Interviews
Jasper Rees
Simon Stephens (b 1971) is the most prolific British playwright of his generation. Born and brought up in Stockport, he began writing as a student in York University and had produced seven plays before his Bluebird was produced at the Royal Court in 1998. In due course along came angry, searching, passionate statements about society and belonging with punchy titles like Motortown (2006), Pornography (2007) and Punk Rock (2009) (pictured below right). The productivity has not let up, least of all in a summer which sees three new plays from his pen: Morning at the Traverse in Edinburgh, a fresh Read more ...
joe.muggs
The 21st-century British summer would be a very different thing were it not for Rob Da Bank. With the Bestival brand, Rob – originally Robert Gorham – and his wife Josie have, over the past decade, redefined the weekend music festival, setting the stage for the current massive proliferation of boutique events. The Bestival itself, still on the Isle of Wight site where it began in 2004, has grown to 10 times its original size, remained strong through the recession, and birthed the family-friendly Camp Bestival spin-off which takes place this coming weekend.Bestival's party ethos has its roots Read more ...
Thomas H. Green
Jimmy Cliff (b 1948) is one of Jamaican music’s biggest names. Raised in the countryside, he went to Kingston in his teens and persuaded record shop owner Leslie Kong to record him. The resulting song, “Hurricane Hattie”, was the first of a string of local hits but in the late Sixties he moved to London and, working with Chris Blackwell’s Island Records, his songs such as “Wonderful World, Beautiful People” and “Vietnam”, the latter a favourite of Bob Dylan, reached a far wider audience, becoming hits in Europe.In 1972 Cliff played the lead role in the film The Harder They Come, about a Read more ...
Adam Sweeting
When he joined up with John Oates, Daryl Hall became half of one of the most successful duos in pop history, which has sold upwards of 60 million albums. From the mid-Seventies to the late Eighties, the pair notched six platinum albums and posted a remarkable streak of hit singles. Six of them were American chart-toppers, including "Kiss On My List", "Rich Girl", "Private Eyes" and "Out of Touch", while even the ones which didn't reach Number One became pop standards anyway, including "Sara Smile" and "Family Man".Born in Pottstown, Pennsylvania in October 1946, Hall majored in music at Read more ...
graeme.thomson
Tracing a career arc which has taken him from stand-up comic to actor, writer and film director, it's not too fanciful to describe Bobcat Goldthwait as an anarchic, indie, low budget version of Woody Allen. The 50-year-old New Yorker started out in the clubs of Boston before heading west to Hollywood in the 1980s, where he cultivated a shrill-voiced, nervy, confrontational comic persona to considerable success. Increasingly, he became infamous for the somewhat contrived controversies he unleashed on the US chat show circuit; in 1994 he set fire to a chair on The Tonight Show with Jay Leno. Read more ...
Jasper Rees
Thirty years ago the British were coming. So cried Colin Welland rallyingly from the stage of the Academy Awards, having just accepted an Oscar for best screenplay. And now Chariots of Fire is coming again, twice. An energetic stage reincarnation has sprinted round the block at Hampstead Theatre and now jogs along to the Gielgud, where it will continue to leave barely a dry eye in the house. And then there is the film itself, out shortly for another turn on the red carpet in this Olympic season.Hugh Hudson (b 1936), debut director of the film, wizened producer of the play, has another Read more ...
Peter Culshaw
At his studio near White City in West London (he did say it was Notting Hill) Ilan Eshkeri’s is adding a scratchy cello to a key moment in Ralph Fiennes film of Shakespeare’s Coriolanus. It’s the moment the inhabitants of Rome realise that Coriolanus, an exile, is about to attack them. It is, he says of the suitably ominous sound, “bent out of tune, weird – I’m getting into the sounds of breathing, I like a lot of dirt.” In the studio is his producer Steve McLaughlin, and there are a couple of assistants bustling around.Although not (yet, anyway) a household name, it’s a fair bet that you Read more ...
Thomas H. Green
Joe Walsh is one of classic American rock’s guitar heroes. For the solo at the end of The Eagles' “Hotel California” alone, he earned his place in those ranks, but he’s done a whole lot more in the 44 years he’s been a professional musician.Born in Kansas in 1947 and raised in Ohio and New York, Walsh first gained profile in the heavy rock trio the James Gang before moving on to his own band Barnstorm then going solo. His combination of technical skill, tight riffs and wry lyrics garnered US appeal and when he joined The Eagles in 1975, he gave their sound a steroid edge, co-writing “Life in Read more ...
Jasper Rees
At the Royal Albert Hall one summer evening in 2007, a teeming ensemble of young South Americans served up a BBC Prom that is the most YouTubed classical concert this side of the Three Tenors. Under the baton of the compelling Gustavo Dudamel, an all-dancing, all-shouting account of “Mambo” from West Side Story has become the roof-raising sign-off of the Simón Bolívar Symphony Orchestra of Venezuela, who last year dropped the word Youth from their name.Still a mere 32, with the hair of a poet and the grin of a chipmunk, their conductor seems to be few critics’ idea of the finished Read more ...
Emma Dibdin
From playing a blood-weeping Bond villain in 2006’s Casino Royale to his repeated collaborations with directors such as Nicolas Winding Refn (Drive) and Susanne Bier (After The Wedding), Danish-born actor Mads Mikkelsen has carved out a respected niche on both sides of the pond. He can come out of questionable blockbuster material unscathed – as his recent turns in Clash of the Titans and The Three Musketeers demonstrate – and elevate good material with his relentlessly compelling, peculiarly intense screen presence.He’s recently been confirmed to play a villain in the follow-up to Kenneth Read more ...
peter.quinn
Django Bates ascribes the variety of musical influences at play in his work to his childhood - growing up listening to his father's remarkably eclectic record collection. In the first part of my conversation with Django, he talks about Loose Tubes, StoRMChaser and his new post at Bern University of the Arts. In this second part of our conversation, he talks about craftsmanship, confounding expectations and why strumming one chord all day can be time well spent.PETER QUINN: Your father’s record collection included Romanian folk music, African music, jazz. I’m intrigued to know how that music Read more ...
peter.quinn
Born in Beckenham, Kent, in 1960, Django Bates is a self-taught composer and founder member of the seminal big band Loose Tubes (1983-1990). As well as leading his own groups, Human Chain and Delightful Precipice, he has composed works for the Brodsky Quartet, Joanna MacGregor, Evelyn Glennie, the Britten Sinfonia and the Dutch Metropole Orchestra, amongst others. In 1997, Bates was awarded the prestigious Jazzpar prize, known as the 'Nobel Prize of Jazz' (previous recipients include Lee Konitz, Roy Haynes and Geri Allen). He currently teaches at Bern University of the Arts and the Read more ...