Features & Interviews
Here comes the flood: Bob Dylan's 1974 Live Recordings
Tuesday, 17 September 2024
Lighters at the ready, because here comes the flood. Drawn from 16-track tape, 1/4in reels and lo-fi sound board cassettes that are now a half century old, the 27 CDs of 431 performances, 417 of them previously unreleased, of Dylan and The Band’s 1974 arena tour of the US, is a set that challenges the listeners’ staying power perhaps more than it celebrates an epochal tour.
First Person: Alexandra Dariescu on highlighting women at the Leeds International Piano Competition
Monday, 09 September 2024
This year, I am delighted to be supporting the Alexandra Dariescu Award at the Leeds International Piano Competition for an outstanding performance of a work by a female composer. This marks a significant milestone in the 60-year history of The Leeds, as it is the first year a piano concerto by a female composer has been added to the repertoire of the Concerto Final round with the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra.
theartsdesk in Switzerland: Lucerne and Gstaad...
Tuesday, 27 August 2024
The summer festival circuit in Central Europe can be a bit of a merry-go-round. Notices in festival towns promise world-class orchestras and soloists...
theartsdesk at Jaminaround 2024 - preview of the...
Friday, 16 August 2024
We’re in deepest Dorset, on the edge of the village of Cranborne. The sun has just set. A cluster of thatched rooves, ancient looking barns and...
theartsdesk Q&A: Nina Ananiashvili, founder...
Saturday, 03 August 2024
Great ballet dancers who boldly turn away from a stellar international career to grow a national ballet company in their homelands are few, but...
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The Micro Golden Age of Mid Eighties Fantasy Films
They don't make 'em like 'The NeverEnding Story', 'Labyrinth', and 'Legend' anymore |
theartsdesk at the Ryedale Festival: dances, and songs, to the music of time
North Yorkshire's summer celebration blooms, and grows |
Bill Viola (1951-2024) - a personal tribute
Video art and the transcendent |
First Person: trans opera singer Lucia Lucas on Tippett’s 'New Year' and her life in music
The baritone’s success with Birmingham Opera Company has led to further reflections |
First Person: Katharina Kastening on directing slimline Bizet in a year rich in 'Carmen' productions
Peter Brook's 'La Tragédie de Carmen' further reimagined at Buxton |
theartsdesk Q&A: violinist and music director Pekka Kuusisto on staged Shostakovich, Sibelius, sound architecture and folk fiddling
Al fresco talk around 'Concert Theatre DSCH', playing at the Southbank Centre |
First Person: The Henschel Quartet at 30
On places, people, and playing Freda Swain's 'Norfolk' Quartet at the Aldeburgh Festival |
First Person: LIFT artistic director Kris Nelson on delivering the best of international theatre to the nation's capital
LIFT2024 promises a characteristically broad and bracing array of global performance |
Remembering conductor Andrew Davis (1944-2024)
Fellow conductors, singers, instrumentalists and administrators recall a true Mensch |
Extract: Pariah Genius by Iain Sinclair
A form-defying writer explores the troubled mindscape of a Soho photographer |
First Persons: composers Colin Alexander and Héloïse Werner on fantasy in guided improvisation
On five new works allowing an element of freedom in the performance |
First Person: Leeds Lieder Festival director and pianist Joseph Middleton on a beloved organisation back from the brink
Arts Council funding restored after the blow of 2023, new paths are being forged |
First Person: actor Paul Jesson on survival, strength, and the healing potential of art
Olivier Award-winner explains how Richard Nelson came to write a solo play for him |
First Person: author-turned-actor Lydia Higman on a play that foregrounds a slice of forgotten history
'Gunter' co-creator and historian connects a 1604 witch hit to the world today |
First person: playwright Paul Grellong on keeping pace with American politics
The author of 'Power of Sail' sets the scene for his play's UK premiere |
10 Questions for folk singer-songwriter Olivia Chaney - 'deeply personal songs that open out to the universal'
The Grammy-nominated singer-songwriter on 'Circus of Desire', her strongest album to date |
First Person: conductor Peter Whelan on coming full circle with the Monteverdi Choir and Orchestra
From watching Handel's 'Israel in Egypt' on TV to conducting it |
theartsdesk in Strasbourg: crossing the frontiers
'Lohengrin' marks a remarkable singer's arrival on Planet Wagner |
First Person: Laurence Cummings on his 25th and final year as Musical Director of the London Handel Festival
A blockbuster month begins tomorrow, mixing starry casts with new talent |
First Person: violinist Tom Greed on breaking down barriers in the presentation of chamber music
Unscary Schoenberg is on the bill of enterprising young musicians' latest new-look event |
First Person: Ten Years On - Flamenco guitarist Paco Peña pays tribute to his friend, the late, great Paco de Lucía
On the 10th anniversary of his death, memories of the prodigious musician who broadened the reach of flamenco into jazz and beyond |
First Person: pioneering juggler Sean Gandini reflects on how the spirit of Pina Bausch has infiltrated his work
As Tanztheater Wuppertal Pina Bausch's 'Nelken' comes to Sadler’s Wells, a tribute from across the art forms |
First Person: contralto Hilary Summers on going beyond her baroque and contemporary comfort zones
On recording 'Circus Dinogad', a wacky collaboration with distinguished Dutch colleagues |
Best of 2023: Books
As the year draws to a close, we look back at the best books we opened |
latest in today
Donohoe, Roscoe, Stoller Hall, Manchester review - two great...
A little piece of musical history was made last night at Manchester Chamber Concerts Society’s season-opening concert. Two of the greatest...
Here comes the flood: Bob Dylan's 1974 Live Recordings
Lighters at the ready, because here comes the flood. Drawn from 16-track tape, 1/4in reels and lo-fi sound board cassettes that are now a half...
Wang, Lapwood, LSO, Pappano, Barbican review - grace and pow...
It takes stiff competition to outshine Yuja Wang, who last night at the Barbican complemented her spangled silver sheath with a disconcerting pair...
My Favourite Cake review - woman, love, and freedom
The taxi cab has become a recurring motif in modern Iranian cinema, perhaps because it approximates to a kind of dissident bubble within the...
Beethoven Sonata Cycle 1, Boris Giltburg, Wigmore Hall revie...
A happy, lucid and bright pianist, a forbidding Everest among piano sonatas: would Boris Giltburg follow a bewitching, ceaselessly engaging first...
The Band Back Together, Arcola Theatre review - three is a d...
We meet Joe first at the keys, singing a pretty good song, but we can hear the pain in the voice – but is that...
Music Reissues Weekly: Sean Buckley & The Breadcrumbs
Although Dagenham’s Sean Buckley & The Breadcrumbs are less than a footnote in the story of beat boom-era Britain, appearances on archive...
The Critic review - beware the acid-tipped pen
The setting is the lively 1930s London theatre world, but any sense that The Critic will be a lighthearted thriller should soon be...
Van Gogh: Poets & Lovers, National Gallery review - pass...
Van Gogh: Poets & Lovers includes many of his best known pictures and, amazingly, it is the first exhibition the...