Listed
Matthew Wright
Jazz. Is there any other term in contemporary culture so widely recognised, yet so difficult to define? Now in its 22nd year, the London Jazz Festival offers an annual global snapshot of the condition of this most disputed of music form, with the usual big names, but more excitingly, many new, young ones, which is what I have focused on here: acts indicative of the scene today.Wherever you have a tradition, there’s always a temptation to turn it into a dogma, but one of the delights of jazz is the speed of its evolution, morphing before your eyes and ears into a new shape and sound. Surely Read more ...
theartsdesk
It has long since become a cliché that the news of John F Kennedy’s assassination is implanted on the memories of those who remember hearing it for the first time. As that generation thins out, their children are now likelier to think of the breach of the Berlin Wall 25 years ago this weekend.To mark the anniversary, theartsdesk’s writers have come together to nominate works of art inspired by divided Berlin. Necessarily, many of the songs, films and books suggested here have a British perspective, but others are more indigenous commentaries on what one film memorably refers to as the lives Read more ...
theartsdesk
To celebrate our fifth birthday, we offer you an insight into what you, the readers, have devoured in the greatest numbers across the various art forms in both reviews and features. Google Analytics has taught us a great deal about your reading habits, which we try to cater to while always remaining faithful to the original instincts which prompted us to found the site: to provide prompt and knowledgeable coverage of the arts, to be reliable and also provocative, to go deep where necessary or, if less so, skip lightly over the surface. We’re nothing without you lot. Thank you for reading us Read more ...
Jasper Rees
Robin Williams, who has died at the age of 63, was a very American comedian. The flow of invention that erupted from inside him had an unstoppable, domineering, emetic brilliance. In chat shows, performing stand-up, and in his greatest role as a DJ entertaining the troops in Vietnam, he was a not quite human force of nature.Williams had his first starring role in the sitcom Mork and Mindy, as an alien learning the ways of earth. The role lingered over his career as a kind of definition. He never played regular guys: instead he was a shoo-in for shrinks, outcasts, weirdos, penguins and, most Read more ...
alexandra.coghlan
Mozart operas – we’ve all been there, whistled the arias, untangled the love triangles (quadrants/pentagons), dabbled in some cross-dressing, and sung a rousing chorus of general forgiveness. But for every ubiquitous Don Giovanni or Le Nozze di Figaro there are at least two or three other operas that have drifted from the repertoire, rarely performed and little known. 1784’s L’oca del Cairo, anyone?Think of as many Mozart operas as you can (and feel free to include singspiels and any other works performed on stage in the list). Fewer than 10? Keep trying. Fewer than 20? Still not quite there Read more ...
Katie Colombus
While you give your tent an airing in anticipation of festival season, think about the imaginative adventures your teenyboppers might enjoy – from colourful creative activities to bushcraft workshops and babysitting services, there’s much on offer for burgeoning revelers as well as their party-hardy-folks to enjoy. 1. Cornbury, July 4-6, Great Tew Park, OxfordshireAffectionately nicknamed "Poshstock" for its middle-class blend of old school headliners, sub-swanky bars and a glamping section, Cornbury has a range of creative and exciting areas for kids aged six months to five years. Read more ...
Jasper Rees
Is football a thing of beauty? It depends who you ask. If you’re that way inclined, it is possible to see in the 90 minutes’ traffic of a game the qualities that also thrill theatre buffs and balletomanes, opera fans and gallery goers: human drama, obviously, but also grace, wit, villainy, perhaps even truth and profundity. As the World Cup arrives on your television for another month-long sit-in, this edition of Listed suggests the most cultured goals ever scored in the competition, and just for fun looks for parallels in the world of actual culture.Even if you detest football’s venal side Read more ...
theartsdesk
It's the genre of gender-bending and cross-dressing, where women play warriors and men sing like women (while playing warriors). But when it comes to opera, who really wears the trousers? For at least 300 years the answer has been pretty definitive. Women have donned breeches and boots to play opera's many "trouser roles" in music from Handel and Mozart to Massenet and Offenbach. This month Irish mezzo-soprano Tara Erraught takes on one of the repertoire's very finest trouser roles, making her Glyndebourne debut as the lovestruck young nobleman Octavian in Richard Strauss's Der Rosenkavalier Read more ...
theartsdesk
The first bit of the annual Proms ritual is now out of the way, with the publication of the brochure. The next step is at 9am on Saturday 17 May when thousands of people prepare to do simultaneous battle with the Royal Albert Hall's online booking system. We can't help you jump the queue but we can help you make your mind up. Avoiding the events which are mainly there to grab headlines and which will sell out all too easily anyway – the War Horse Prom, announced a week after the National Theatre sacked the musicians who had been playing the theatre show, the Military Wives Choir and the Read more ...
Katie Colombus
If you are seeking to keep small children entertained this Easter, there's no need to sit around gorging on chocolate with so many egg-citing cultural experiences on offer throughout the UK. This week's edition of Listed suggests a range of choices, some in London, some touring, in theatres and beyond. Choose from sing-a-long characters and historical adventures, kooky eco-warriors and Shakespearean puppetry shows.The Unicorn TheatreThe primary London venue for children's theatre is home to two shows this Easter. At the End of Everything Else combines music, puppetry and animation in the Read more ...
theartsdesk
Hauschka is a musician and composer from Düsseldorf, performing in what has been dubbed a "post-classical" vein, although he also has many fans in the electronica scene. His new album Abandoned City, written and performed almost entirely on a treated piano, was inspired by the idea of cities that are no longer, or never were, inhabited. It is full of approriately elegiac beauty. Here he introduces the different cities with a paragraph about each.Elizabeth BayA mining town in southern Namibia. It was formerly considered a ghost town. Elizabeth Bay in on the coast of Namibia, 25 km south of Read more ...
Jasper Rees
It won’t have escaped the attention of anyone with an ear for poetry that Dylan Thomas turns 100 this year. He was born in a suburban house on a hill overlooking Swansea Bay a few months after the outbreak of war, and by his early 20s had been hailed a significant poetic voice by TS Eliot. By 39 he was dead, hastened to his grave by a lethal combination of alcohol, pneumonia and New York doctors.The roaring boy who lived hard and died young has been iconised on the cover of Sgt Pepper, and gave his name to a scrawny-voiced crooner from Minnesota (although this is sometimes disputed by Read more ...