festivals
Kieron Tyler
Tulegur Gangzi describes his music as “Mongolian grunge” and “nomad rock.” Thrashing at an acoustic guitar, the Inner-Mongolian troubadour is singing in the khomei style, the throat-singing which sounds part-gargle, drone and chant – or all three at once. His approach to the guitar is just as remarkable. With his left hand sliding up and down the neck, the open tunings he employs set up a sibilant plangence nodding to the trancey folk-rock of Stormcock Roy Harper. The slashing, descending guitar which kicks in near the close of Led Zeppelin’s “Stairway to Heaven” appears to also be in Read more ...
Matt Wolf
A pair of Oscar hopefuls that take wildly divergent perspectives on World War II were confirmed today as the opening and closing night films of the 58th annual BFI London Film Festival, running 8-19 October at a range of venues across the capital.Proceedings will kick off with the European premiere of The Imitation Game, starring recent Emmy winner Benedict Cumberbatch as the gay code-breaker Alan Turing, and will close 11 days later with a second European premiere – this one of Fury, with the film’s executive producer Brad Pitt doubling as star in his role as a battle-hardened army sergeant Read more ...
Christopher Lambton
It is the fate of Edinburgh Festival directors to programme their music in the considerable shadow cast by the Proms in London. The undeniable economics of large scale touring means that few orchestras will visit Edinburgh alone, so to attract all-important critical attention the Festival must somehow manipulate a limited touring repertoire to create a unique Scottish event. But on the other hand, the festival must also recognise that for most of their discerning local audience the Proms are little more than a massive irrelevance that serve only to clutter up the BBC schedules for months on Read more ...
Jo Verrent
The audience comment I most want to hear during next week's Unlimited Festival is: this show has transformed my perception of disability. We got that over and over and over during the first Unlimited Festival, which ran as part of the Cultural Olympiad in 2012. And I want that again. It’s all about making people understand that disability isn’t a negative, awful experience, just a facet of life that can give you as much as it apparently appears to take away. In fact, it just gives you more.I’m senior producer for the Unlimited commissions programme, which has worked with nine disabled Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
An expectant audience isn’t the only thing which can be seen from the main stage of Helsinki’s Flow Festival. Janelle Monáe, Manic Street Preachers and OutKast are also greeted by a gas holder looming ominously before them. This brooding remnant of the festival site’s former use as a gasworks brings a unique flavour to Flow. The setting and site are unlike that of any other festival.In its 11th year, Flow 2014 balanced big international names against edgier artists and Finns of all shapes, sizes and styles. With great food, a kid-friendly third day and art installations, the festival is a Read more ...
Katherine McLaughlin
August bank holiday weekend is like Christmas day for horror fans thanks to Frightfest who deliver a sackful of disturbing delights in their 15th year. An inspiring line-up sees Downton Abbey's Dan Stevens reinvent himself as a charming psychopath in opening night film The Guest. Adam Wingard and Simon Barrett (You're Next) amaze once again with a blend of Eighties-style action and horror.Meanwhile, horror classics such as Stanley Kubrick’s The Shining and A Nightmare on Elm Street play alongside up-and-coming British fare such as Oliver Frampton’s bleak take on past trauma The Forgotten and Read more ...
Katie Colombus
Entering Wilderness is like stepping into the brain of Baz Luhrmann. It is a kaleidoscope of colours, swirling with noise and feathers, surreal in its array of vintage-bohemian-steampunk spectacle, and magical in its collaboration of the arts and nature.It is a great big fancy dress party – a chance for the middle-class masses to pour themselves into their finest, most psychedelic unitards and bejeweled headdresses, douse themselves in clouds of glitter, swathe themselves in sequins and get utterly decadent, letting their inner exhibitionist run wild for a weekend. They can watch music and Read more ...
David Nice
“If this isn’t nice, what is?” Kurt Vonnegut’s vow to repeat his Uncle Alex’s mantra when things were going “sweetly and peacefully” has been much on my mind during various idylls this war-torn summer. It certainly applied to hearing three boys and a girl in their early teens play a cloudless early Haydn string quartet in the beautifully restored small neoclassical theatre of a perfect Umbrian hill town. But as so often with troubles elsewhere always at the back of our minds, nothing was quite that simple.The young people were totally focused on the work in a performance of astonishing Read more ...
Peter Eyre
Some years ago I read a piece about a novel of Thomas Bernhard, Wittgenstein’s Nephew. Bernhard (1931-1989) was perhaps the most famous Austrian writer of his time, but unknown to me. In this article he was described as intense, manically obsessive, addicted to the unvarnished truth, and innovative in his constructions. I read the novel and was hooked. Bernhard’s novels have no paragraphs, and read like the monologues of a man possessed. You almost need to read them in one sitting. I read all his novels available in translation, and rushed to the bookshop every time I heard of a new Read more ...
mark.hudson
Remember when festivals were only about what they were ostensibly about? When, say, Reading offered nothing beyond hard rock bar disgusting toilets, overpriced hamburgers and the prospect of a punch-up. When literary festivals dealt only in, well, literature. Nowadays, the average music festival offers all the amenities of a small city, not just music, but shopping, comedy, ballet and every form of spiritual and bodily therapy. But even in these times of festival as free-form lifestyle experience Port Eliot is something else.Arriving at the festival site, in the grounds of a neo-gothic Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
“Tonight, in the Faroe Islands, we’re going to find the greatest dancer.” It’s not an exhortation which often rings out. It could even be a first time The Faroes have been invited to demonstrate their disco prowess. Sister Sledge are on stage and about to launch into their 1979 Chic-produced world-wide smash “He’s the Greatest Dancer”.This, though, is 2014 and the Sledge sisters are playing G! Festival, the Faroes’ annual celebration of their own culture and popular music. The other Nordic countries are here too – bands from Denmark, Iceland, Norway and Sweden are playing.But G! is about the Read more ...
Katie Colombus
The only bad thing about Latitude is a serious case of FOMO (fear of missing out). Some proper planning is advised - or a quick purchase of the Latitude App, if you're lucky enough to get reception over the weekend - to weigh up clashes and work out routes through the forest and up and down the undulating landscape of Henham Park, Suffolk.And yet the civilised chaos of who and what to see, where, is what makes up the Latitude experience. From the bewitching opening ceremony on the Waterfront Stage on Thursday evening, with a spellbinding vocal performance from The Irrepressibles and a Read more ...