion for Opera plans in brief:Dame Kiri Te Kanawa, Rolando Villazón and Danielle de Niese present specially commissioned films for BBC Read more ...
Peter Culshaw
This week, the great Brazilian songwriter Tom Jobim, in a duet with Elis Regina, as well as teaching jazzer Gerry Mulligan bossa nova and in a version by Ryuichi Sakamoto. It's also the birthday of songwriter Robert Wyatt, and trip-hop pioneer Tricky, who shares a birthday with Mozart.25 January 1927: Antonio Carlos Jobim, better known as Tom Jobim. First: a minute in 1950s paradise on the beach with Jobim, Joao Gilberto and Luiz Bonfa.
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Although you only get to see his hands in this next clip, he plays his "Águas de Março Read more ...
sue.steward
I’m no folky but I fell for the songs of Kate and Anna McGarrigle the moment I first heard their album Dancer with Bruised Knees, and it’s remained a companion ever since. It never struck me that their songs and the eclectic backing music was "folk", as it was often categorised; the tag presumably arose from Kate’s accordion and banjo playing, their acoustic guitars and, of course, the French-Canadian chansons they sang at home as children - and thankfully introduced to the rest of us.But regardless of definitions, when Kate sat at the piano and Anna played guitar, or they swapped places and Read more ...
Peter Culshaw
An ongoing series celebrating musicians' birthdays. This week's include gypsy jazz guitarist Django Reinhart, who would have been 100 this week, Simon Rattle enthusing about Mahler and talking about the Berlin Philharmonic going digital, Roy Plomley on Desert Island Discs with Paul McCartney and a trio of divas: Eartha Kitt wanting to be evil, Spanish singer Lola Flores and the Japanese teen pop star Rika Ishikawa of the girl group Def Diva in a high budget video set in a gents' toilet. The song "Peace" topped the Japanese charts and sold a million. See videos below.23 January 1910: Django Read more ...
Peter Culshaw
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Jasper Rees
Hampstead Theatre today revealed the identity of their new artistic director. Edward Hall will take over at the end of this month when Anthony Clark steps down after seven years in the post. “Hampstead Theatre and I share a passion for finding new audiences for theatre and I am thrilled to be taking over as artistic director,” Hall said today. “I am excited by the company’s long and successful association with new writing and with the opportunities the building offers in creating a dynamic dialogue between the audience and the actors.”Hall is already the founding artistic director of his own Read more ...
sheila.johnston
Eric Rohmer, who died yesterday in Paris aged 89, was famed for elegant, literate, yet profoundly romantic and erotic dramas such as La Collectionneuse, My Night With Maud and Claire's Knee; and for a style that helped define the French Nouvelle Vague and that he pursued with distinction in some 50 films over the next half century (his last, The Romance of Astrea and Celadon was made two years ago). In this interview, first published in the Daily Telegraph in 1999, the director revealed himself as remarkably clear-eyed and incisive about his films. I offer it here, in a slightly edited form, Read more ...
Peter Culshaw
An ongoing series celebrating musicians' birthdays. This week Don Van Vliet, also known as Captain Beefheart, in a fascinating 1997 documentary made by John Peel, master drummer Gene Krupa, singer Long John Baldry on a TV special hosted by the Beatles, producer Jerry Wexler talking about working with Bob Dylan, smooth operator Sade whose first album of new material in ten years is due to be released next month and a brief farewell to producer Willie Mitchell.15 January 1941: Don Van Vliet, or Captain Beefheart, retired from music in the early 1980s to pursue painting. This 1997 documentary is Read more ...
Peter Culshaw
The singer Lhasa de Sela passed away from breast cancer in her Montreal home on 1 January just before midnight, at the age of 37. Since this news emerged my email box has had numerous messages about this tragic loss, including from theartsdesk critic Robert Sandall who wrote about her “extraordinary talent, amazing life… a total original, a real artist”, and adds a note below this article. Howard Male said, “The Living Road is one of the truly great albums in any genre, in my opinion.” While never forming a conventional career, her three albums La Llorona, The Living Road and the self- Read more ...
Peter Culshaw
An ongoing series celebrating musicians' birthdays. 7 January 1907: This week, by cosmic or other coincidence, has the birthdays of four composers who wrote some of the most interesting 20th-century music for the piano. Francis Poulenc here plays his Piano Concerto for Two Pianos with Jacques Fevrier.The piece was been dismissed by Klemperer, among others, as little more than a mere divertissement - the tunes, including a section inspired by Balinese gamelan, waft in and out "like the models on a Paris Fashion show" as one critic put it, never to be seen again. It was played to great Read more ...