Interviews
joe.muggs
Ryuichi Sakamoto has conquered underground and mainstream with seeming ease over four decades, never dropping off in the quality of his releases. Indeed his most recent projects, following his return to public life after treatment for throat cancer in 2014-15, are among his best. The async album was rightly listed by many, including theartsdesk, as one of 2017's best; the async remodels remixes showed him absolutely keyed in to the electronica zeitgeist, and Glass, his live collaboration album with Carsten Nicolai aka Alva Noto is a worthy addition to the duo's extensive Read more ...
Jasper Rees
Ian Rickson’s route into theatre was not conventional. Growing up in south London, he discovered plays largely through reading them as a student at Essex University. During those years he stood on a picketline in the miners’ strike, and proudly hurled the contents of an eggbox at Cecil Parkinson. He is a lifelong supporter of Charlton Athletic. When he was appointed to succeed Stephen Daldry at the Royal Court in 1998, having been associate director for three years, he was portrayed in the media as a nowhere man. He could have been forgiven for wondering whether his surname had been changed Read more ...
Demetrios Matheou
French director Michel Hazanavicius made a name for himself with his OSS 117 spy spoofs, Nest of Spies (2006) and Lost in Rio (2009), set in the Fifties and Sixties respectively and starring Jean Dujardin as a somewhat idiotic and prejudiced secret agent. But it was with The Artist in 2011 that he hit the jackpot, marrying his gift for period recreation with a story of genuine depth and warmth. A black-and-white silent movie about the silent era itself, starring Dujardin alongside Hazanavicius's wife and frequent collaborator Bérénice Bejo, The Artist Read more ...
Thomas H. Green
David Shrigley (b. 1968) is an artist whose work has become broadly popular via a wide range of formats. At first glance, his stark pen-on-paper drawings seem akin to humorous newspaper cartoons – and, indeed, he’s contributed to The Guardian for years – but there's another layer to his work, something odder, slyer, psychologically attuned to the relationship between the subconscious and the ruthlessness of the human condition.As well as a long series of books and multiple exhibitions all around the world, including forthcoming ones this year in Shanghai, Stockholm and on the Greek island of Read more ...
Adam Sweeting
Very early in his career, Andrew Haigh worked as an assistant editor on such Ridley Scott blockbusters as Gladiator and Black Hawk Down. He didn't actually meet Scott in person until years later, when the eminent director had no recollection of him. However, Sir Ridley might have a better idea of who he is now. As a director, Haigh created his first ripples in the filmic pond with Greek Pete (2009), the story of a Greek rent boy in London which collected a gong at LA's LGBT-orientated Outfest. He made an even bigger splash with Weekend (2011), a gay romantic drama which was acclaimed at Read more ...
David Nice
In a classical recording industry seemingly obsessed with marketing beautiful young female violinists, but very often presenting them in repertoire to which most of them seem to have little individual to add, how do you make your mark? Norwegian Eldbjørg Hemsing came up with a bright idea typical of a thoughtful approach in which the music always comes first: to twin a 1914 concerto she genuinely admires by a compatriot very few people will know, Hjalmar Borgstrøm (1864-1925), with what is perhaps the ultimate 20th century challenge to violinists, Shostakovich's First Violin Concerto.Is the Read more ...
Thomas H. Green
Gob Squad is a “seven-headed” Anglo-German arts collective who specialise in multimedia performance. Beginning in Nottingham in 1994 and now based in Berlin, their work ranges from site-specific to installation and film but, more recently, mainly theatre. They major in using technology to “make connections with places outside the theatre or to create different spaces inside the theatre where we can talk to the audience in quite intimate ways”. Recent works include War and Peace and My Square Lady. For the Brighton Festival they're presenting Gob Squad’s Creation (Pictures for Dorian), based Read more ...
Matthew Wright
Over 30 years after he made his debut as a solo artist, woodwind multi-instrumentalist Courtney Pine is still Britain’s most prominent and influential jazz musician. He had a crucial role in reviving interest in jazz in the 1980s and 1990s, and has been an important role model for black British musicians. His own performances have always been informed by an awareness of both his Caribbean – his parents were Jamaican – and British musical identity, and as well as jazz, he has made albums exploring reggae, ska, drum'n'bass, hip hop and more, as well as, more recently, funk and soul. Read more ...
Demetrios Matheou
It’s about time Juliette Binoche and Claire Denis teamed up: the legendary French actress, Gallic film royalty known by her countrymen and women as La Binoche, with one of the country’s most unique directors, both talented and formidable women who have very much forged their own paths in the cutthroat world of the film industry.Just like waiting for a bus, there are now two collaborations between them, made in quick succession: the second, a science fiction co-starring Robert Pattinson, is in post-production. The Arts Desk met Binoche in Paris to speak about the first.Let the Sunshine In has Read more ...
Jasper Rees
The second thing I noticed about Miloš Forman, who has died at the age of 86, was the spectacular imperfection of his English. All those decades in America could not muffle his foghorn of a Bohemian accent, nor assimilate the refugees from Czech syntax. The first thing was the heavy Cuban perfume that announced his proximity. It's a wonder America, almost as Stalinist about public smoking as his native Czechoslovakia once was about public speaking, never booted him out.He torched another reeking missile as he told of an English friend visiting New York "who hadn't been for several years, and Read more ...
Thomas H. Green
Jeremy Cunningham (b.1965) is bass player and a founding member of The Levellers, as well as being a visual artist in his own right. During the 1990s The Levellers, and most especially their 1991 album Levelling the Land, became a phenomenon. The group were punk-influenced folk-rockers whose songs were often polemic and political. It was no coincidence that their main flush of popularity was during the premiership of John Major. They became a focus for anti-government feeling, especially among those affiliated with the travelling and festival communities (remember Major’s “New age travellers Read more ...
Russ Coffey
Joan Wasser – aka Joan as Police Woman – is known as a sophisticated songwriter and a pretty groovy person. But most of all it’s her gorgeously warm voice that's earned her a cult following. Over seven albums her angst-ridden vocals have explored heartache and compulsion with a blend of soul and indie-rock. Damned Devotion, her latest LP, has been particularly well received, earning mainly four-star reviews. Her UK tour starts next week in Glasgow.Wasser was not always a singer. She started off her musical career playing violin in various youth orchestras, and later with the Boston University Read more ...