Features
theartsdesk
He was not only a bracing conductor/harpsichordist pioneer in period-instrument authenticity, writes David Nice, but also a gentleman and a scholar. My only direct acquaintance with Christopher Hogwood, who died earlier this week at the age of 73, was in two projects dear to his heart: the recording of Handel’s Orlando, mentioned by its countertenor star James Bowman below as a highlight of his career, and his phenomenally well researched Haydn symphonies series, both for that handsomely logo-ed early music branch of Decca known as L’Oiseau-Lyre.Hogwood was very much a part of my own Read more ...
Joe Muggs
The story of Vashti Bunyan is a compelling one. The urbane Sixties would-be popstrel who gave it all up to ride up to a hippie community in a horse-drawn caravan, writing an exquisite album on the way, Just Another Diamond Day, which then became a lost classic, vanishing into the ether as she too vanished until she was rediscovered by obsessive record collectors and psychedelic freaks and persuaded to return to music after 30 years: who couldn't be enchanted or at least intrigued by it? And when her comeback showed her still with a crystal clear voice and intimate songwriting style it just Read more ...
Markie Robson-Scott
In 1959, the walk to Salvador Dalí’s house in Portlligat seemed very long. I was on holiday with my parents in Cadaqués, staying in our friends’ house high on a hillside with a view of the blue bay and the white houses surrounding it. Not that I cared about views. What I wanted to do was swim, poke sea urchins, watch the fishermen unload their nets, and have a Coke at the Meliton bar.We set out for Dalí’s house with a guide, a little boy not much older than me who led us across rocks and beaches. I whined as we rambled along, annoyed because I couldn’t keep up with the boy. In those days Read more ...
Paul Simmonds
Not that long ago, certainly when I was old enough to know better, I managed to get myself mugged by a gang of teenage street girls down by Lisbon docks. I had been following a long chain of beer and whisky glasses from the end of one bar to the front of the next and was quite drunk in that careless, carefree, foolhardy way.As muggings go it was hardly the worst: a little swarm of hands, a tickling feeling, a few oaths and the sound of trainers running off into the distance. As my dignity had already departed, I was entirely unharmed. Obviously, they had made off with everything I had. Read more ...
Debbi Lander
The emergence of digital both as a technology and a culture has fundamentally changed the world in which short film now exists. Now short film has public, industry and social value and its role and routes have fundamentally changed.Short film is one of the most creative art forms on Earth, a space for research and a format in which an artist can experiment, take risks, explore their craft and develop their cinematic vision. The Encounters Short Film and Animation Festival champion it as an art form, place for information communications and a talent development space. It’s a flexible, powerful Read more ...
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 ...
Kieron Tyler
The release of a restored version of 1974’s Immoral Tales on Blu-ray raises inevitable and unavoidable issues: whether the film is pornography, art or arty pornography. Then, there’s the matter of whether its director Walerian Borowczyk was a misogynist; an objectifier of women. Consideration of its qualities as a film can be lost in such debate.Borowczyk (1923-2006) was working to the directive of his producer, who suggested he make a film to capitalise on France’s newly relaxed censorship laws. This had the added benefit of also, via its nudity and sexual themes, hopefully attracting more Read more ...
Peter Culshaw
The Arts Desk is, astonishingly, five years old today. Launched on the numerically pleasing date 09/09/09, its survival and indeed thriving state is testament to the hard work, flair and critical nous of its contributors – a mixture of experienced writers and new writers we have brought on. We’ve also been supported by venues, festivals, PRs, record, film, theatre and arts companies who recognised and supported the value of what we have been doing, even as we have sometimes been rude about what they have been doing. Pioneering advertisers supported us when it was not clear in the early Read more ...
theartsdesk
To celebrate our fifth birthday, we offer you an insight into what you, the readers, have devoured in the greatest numbers across the various art forms in both reviews and features. Google Analytics has taught us a great deal about your reading habits, which we try to cater to while always remaining faithful to the original instincts which prompted us to found the site: to provide prompt and knowledgeable coverage of the arts, to be reliable and also provocative, to go deep where necessary or, if less so, skip lightly over the surface. We’re nothing without you lot. Thank you for reading us Read more ...
Veronica Lee
The traffic warning signs into Limerick City from Shannon Airport told their own story: first “Giant saga in progress”, then “City of Culture giant event”, followed by “Giant’s diversion”. Had Finn McCool made a return visit and started reciting ancient tales? No, but French street theatre company Royal de Luxe had come to town and Grandmother was walking the streets.In July the company took over Liverpool for a few days to tell a deeply moving First World War story based on a Pals' Regiment there. Grandma reappeared to tell a different tale on the streets of Ireland’s first ever City of Read more ...
fisun.guner
Age could not wither her, or so it appeared. Joan Rivers has died, aged 81. On her 80th birthday she told an interviewer she’d be celebrating with her eightieth face. Her caustic humour could leave your nerves jangling, but she was the butt of it as often as anyone was. And in the field of cosmetic surgery you could almost call her a lone pioneer, of sorts, for what other American celebrity has ever been as candid about going under the knife? Nothing – not her face, nor her husband’s suicide in 1987, and certainly not the Holocaust or 9/11 – seemed to be off-limits for Rivers. Rivers was 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 ...