America
Adam Sweeting
The 1973 series An American Family is often referred to as television's first reality show, though comparing it to Big Brother or the Kardashians would be like slotting Ingmar Bergman alongside the CBeebies. Its 12 episodes were boiled down from 300-odd hours of observational footage of the Loud family, of Santa Barbara, California, at work, rest and play. But whatever the original intentions of the show's producer, Craig Gilbert, An American Family ended up being far from a fly-on-the-wall portrait of humdrum domestic routine, or "five hours of pass-the-salt", as one TV network Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
By 1977, disco was a cliché to be mocked. But a few years earlier, before its ubiquity, disco was a liberating music uniting minorities on the dance floor. Funk, too, became a cliché, little more than a reductive musical cypher. Two new reissues celebrate these genres when both were still vital, still able to surprise. Disco Gold: Scepter Records & The Birth of Disco is exactly what its title says it is, while Darondo’s Listen to My Song: The Music City Sessions collects A-grade funk that had languished in the vaults until now.Disco wasn’t just the place to dance, but the music, too: a Read more ...
Sarah Kent
It took a long time for architects to embrace popular culture. I attended a talk at the Architectural Association in the mid 1970s, when someone (probably the architect Robert Venturi) waxed lyrical about shiny American diners and hot-dog stands shaped like Frankfurters and extolled the virtues of the madcap fantasies built in Las Vegas."Dazed by desert sun and dazzled by signs, between loving and hating what we saw, we were both jolted clear out of our aesthetic skins," wrote Venturi’s partner Denise Scott-Brown of their American road trip. A nervous buzz of excitement swept the room; Read more ...
Ismene Brown
My acid test for whether a show’s worth going to is, specifically, whether it was worth driving 27 miles into town and 27 miles back, spending, say, three or sometimes four hours travelling to see something 80 minutes long. Not often is it worth that. But if it was on in a theatre near you, it would be worth picking up. And so I say for Arthur Pita’s The Metamorphosis.If I lived in London I would not be malcontented to have gone to see it, since Pita is a distinct theatrical talent, rather in Matthew Bourne’s mould, with a showman’s feel for the stage and a considerable skill in entertaining Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
A reverb-swathed guitar picks out a rudimentary surf riff. Drums whack out the Bo Diddley shuffle. The four-to-the-floor bass throbs. Vocals drag the vowels out. As whole, the sound spirals, pulses. At eye-rattling volume, The Black Angels serve up a psychedelia that’s mind expanding, but more about the darkness within than the light without. Their trip isn’t the worst ride you’ve ever been on, but it sure doesn’t take you to the third bardo.We all know the Sixties dream was confirmed AWOL with Altamont, 1969 and Chuck Manson. Although Austin Texas’s Black Angels’s vibe is smack bang with all Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
Strings waft in, then coalesce like banks of fog. A piano picks out single notes. Space is left between them. With no immediate rhythmic patterns, the minimalist A Winged Victory For The Sullen make music for becalmed oceans. This collaboration between Adam Wiltzie and Dustin O’Halloran could have come form the deck of the Marie Celeste.There’s quite a lot of this around right now. Ólafur Arnalds, Peter Broderick Nils Frahm, Hauschka, Jóhann Jóhannsson, Nico Muhly and Radiohead’s Jonny Greenwood complement each other, creating minimalist pieces that draw on modern classicism. Varying degrees Read more ...
David Nice
Newly knighted with the Royal Norwegian Order of Merit for his services to the Bergen Philharmonic Orchestra, American conductor and pianist Andrew Litton is a musician who believes in the nurturing of long-term orchestral relationships: eight years as music director in Bergen, with the contract recently extended to 2015, and an equal length of time before that in Dallas have reaped their rewards. In May he spoke to theartsdesk while visiting Berlin with "the other" BPO, and in August conducted a three-part Prom with the Royal Philharmonic featuring works written for Boston Symphony Orchestra Read more ...
aleks.sierz
You could call it the BBC Four effect. It’s fact-based fictions set in the past, more often than not about the absurdities of sexual mores or other changing customs. In the latest theatrical example, Steve Thompson’s new play - which opened last night - we time travel back to December 1975, when the surreal BBC comedy series Monty Python’s Flying Circus was due to be broadcast all across the United States. But wait a minute, here’s the snag: about one in four of the jokes have been cut. Why?Pythons Michael Palin and Terry Gilliam go to the States to find out. At first they are told by the ABC Read more ...
ash.smyth
Over the course of the past weekend, not to mention over the last 10 years, it has been said often enough that there are no words to express the horror of 11 September, 2001. This hasn’t stopped people from trying, of course – and sometimes with commendable results. But basically there just isn’t much effective vocabulary when it comes to describing grief and torment on a grand scale: hence, perhaps, America’s seeming lack of closure regarding the whole episode, and the often slightly surreal and distant nature of 9/11 documentaries.Shorn of all the noisy “bigger picture”, though – the Read more ...
mark.hudson
Exhibitions with titles appended "in Britain" or "and Britain" tend to be the kiss of death: indicating concentration on a brief and insignificant visit, on the subject’s impact on British art or – even worse – the influence of local collectors on his or her reputation. With Mark Rothko, though, it has to be different. The New York abstractionist’s current near-sacred status is such that a show of his dog-ends and nail clippings would probably prove a major draw.Indeed, the sheer incongruity of the grouchy high priest of Colour Field Painting being in Britain at all, never mind socialising in Read more ...
David Nice
Ten years on from 9/11 and the polyphony of reactions will not, and should not, be stilled. Creative artists have had to tread carefully in what they amass, and how they present it. Headlong theatre company’s fresh-thinking artistic director, Rupert Goold, decided to let a babel of playwrights and speechifiers have their say, with no one monopolising the truth (Simon Schama, whose lecture stands out as so obviously his own, the exception). Threading it together, deciding what to include and discard along the way, can’t have been easy, but a dedicated team of first-rate actors just about pulls Read more ...
alexandra.coghlan
After filing for bankruptcy earlier this year, the Philadelphia Orchestra seemed poised to be the flagship cultural casualty of the financial crisis. Five months on and the bills continue to rise, but in the best Titanic tradition the band are determinedly playing on. It’s been five years since we last heard them at the Proms and their return last night under Chief Conductor Charles Dutoit saw a capacity crowd turn out to show their support and to hear the glossy music-making for which this orchestra is so justly celebrated.For a partnership so synonymous with French repertoire, the Read more ...