New Music Features
theartsdesk in India: Endangered classical music, and aerialist dancersSaturday, 13 April 2013
I hadn’t been through Mumbai (although lots of people there still call it Bombay) for a while – I once Iived in a beach house here for several months in Juhu while working on a fairly insane project with, among others, Boy George, Bollywood playback goddess Asha Bhohle, and the brilliant film composer RD Burman called the West India Company. Read more... |
Audio Exclusive: Green Gartside Sings Nick DrakeTuesday, 09 April 2013
One of the great British singer-songwriters of the past half-century, Nick Drake is the subject of a new tribute album, Way to Blue, released next Monday on Navigator Records. A companion piece to the concerts staged worldwide over the last four years, the artists involved include Teddy Thompson, Vashti Bunyan, Robyn Hitchcock, Lisa Hannigan, Scott Matthews and Danny Thompson. Read more... |
theartsdesk in Lahore: Music, mysticism and fistfightsSaturday, 06 April 2013
On Wednesday I will strap on a guitar and take the stage at the Royal Festival Hall for the opening night of this year's Alchemy Festival. I am the musical director and happy accompanist to a line-up of spectacularly talented musicians, all with roots in different parts of the Indian subcontinent. As I write, visas are being stamped and air tickets finalised for 11 musicians flying in from India and Pakistan. Read more... |
Interview: Stephan Micus, the world's largest one-man bandWednesday, 03 April 2013
"Multi-instrumentalist" is a catch-all phrase that usually means somebody who plays flute, clarinet, sax and perhaps a bit of guitar. When it comes to Stephan Micus, he’s a multi-instrumentalist of an altogether different calibre. He plays hundreds of instruments – he doesn’t know how many – which he’s collected and commissioned from all over the world. Read more... |
theartsdesk in New Zealand: WOMAD TaranakiSunday, 24 March 2013
I've been to countless UK Womads yet have never before made it WOMAD Taranaki. Which is almost something to be ashamed about considering I'm a Kiwi. But this expat is never in the South Pacific mid-March. Until, that is, this year. The 11th New Zealand Womad is held in the small city of New Plymouth in Taranaki, a gorgeous West Coast hump in the central North Island. Read more... |
theartsdesk in Zanzibar: The Nightingale Still SingsSunday, 10 March 2013
A crowd of men and younger women in full burkahs gathers, bewildered by the sight: an African woman, in West African “Mumu” (khaftan) and a covered head, playing Ghazals (Islamic calls to prayer). Accompanied by an acoustic guitar, a clear voice, sitting on a café terrazza, Nawal transports us: until it is broken. “How dare you use the name of Allah in a song?!” cries out a dishevelled street vendor, visibly upset. “But you use keyboards in your praise of Allah” she retorts calmly. Read more... |
Farewell Kenny Ball, 1930-2013Thursday, 07 March 2013
The death today at age 82 of trumpeter Kenny Ball makes him the first of the big three chart regulars of Britain’s trad jazz boom to pass away. Both Acker Bilk and Chris Barber are still with us. It’s easily forgotten, but trad actually was bigger than The Beatles. In January 1963, just as the Liverpool quartet were issuing their second single, “Please Please Me”, Ball was on a sell-out bill at north London’s massive Alexandra Palace. Read more... |
10 Questions for Suede's Brett Anderson & Mat OsmanMonday, 04 March 2013
Suede, led by the arrestingly beautiful Brett Anderson, was one of the finest bands to come out of the UK in the first half of the 1990s. Their eponymous debut album, released in 1992, won the Mercury Music Prize. Read more... |
The Dark Side of the Moon: Prog’s Gleaming PeakSaturday, 02 March 2013
Let us go now to a foreign country. To the foreboding concrete tunnels and rooms of an RAF early-warning facility under the Sussex Downs in the early summer of 1973.The Lower Sixth has somehow procured the space for an epic late-night party. Cheap beer and cheaper cider is drunk. Cigarettes are smoked, self-consciously. Flared jeans and cheesecloth shirts are worn under Afghan coats, not with panache. Read more... |
Manchester International Festival 2013 PreviewFriday, 01 March 2013
Yesterday Kenneth Branagh was thanking Manchester – saying that he felt he had “come of age” the previous time he had performed Shakespeare in the city 25 years ago, the audience being so “generous, quick-witted and lively". 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
Help to give theartsdesk a future!
It all started on 09/09/09. That memorable date, September 9 2009, marked the debut of theartsdesk.com.
It followed some...
Personal Values, Hampstead Theatre review - deep grief that...
“They fuck you up your Mum and Dad; they may not mean to, but they do.” These lines from Philip Larkin’s 1975 poem, “This Be the Verse”, sum up...
April review - powerfully acted portrait of a conflicted doc...
It’s easy to see metaphors about the status of modern Georgia, once again threatened by the Russian boot, in its recent artistic output...
theartsdesk Q&A: filmmaker Miguel Gomes on his latest ex...
It doesn't take much to get lost in a film by Miguel Gomes. In fact, it's required. Multiple layers, timelines, and perspectives unfold in his...
Album: Billy Idol - Dream Into It
There’s always been a goofy charm about Billy Idol. As an implausibly chiselled Adonis shining out from the deliberate ugliness of the original...
Greg Davies, Brighton Dome review - chocolate bars and erran...
Greg Davies doesn’t spare himself in his new show, Full Fat Legend, his first tour in seven years after having been busy being...
Bach St John Passion, Academy of Ancient Music, Cummings, Ba...
In a programme note for the St John Passion at the Barbican, the Academy of Ancient Music’s chief executive called their Easter performances of...
Album: Viagra Boys - Viagr Aboys
Sweden’s most gloriously unhinged export is back, and Viagr Aboys might just be Viagra Boys at their most fun, feral and fully realised....
Music Reissues Weekly: 1001 Est Crémazie
It would have been hard to pick up a copy of the album credited to and titled 1001 Est Crémazie in...
MacMillan St John Passion, Boylan, National Symphony Orchest...
Never make your mind up too soon about any large-scale work by a genius. Back in 2010, I had my doubts about James MacMillan’s first Passion,...