Israel
ash.smyth
Who does the PR these days for Middle Eastern extremists? Whoever it is clearly wasn’t on board when the Palestine Liberation Front decided to whack the Achille Lauro. Or wasn’t aware that chucking a wheelchair-bound pensioner into the Med was the sort of move unlikely to garner widespread international support for the cause.It’s bemusing to me that anyone could interpret The Death of Klinghoffer as in any way anti-Semitic (anti-Israel, maybe…) or, for that matter, that anyone could consider it offensive were the opera to be found stridently anti-Palestinian-extremism. But, y’know, whatever. Read more ...
igor.toronyilalic
In October 1985 four Palestinian terrorists boarded the Achille Lauro cruise liner, took the 400-odd passengers hostage, shot an old disabled American Jew dead and flung his body overboard. Of all the many atrocities in the long war between the Palestinians and Israelis the murder of Leon Klinghoffer has always struck me as being one of the more morally cut and dried incidents. Hardly worthy of any kind of lengthy debate, let alone dramatic exposition. But the successful trio behind Nixon in China (Peter Sellars, Alice Goodman and John Adams) thought differently and proceeded to turn the cold Read more ...
Ismene Brown
Empty vessels make the most noise. That pithy old aphorism floated into my head a scant few minutes into the much-heralded new work by the undoubtedly talented, but here way off-beam, Hofesh Shechter. And again, a few minutes later. And again, and again, as something like 200 drummers filled the stage and bashed away in earnest polyrhythmy. At the end of the 80 minutes my watch was worn with checking.Survivor is its name, and I absolutely don’t mind being asked to survive din if it’s worth it, if it changes you. We had been kindly offered the option beforehand of earplugs but it’s surprising Read more ...
Ismene Brown
London's Barbican Centre is 30 this year, and with a special Olympics subsidy boost as the world's eyes turn to the British capital this summer, it aims to be as lovely inside as it is famously unlovely outside. Film beauties Cate Blanchett and Juliette Binoche appear live on stage and theatre giants Pina Bausch, Philip Glass and Shakespeare are celebrated in a season of prominent internationalism. Peter Sellars, Toni Morrison, Yukio Ninagawa, Krzysztof Penderecki and Chick Corea are among many other world names invited to EC2 over the season. Three key British theatre companies are Read more ...
judith.flanders
“Jazz is my adventure,” said Thelonious Monk. “I’m after new chords, new ways of syncopating, new figures, new runs. How to use notes differently. That’s it. Just using notes differently.” Based on the title of the new hour-long piece by Israeli choreographer Emanuel Gat, Brilliant Corners, named for Monk’s 1957 album, the naïve viewer might expect, at the very least, to hear some Monk. Not so. Gat has produced an always interesting, sometimes absorbing sight-and-sound world, but of Monk, or jazz, there is neither sight nor sound.With a 10-strong company of dancers, Gat uses a darkened stage Read more ...
David Nice
Some violinists just play; others have a voice. Ukrainian-Israeli violinist Vadim Gluzman follows the distinguished line of great Petersburg violinist Leopold Auer - whose 1690 Stradivarius he currently plays - David Oistrakh and Isaac Stern, his one-time mentor. His 2008 performance of the Tchaikovsky Violin Concerto, dedicated to Auer, with the great Neeme Järvi on responsive form, forged an electrifying concert partnership and augurs well for his next appearance with the London Philharmonic, this time conducted by Vassily Sinaisky, in the Korngold Concerto. The wide-ranging curiosity so Read more ...
igor.toronyilalic
Police. Placards. Protests. And bag checks. It meant only one thing. Jews were performing at the Proms. Here we were in the Royal Albert Hall in London in 2011 witnessing a stage of musicians being barracked and abused for having the gall to be Jewish. Last year, four more Jewish musicians, the Jerusalem Quartet, had the cheek to perform and broadcast a recital at the Wigmore Hall. They were again heckled and hounded off air. No, not a portrait of Europe in the early 20th century, but Britain in the 21st. I wonder. In a few years, will Jews be able to make music publicly in Britain at all?If Read more ...
ash.smyth
I think I owe David Hare an apology. When I sat down to watch Page Eight, last night – being, as it is, his latest probing of our moral and political universe – I just assumed that our national intelligence services would be in for a trendy-lefty-type shoeing. But I was wrong.Enter Johnny Worricker, a senior MI5 intelligence analyst with the complexion of yesterday’s porridge and a heart as warm as today’s (this much is established very quickly). He was a late-middle-aged man, in a reassuringly tailored suit, on a nondescript evening in London. You might have been forgiven for missing Read more ...
joe.muggs
It's always interesting to see how revolutions in music get folded back into the fabric of the culture that fomented them. Dubstep, which changed club culture so dramatically in the mid-2000s, is now an intrinsic part of that culture from mainstream to margins, and the forms it takes as it beds into these various parts of the ecosystem are manifold. And Jazzsteppa – two Israelis named Gal and their trombones – turn their hands to a fair few of those forms.Watch video for "Investment Decision"
Hyper Nomads is on a label run by dance/dub veteran and ex-KLF producer Tony Thorpe. It is a Read more ...
judith.flanders
Only three years ago, Hofesh Shechter, the Israeli-born, London-based choreographer, made the leap into the big leagues, almost overnight, with his Uprising/In Your Rooms double bill. The following year he produced a "Choreographer’s Cut", a bulked-up version in the Roundhouse, part dance, part gig. 2010’s Political Mother was received with rapture, so what next? Yes, of course, another Choreographer’s Cut, this time Political Mother in an amped-up version with 24 musicians and 16 dancers in front of a Sadler’s Wells audience, the front stalls removed and transformed into a wannabe mosh pit. Read more ...
Jasper Rees
The traditional place for such films is below the radar. A low-budget portrait of an ethnic minority in America which has schlepped round the festivals, Amreeka could just as easily have been cold-shouldered by distributors. It tells of a family of Palestinians redomiciled in the Midwest just as America is invading Iraq and anti-Muslim prejudice infiltrates American streets and classrooms. A good three years after being shot, it would look a bit passé, a story that had missed its moment. But a certain Public Enemy No One being shot in the head last week has given Amreeka a shot in the arm.A Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
Keren Ann’s new album, 101, might showcase her new-found pop smarts but last night’s hour-and-a-half set ranged through her whole catalogue taking in country-flavoured balladry, early Velvet Underground chugging and introspective singer-songwriting. A single French-language song acknowledged where she first attracted attention. Her American-accented English betrayed little of her Franco-Israeli roots. Truly multinational, her show at the Jazz Café was similarly diverse.It was a peculiarly paced set. The up-tempo “Je fume pour oublier que tu bois” followed a harmonica-racked take of 101’s “ Read more ...