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theartsdesk
Amy Winehouse, who was found dead at her London home this afternoon, was the greatest female pop singer of her time, in the way that Billie Holiday was of hers, says Peter Culshaw, the first of theartsdesk's writers who tell below what she signified to music and to them. More tributes come from Joe Muggs, Thomas H Green, David Nice and Matilda Battersby.PETER CULSHAWIn just two albums, Amy Winehouse proved she had a rare ability to inhabit her songs, and her sultry contralto voice was unique. It will be noted she is a tragic member of the "27 Club" - the brilliant fireworks who burned out at Read more ...
theartsdesk
Lucian Freud, who died aged 88 at his west London home on Wednesday, was often described as Britain's greatest living artist. In the six decades he was active, figurative painting went in and out of fashion - though mostly it was out - but Freud remained resolutely outside and beyond fashion. As both an art world grandee and something of a celebrity, he really had no rival, though perhaps David Hockney, still alive and 15 years his junior, came closest. Freud, however, had a very different way of looking: cooler, harder, more penetrative. Below, four writers pay their personal tributes. Read more ...
David Nice
Whatever the quality of the material with which they're grappling, there are two undeniable truths about the Belarusian actors who've put their already curtailed freedom on the line by coming to the Almeida Festival this week: they're skilled practitioners of their art and courageous human beings. Read their biographies in the programme and you'll see that the words "detained", "arrested", "attacked", "dismissed" crop up rather a lot. In Europe's last dictatorship, stepping out on stage and speaking a line, a word even, can lead to imprisonment.Be cynical if you will about Western actors Read more ...
theartsdesk
Tonight the doors open for the biggest classical music festival in the world, the BBC Proms at the Royal Albert Hall. To help you plan your summer visits and listening, theartsdesk's critics gently steer you with their own preferences from the 90 concerts on offer. You can also check the complete list of all Proms on another page. Recommendations are made by David Nice, Igor Toronyi-Lalic, Edward Seckerson, Alexandra Coghlan, Graham Rickson, Stephen Walsh and Ismene Brown. David Nice As I intimated when I reported on the press briefing, the prospectus looks more enticing this year Read more ...
Ismene Brown
Roland Petit died this morning aged 87, a world choreographer of chic and erotic theatricality who blew away the French classical ideal in a roar of post-war sexual liberation. He created an all-male corps of swans for Swan Lake long before Matthew Bourne, and his roles for his exquisite wife, Zizi Jeanmaire, repositioned ballet drama upon the femme fatale rather than the virgin. Arguably, though, for British ballet-goers he was above all the seducer who almost lured Margot Fonteyn away to France (and who got her to have a nose job) just as she was leading the Sadler’s Wells Ballet to Read more ...
joe.muggs
It's not often you can call pop music revolutionary, but this record is - in more ways than one. Bringing together techniques of engagement that have been honed by Radiohead, Lady Gaga, Lil Wayne and... um... Justin Bieber, the 21-year-old Berkley, California rapper Lil B appears to be on the verge of becoming the first bona fide internet-birthed superstar. I'm Gay (I'm Happy) appeared on iTunes yesterday, announced with a single tweet, with no prior warning whatsoever bar an announcement of its provocative title a couple of months back. It has seemingly no standard record company support Read more ...
Russ Coffey
This site has never acknowledged a distinction between high and popular culture. Nor, it seems, does the city of Birmingham. Currently bidding for UK City of Culture 2013, it is also promoting itself as the "Home of (Heavy) Metal". This summer, at various locations across the Black Country, a four-month festival looks at the likes of Ozzy Osbourne and celebrates the people who inspired him to “bark at the moon”. Surrounded by guitars, leather and fans' metalobilia in the Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery, theartsdesk caught up with Black Sabbath guitarist Tony Iommi to find out what it’s all Read more ...
Jasper Rees
A few years ago I chanced upon something truly surreal. I was driving along a track in New Zealand. The way you do. There was a field on the left. In it there was a man sitting on a portable chair, a sketchpad in his lap, a pencil in his hand. Gathered in front of him, like a cluster of attentive disciples, was a tight semi-circle of cows. The man was wearing a black suit in a style popular at the end of the 19th century. The surreal bit is that, despite the grizzly beard, this was Columbo. None other than.I looked over his shoulder at a very pretty picture, and tried to engage the Read more ...
Ismene Brown
The Royal Opera House prides itself on knowing exactly who is registering on its mailing services, and just how high-class they are. Mr, Mrs, Ms, Miss, Dr, really can’t cover the possibilities. Hence the hilarity greeting their online registering process, which offers no fewer than 132 options for your title - which it is mandatory to fill in. These range from HRH The Duke of, HSH The Princess, HRH Sultan Shah, Senator, Ambassador, Baron, Marquess, Viscount and so on down to numerous different forms of Reverends, Rev Dr, Rev Mgr, Rev Preb, Very Rev throughout the highways and byways of church Read more ...
joe.muggs
The house music of Chicago, led by producers and DJs, has long had a tendency to feature the greatest vocals of any genre yet not make stars of its singers. And for most of his working life, Darryl Pandy, who died yesterday aged 48, was not the star his huge presence and elemental, gospel-schooled voice warranted – instead working the club circuit and soul revival shows, and featuring on dance tracks scattered across dozens of 12" singles on many labels worldwide.However, Pandy did have one moment of glorious exposure to the mainstream, one which will ensure his immortality, and which also Read more ...
joe.muggs
This month sees an audacious attempt to showcase British dancehall music, when the Cargo venue in Shoreditch hosts the multi-artist revue Showtime!. The Heatwave collective have brought together vocalists from various UK underground scenes, linked by a strong influence from the high-energy Jamaican sounds of the past 30 or so years. While many of the artists involved have found success in crossover scenes like rave, jungle, grime and garage, the appeal of dancehall itself (also known by the overlapping terms bashment and ragga) has traditionally been restricted to predominantly black Read more ...
theartsdesk
The inaugural year of National Theatre Wales included an immensely ambitious body of work which tested to the limit the definition of what a national theatre can and should be. In new venues and old, found spaces and open spaces, it staged several freshly created plays, some retrieved ones, as well as adaptations, devised pieces and, in Aeschylus'sThe Persians, the oldest play of all. The year was capped at Easter by the widely hailed The Passion of Port Talbot starring Michael Sheen. Now NTW has announced its second season and it looks to be just as boundary-pushing as the first. Read more ...