fri 04/07/2025

New Music Features

Appraising Billie Holiday's 'Fine and Mellow' - anatomy of a jazz masterpiece

Tony Staveacre

On December 8th 1957 there was a heavy snowstorm in New York. Ten elderly jazz musicians struggled to make their way through the drifts to a television studio on 10th Avenue. One of them – the bass player – collapsed in the street, and died in hospital three weeks later. But the others got through because they needed to be there, they wanted to be there to support Billie Holiday, who’d been their close friend and inspiration for more than 30 years.

Read more...

'Time Out of Mind' Revisited - a deep focus take on classic Dylan

Tim Cumming

The 1997 release of Time Out of Mind was the resurrection of an artist who appeared to have wandered off the reservation some years before, lost in transit on his Never Ending Tour, trailed by an army of "Bobcats" who followed him for show after grinding show. “How can you stand it?” he once asked of a woman who told him she’d seen dozens of NET gigs.

Read more...

First Person: Kings Place Artistic and Executive Director Helen Wallace on a year of 'Sound Unwrapped'

Helen Wallace

2023 is surely the year the performing arts reach peak "immersive", a word endangered by its own ubiquity. From Punchdrunk’s Burnt City to Danny Boyle’s The Matrix we are promised a swallowing-up by art. Kings Cross is the location for two visual and aural initiatives: David Hockney’s 3D Bigger & Closer at the Lightroom, and Sound Unwrapped at Kings Place, a year-long series of intimate, immersive events kindled by live performance.

Read more...

Remembering Wilko: unforgettable encounters with the Dr Feelgood guitarist

Mark Hudson

Looking back on the most exciting, atmospheric and musically challenging gigs I’ve seen to date, there are several contenders in each category. But for the distinction of THE MOST DISTURBING GIG I’VE EVER BEEN TO there is only one possible option: the night in autumn 1973 when I saw a band called Dr Feelgood supporting Ducks Deluxe, a bluesy soully pub rock band in – of all places – Surbiton Assembly Rooms.

Read more...

2022 Parliamentary Jazz Awards: baubles, bromides and birthdays

peter Quinn

The winners of this year's Parliamentary Jazz Awards were announced at a convivial ceremony held on Tuesday night at Pizza Express Live Holborn.

Organised by the All-Party Parliamentary Jazz Appreciation Group (APPJAG), and co-chaired by John Spellar MP and Lord Mann, the Awards celebrate the vibrancy, diversity, talent, and breadth of the jazz scene throughout the UK.

Read more...

The superstar, the Svengali and a rising young talent

mark Kidel

I'm at the New Theatre in Oxford. Elvis Costello is playing through the final stages of his 2022 UK tour. The venue is full of memories: I saw The Kinks and Tom Jones here in the 1960s and then The Who in the early 70s.

Read more...

Clubbing with the Stones: Live at El Mocambo

Tim Cumming

In a little over two week’s time, the three remaining ones will kick-start their 60th year as The Rolling Stones by taking to the stage at a stadium on the edge of Madrid on June 1, around the same time that Elizabeth Windsor marks her own @70 jubilee across the UK.

Read more...

First Person: Harpist Rachel Newton on creating music to accompany two well-loved books celebrating nature, poetry and magic

Rachel Newton

I am fortunate to be one of the musicians involved in Spell Songs, a musical companion piece to both The Lost Words and The Lost Spells by acclaimed author Robert Macfarlane and award-winning illustrator and author Jackie Morris.

Read more...

10 Questions for musician and DJ Pete Tong

India Lewis

Perhaps appropriately, when I called Pete Tong for his 10 questions I was hungover, on the phone in a park after a night at a very good party. It’s a sign of the times that things are appearing to return to a relative normal, despite the threat of Omnicron and a precipitant winter lockdown.

Read more...

K-Music 2021: striking the right note for musical fusion

Tim Cumming

It’s been eight years since the first K-Music landed in London, courtesy the Korean Cultural Centre UK, along with world, folk and jazz concert producers Serious.

Read more...

Pages

Subscribe to theartsdesk.com

Thank you for continuing to read our work on theartsdesk.com. For unlimited access to every article in its entirety, including our archive of more than 15,000 pieces, we're asking for £5 per month or £40 per year. We feel it's a very good deal, and hope you do too.

To take a subscription now simply click here.

And if you're looking for that extra gift for a friend or family member, why not treat them to a theartsdesk.com gift subscription?

latest in today

'We are bowled over!' Thank you for your messages... ...
Jenny Saville: The Anatomy of Painting, National Portrait Ga...

When in the 1990s, Jenny Saville’s peers shunned painting in...

Hot Milk review - a mother of a problem

Rebecca Lenkiewicz’s Hot Milk, adapted from Deborah Levy’s 2016 Man Booker shortlistee, has been described as a "psychological drama"....

Glastonbury Festival 2025: Five Somerset summer days of musi...

MONDAY 30th JUNE 2025

“I think you’d better drive,” says Finetime, his face sallow, skull-sockets underscored by...

Tom Raworth: Cancer review - truthfulness

I recently heard a BBC Radio 4 presenter use the troubling phrase: "Not everyone agreed on the reality of that." Once the domain of Andre Breton’s...

Hill, Sky Documentaries review - how Damon Hill battled his...

Some world champion racing drivers make it look effortless, but it was never that way for Damon Hill. His path to the championship he won in 1996...

Album: Kesha - .

“I’m, like, pop star when I have to pop star, and then I’m...

The Shrouds review - he wouldn't let it lie

“Dying is an act of eroticism,” suggested one of the many disposable characters in David Cronenberg’s first full-length feature, Shivers...

Album: Claudia Brücken - Night Mirror

German singer Claudia Brücken has had a long and busy career,...

Jurassic World Rebirth review - prehistoric franchise gets a...

The first Jurassic Park movie now seems virtually Jurassic itself, having been released in the sepia-tinged year of 1993. Directed with...