Interviews
Joseph Walsh
"Surreal" is how the man calling himself Nicholas Searle describes the last five years of his life. He began working on his debut novel The Good Liar in 2014 at the age of 57, having recently retired from the Civil Service. The nature of his former employment remains undisclosed. But, the fact that Nicholas Searle is not his real name, gives a clue to the fact his work was in intelligence rather than land registry. Early retirement gave him the opportunity to do something he has always wanted to do – write a novel.He had dabbled in writing but now “wanted to see whether I could or not”. It Read more ...
Russ Coffey
When goth-pop duo Shakespears Sister split in 1993, the music press dubbed it the break-up of the decade. Partly it was because at the time they were one of the biggest, and coolest, bands around (their single "Stay" managed a record eight weeks at number one). It was also because of the dramatic way the split happened: Siobhan publicly fired Marcella with a short note, read out at the Ivor Novello awards. After that, the pair didn't speak for 26 years. Now they're back together. A new EP, Rides Again, is out tomorrow and their tour starts at the end of the month. It's thirty Read more ...
Lisa-Marie Ferla
As frontman and lyricist of US rockers The Hold Steady, Craig Finn specialises in vivid storytelling featuring larger than life characters. It’s a writing style that he has carried with him into his solo work too even if, as he says, the stories are “more vulnerable and maybe a little more personal” than fans of his other band may be used to.It’s been a busy year for Finn. Fourth solo album I Need A New War, released in April, completed what he has described as a trilogy of records with producer Josh Kaufman. It’s musically spacious and lyrically dense, its bright spots of harmonica and Read more ...
David Nice
There's something about the very opening of a Mahler symphony which gives you an idea of how the rest of the performance will go. In the case of the Second, the inescapable "Resurrection", it's the ferocity behind the upper string tremolo and the wildness of the uprush from cellos and basses. To kick off the first full Tsinandali Festival in the wonderful part-open auditorium recently constructed on a country estate in Georgia's wine-growing district, there was that special shock of the new you only get from young players experiencing the work for the first time.The Armenians, Azeris, Read more ...
Jasper Parrott
Fiftieth anniversary? It seems incredible but also so exhilarating not least because these times we live in now seem to me to be a golden age for music of all kinds and in particular for what we label so inadequately classical music. This flowering is all the more significant and exciting as we see politics and governments around the world set on courses which can only damage and undermine the environments in which what is best about human talent and endeavour - and especially for young people and even more for children and the very young - should be encouraged to thrive.It is sobering Read more ...
Thomas H. Green
Charles Hazlewood (b. 1966) has worked across the gamut of orchestral music, his career showcasing the multitude of ways it can be perceived and enjoyed. Recently he has reengaged with his longstanding love of minimalist music, first via his two BBC documentaries Tones, Drones and Arpeggios: The Magic of Minimalism, and now with forthcoming concerts which follow in their wake. These ares the latest chapter in a creatively restless career.In 1995 Hazelwood won the European Broadcasting Union’s conducting competition and has since performed with orchestras including the Swedish Radio Symphony, Read more ...
Marina Vaizey
Over the past four decades Martin Gayford, The Spectator’s art critic, has travelled the world, been published in an amazing range of print and digital publications and written more than 20 books, many of them involving his fascination not only with looking at art, but also its making.Several, including Looking at Pictures, have been collaborations with David Hockney. Man in a Blue Scarf, his account of sitting 250 hours for his portrait by Lucian Freud, is a classic. He has also published books on Michelangelo, Constable, and Van Gogh. His association with art is deeply personal. His Read more ...
Miranda Heggie
A robe can be many things. Sure, it’s a garment, but it can also be cover, a disguise, a costume or a uniform. It’s also something composed of many different threads woven together to create something much bigger. It’s these kinds of layers of multiplicity which form the basis of the inspiration for Scottish composer Alastair White’s new opera, ROBE, premiering at this year’s Tête à Tête opera festival. Scored only for piano, flute and four female voices, the opera creates a layered matrix of worlds within worlds, exploring complex networks between stories, history and experiences.White’s Read more ...
Heather Neill
Lia Williams is not an actor who looks for easy options. Twice she has played two characters in the same production, switching between them for different performances. In Pinter's Old Times in 2013 she and Kristin Scott Thomas alternated Anna with Kate, dancing competitive rings around Rufus Sewell's Deeley, and in Mary Stuart at the Almeida she and Juliet Stevenson flipped a coin to decide, minutes before the play began, which of them would play Elizabeth or Mary. In both these productions, Williams received stunning reviews, as she has done in other recent lead roles, notably Read more ...
Tim Cumming
As Martin Scorsese’s new feature film, Rolling Thunder Revue: A Bob Dylan Story, hits Netflix and cinemas, and a new 14 CD boxed set enters the official Bootleg Series, theartsdesk talks exclusively to Scarlet Rivera, the violinist on Desire and the Rolling Thunder Revue tours of 1975 and 1976, about her experiences of encountering, recording and touring with Dylan.I wrote to Scarlet Rivera via her website, expecting only the outside chance of a reply, because few who have worked and spent time with Dylan tend to open up about their experiences in public. I stressed my interest in the Read more ...
Jenny Gilbert
Visits from major foreign ballet companies are always news, but a two-week London season by one of America’s “big three” is something to get excited about. San Francisco Ballet doesn’t rest on its laurels. Eight of the 12 pieces offered in the coming Sadler's Wells season were premiered by the company only last year. Helgi Tomasson, its long-serving artistic director, tells theartsdesk what it means to keep pushing the boundaries.JENNY GILBERT: You’ve been at the helm of this company for an astonishing 34 years. That gives you a long view of the art form that’s almost unique.HELGI TOMASSON: Read more ...
Nick Hasted
Martial arts mayhem, Shaolin philosophy, a tribe of masked hip hop warriors emerging from the mist of Staten Island, a Funkadelic-Parliament collective sprawling through the music industry in the age of black mass incarceration: the Wu-Tang Clan were all these things, immediately. Will Ashton’s new book, Chamber Music: About the Wu-Tang (in 36 Pieces), considers their 1993 debut album Enter the Wu-Tang (36 Chambers) in provocative, cut-up, sample-heavy style. In conversation with the languidly learned, culturally sensitive journalist Kevin Le Gendre, he sets the Wu-Tang in a broad, often ugly Read more ...