Features & Interviews
Summer seasons in a Covid world: five opera company movers and shakers reflect
Tuesday, 14 September 2021
The bleakest time of all for live music during the Covid crisis came in the first four and a half months of this year.
First Person: theatre director Christopher Haydon on how the Rose Theatre, Kingston, can bloom anew
Monday, 13 September 2021
Programming a theatre during a pandemic has been like trying to nail jelly to a set of constantly moving goalposts. Government indecision meant that reopening dates shifted repeatedly while the configuration of our auditorium kept changing as we tried to adapt to ever-evolving regulations around social distancing. Even our audience – once so familiar to us – became an unknown quantity.
Out of the shadows: Dylan’s Eighties reappraised
Saturday, 11 September 2021
Dylan’s 1980s weren’t great in terms of critical acclaim. As an emerging new fan, I knew that first hand from the scathing reviews accorded Shot of...
First Person: pianist Filippo Gorini on head,...
Saturday, 11 September 2021
A past work of art either still speaks to us in the present, or it is dead. To try and understand a masterpiece, we tend to look at its past: we...
Through hoops and hurdles to sheer joy: BBC Proms...
Friday, 10 September 2021
As anyone who has been trying to steer an arts organisation through the pandemic will tell you, the greatest challenge has been uncertainty; learning...
First Person: composer Joseph Phibbs on rescoring Britten
Tonight at Snape: chamber arrangement of an early masterpiece, 'Our Hunting Fathers' |
Remembering Graham Vick (1953-2021) - top colleagues on one of the greatest opera directors
Five singers, a conductor and a casting director recall an irreplaceable visionary |
First Person: theartsdesk writer Bernard Hughes on composing for the BBC Proms
Classical music reviewer on sitting on the other side of the artist-critic fence |
First Person: young musicians Brooke Simpson and Erin Black on the National Youth Orchestra's 'Hope Exchange' project
NYO double bass player and orchestral pianist on their part in a very special collaboration |
First Person: conductor Enrique Mazzola on Verdi's time-travelling 'Luisa Miller'
Notes from the musician who knows Glyndebourne's last main-season production best |
10 Questions for Harry Grafton of Red Rooster Festival
On The Rolling Stones, Americana, and his festival surviving COVID-19 |
First Person: Héloïse Werner on a live collaboration with fellow composers and performers
New music in a trio concert with a difference |
An Oral History of Glastonbury Festival 1992
Take a 29 year time-trip back to the world's greatest festival with those who were there |
'In music, we are together': saxophonist Jess Gillam on returning to concerts with audience
One of our liveliest musical communicators on the slow journey out of lockdown |
First Person: Roxanna Panufnik on a new version of her 'Letters from Burma' in aid of Myanmar refugees
The composer on why she expanded a chamber piece for London Mozart Players |
From cancellation to new vigour: pianist and artistic director Joseph Middleton on Leeds Lieder
One of our most enterprising younger-generation performers on renewing a major festival |
First Person: Director Maria Aberg on drawing fresh inspiration for the future
The theatre-maker sets out her stall for an ambitious, pan-European venture |
First Person: playwright Tanika Gupta on being back in the rehearsal room once more
The writer expresses her joy at going 'Out West' |
Glastonbury Festival: Live at Worthy Farm livestream review - glitched access upstages beautifully shot live footage
Calamitous technical upset overshadows Coldplay, HAIM, Damon Albarn, Kano, IDLES and the rest |
Music books to end lockdown: Sam Lee, Hawkwind, Dylan, Richard Thompson, and the Electric Muses
From nightingale song to sonic attack via folk rock and the world's greatest songwriter, spring 2021's best music books |
Christa Ludwig, 1928-2021: a selective tribute
The German mezzo-soprano embraced the light and the dark at a transcendental level |
Extract: Blackface by Ayanna Thompson
Examining the history and legacies of this racist performance mode |
First Person: Boris Giltburg on lockdown interruptions to filming Beethoven's 32 piano sonatas
The Moscow-born Israeli pianist on an odyssey that took several unexpected turns |
First Person: composer and Renaissance man Tunde Jegede on transcending genres
Crossing boundaries for Southampton's 'Mayflower 400: Voyages of the Heart' project |
Helen McCrory: 'If there's one interesting thing about acting it's trying to lose your ego'
Three encounters with the great actor who has died at the age of 52 |
The Royal Ballet - variations on a comeback
How one major ballet company survived to dance another day |
The Master Musicians of Joujouka review - a 4000 year-old rock'n'roll band
Healing music from the Rif Mountains of Morocco |
Filmmaker Darius Marder: 'Deafness is a culture. That's not being PC'
Writer and director on Sound of Metal's long journey from concept to award nominations |
Extract: TV by Susan Bordo
On 75 years of changing TV, changing habits and the relationship between TV and Trump |
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