Interviews
Matthew Wright
Eno Williams is lead singer and composer of the band Ibibio Sound Machine, an eclectic fusion in which contemporary dance and synth are laid over classic Nigerian highlife rhythm and vocals. The full line-up consists of eight musicians working with a range of influences, including Brazilian percussionist Anselmo Netto, Ghanaian guitarist Alfred Bannerman, and producer and saxophonist Max Grunhard. The band’s debut album, Ibibio Sound Machine, was released on the West African specialist label Soundway, to widespread acclaim last year, and they are already busy performing across the festival Read more ...
fisun.guner
Quentin Blake, illustrator, cartoonist and children’s author, has, to date, illustrated over 300 books. He is most famously associated with Roald Dahl, but he’s worked with a number of children’s writers, most recently David Walliams, illustrating the actor's debut novel The Boy in the Dress. He is a patron of The Big Draw which aims to get people of all ages drawing throughout the UK, and of The Nightingale Project, a charity that puts art into hospitals. Since 2006, he's produced work for several hospitals and mental health centres in London and in France. He has, he says, drawn ever since Read more ...
Jasper Rees
How do you live a good life? Is wealth a good thing? How do you create a just society? The United Kingdom's electorate recently pondered such questions in the polling booth, and made their decision. The Labour Party is agonising over them as it chooses its next leader. And yet while these anxieties may feel very now, they have deep roots. According to the historian and broadcaster Bettany Hughes, such questions first crystallised in the minds of three thinkers, born within a century of one another 2,500 years ago, who are the subject of her new series. Across three episodes, Genius of the Read more ...
Jasper Rees
Roger Rees, whose death at the age of 71 was announced yesterday, never intended to act. He trained at the Slade and made extra money painting theatrical scenery. One day a director asked if he’d like to act, and he laid down his brush. The second time he applied to join the RSC, he got in. He stayed with the company for a now unimaginable 22 years and in due course became one of the great stars of British theatre in the 1980s.He was a mercurial Hamlet, but overwhelmingly his best remembered performance was in The Life and Adventures of Nicholas Nickleby. The eight-and-a-half hours’ traffic Read more ...
Ismene Brown
Last week the 15th International Tchaikovsky Competition in Moscow was rung down with a sigh of relief for the home team, with once again a Russian pianist in possession of the gold medal, Dmitry Masleev following 2011’s Daniil Trifonov. It was all very satisfactory for President Putin as he delivered his speech at the winners’ gala, being Tchaikovsky’s 175th anniversary year, but it was not a result that many disputed. The modest Siberian, 27, is a thoughtful pianist as well as a powerful one in traditional Russian manner.All the same, Masleev was not the pianist who will be remembered as Read more ...
bella.todd
If you’ve read any of the glowing reviews for the current revival of Caryl Churchill’s cloning play A Number, you’ll know all about the extraordinary set. Produced at the Nuffield in Southampton last year and transferred to the Young Vic this week, the intense production places father-and-son performers John and Lex Shrapnel inside a mirrored box where their every move is reflected infinitely. The audience is split into four around its edges, and watches the action through one-way glass. In between scenes, the mirror effect is reversed and the audience sees itself reflected. How the hell do Read more ...
Jasper Rees
Frank Sinatra is back in London in the centenary of his birth. His disembodied voice is returning in a show called Sinatra: The Man & His Music. At the London Palladium, where he made his British debut 65 years ago, there’s to be a 24-piece orchestra, 20 dancers and video effects galore in a multi-media concert featuring many of his best-loved songs. At the heart of it will be footage supplied by the Sinatra Estate. For those who never saw Sinatra live, the idea is that this will be the next best thing, at least since the last time he was exhumed.In 2005 Sinatra at the London Palladium Read more ...
Jasper Rees
Is there more than one Michael Longhurst? As sometimes happens in theatre, a rising young director seems to be everywhere at once. His calling card is the modestly universal Constellations. Directed with clarity and simplicity, Nick Payne’s romantic two-hander with multiple narratives has travelled from the Royal Court via the West End to New York, before touring the UK and heading back to London this week. Longhurst may need to clone himself in order to be in two places at once: his production of Caryl Churchill’s A Number is also opening at the Young Vic.And if that’s not enough Longhurst Read more ...
Russ Coffey
On paper, Richard Thompson's career seems every bit as exotic as one of his songs: At the age of 18 he helped found folk-rock pioneers, Fairport Convention. Later, in the Seventies, he and wife Linda recorded several successful records together before retreating to a Sufi Muslim commune.After returning to music, Thompson relocated to LA, where his unique combination of British folk and virtuoso rock guitar made him a connoisseurs' choice. In recent years Thompson has curated South Bank’s Meltdown festival, been awarded an OBE, and had a Grammy-nominated record. Yet he remains the Read more ...
Matthew Wright
Pianist and producer Robert Glasper is one of the most versatile and innovative musicians on the scene, working within jazz, R&B, hip hop and related genres. He has won two Grammys, one each for his two Black Radio albums, 2012 and 2015, recorded with his electronic band The Robert Glasper Experiment. He also has an acoustic trio, working more specifically in the jazz tradition. His trio’s new Blue Note album Covered, featuring cover versions of artists including Radiohead, Bilal and Kendrick Lamar, aims to draw new listeners to the jazz idiom with recognisable tunes while also Read more ...
Marianka Swain
Zurich, London, New York…Somerset. It may seem unlikely, but an 18th-century farm in the West Country is the new place to be for contemporary art aficionados. Last year, renovations were completed on the 10 buildings of Durslade Farm, left to fall into disrepair over decades. Now, the world-class arts centre boasts five gallery spaces, the Roth Bar & Grill – where locally sourced produce meets bold, eclectic installations – shop, guest house, library and learning room, backed by Piet Oudolf’s sumptuous 1.5-acre perennial meadow. But how did Hauser & Wirth’s creators make the intuitive Read more ...
Guy Oddy
Kevin Martin is a musician, record producer and journalist. He is best know for recording and performing as The Bug, however, has been and continues to be involved in a variety of other musical projects including: GOD, Techno Animal, Ice, Curse of the Golden Vampire and King Midas Sound. During 2014, The Bug released both the Angels and Devils album and a collaboration with Dylan Carlson of American drone-metalists Earth, titled The Bug vs Earth – which sees its live debut at the Supersonic Festival in Birmingham on Saturday 13 June.Guy Oddy: The Bug vs Earth is a great record. How did you Read more ...