Interviews
Jasper Rees
Had we but world enough and time... A new book by the editor of the Guardian makes it clear quite how many hours in the day it takes to run a national newspaper in the digital age. There is the unyielding nature of 24-hour news, while the internet relentlessly asks grave questions of print media’s business model. Some editors respond to the job's demands by keeping obsessively fit, and then there is Rusbridger’s alternative guide to stress-busting: the piano.Play It Again: An Amateur Against the Impossible, written in diary form, is the story of Rusbridger’s attempt to grapple with Chopin’s Read more ...
Jasper Rees
The generation of alternative comedians who emerged around 30 years ago have long since elbowed their predecessors into the long grass and themselves become the establishment. Of no performer can that be said with more certainty than Rowan Atkinson. His rubbery physiognomy is instantly recognisable to billions, which is why he – or rather Mr Bean - was granted pride of place at the Opening Ceremony as guest artist with Sir Simon Rattle and the London Symphony Orchestra.His curriculum vitae barely needs restating. He is the only performer from Not the Nine O’Clock News who still makes a living Read more ...
Russ Coffey
Over the past 12 years I Am Kloot have quietly built up a faithful legion of fans who look to the poetic lyrics of lead singer John Bramwell for inspiration and comfort. Sky at Night (2010) won them a Mercury Nomination for its smoky, late-night reflections. It was a slight departure from their normal fare, with a cohesive theme and full arrangements. Partly responsible for the sound were old friends, Guy Garvey (pictured below) and Craig Potter from Elbow, who produced it. The pair also came in for the last leg of recording for the new LP, Let It All In, which is released on 21 January.The Read more ...
Jasper Rees
Five years ago James Marsh won an Academy Award for the documentary Man on Wire. It thrillingly told the story of Philippe Petit’s audacious walk on a tightrope between the Twin Towers of the World Trade Center in 1974. Marsh stayed on in the 1970s for Project Nim, a chilling documentary about a hubristic American scientist who as an experiment tried to bring up a chimpanzee as a human. Marsh is clearly attracted to stories about man’s vaulting ambition, because his next film featured the quest to bring about peace in Northern Ireland.Shadow Dancer, critically acclaimed on its release and now Read more ...
Tom Birchenough
Who ever said making a movie was a glamorous business? Shooting the climactic scene of his most recent film Boxing Day, British-born director Bernard Rose (pictured below right) found himself in the freezing Colorado mountains - so cold you couldn’t even see your breath - with just his two stars, Danny Huston and Matthew Jacobs, and a sound-recordist for company. Rose was his own cameraman, as well as editor, and a major inspiration behind the redemptive musical score.Rose may live in Los Angeles, and have made plenty of films on a much larger scale, but his ongoing series of adaptations of Read more ...
igor.toronyilalic
Few singers provoke more debate than Rolando Villazón. His off-piste projects - from his Romantic exploration of the Baroque to his spell as a talent contest judge - have been much discussed over the years. By comparison, there's something strangely calm and conventional about Villazón's two latest projects: a new album of Verdi on Deutsche Grammophon and a performance of John Copley's La Bohème at the Royal Opera House. Yet you'd be foolish to ignore either. The celebrated Mexican tenor is the kind of singer who could make the Yellow Pages seem fresh. Theartsdesk caught Read more ...
Jasper Rees
In 1972 John Kander and Fred Ebb were invited by Bob Fosse to a private screening of his film version of their hit stage musical, Cabaret. The movie starred their protégée, Liza Minnelli, who at only 19 had won her first Tony in Kander and Ebb’s first show, Flora the Red Menace, and for whom they would go on to write “New York, New York”. “Liza was our girl, and we cared very deeply about her. We sat there afterwards and didn’t know what to say to these people whom we liked so much. Because we just hated it.”It’s not impossible to see why. When it eventually came in 2002, the movie adaptation Read more ...
Ismene Brown
The astronomer Sir Patrick Moore was a keen composer of decided musical preferences, and no mean xylophonist. The news of his death on Sunday reminded me of my hugely enjoyable encounter with him - for musical reasons - for the Daily Telegraph in October 1998, heralding the release of a recording of his tunes.PATRICK Moore is hammering the living daylights out of the xylophone in his dark, cluttered drawing-room. Over it hangs a sharp message to visitors: "No, you may NOT put your cup on the xylophone". I have a sudden vision of him attacking an offender with his mallets.When I arrived at his Read more ...
Adam Sweeting
Two years ago, I spoke to Dave Brubeck just before his 90th birthday. The occasion was being commemorated by a film executive-produced by Clint Eastwood, Dave Brubeck - In His Own Sweet Way, which was aired on BBC Four as one of several broadcast tributes to Brubeck's unflagging creativity over more than six decades. Brubeck himself, a trouper to his toes, was about to celebrate Thanksgiving with a string of performances at the Blue Note jazz club in New York, despite having had a pacemaker fitted a few weeks earlier. Although his tenth decade loomed, his recollections were sharp, his Read more ...
Russ Coffey
When an artist calls the people of their hometown their family, it's usually a metaphor. In the case of Björk Guðmundsdóttir it’s actually true. Reykjavik has a population of only 200,000 and everyone is somehow related. But she's more than just the capital's favourite daughter: to the outside world the diminutive singer has become as emblematic of Iceland as its volcanoes and midnight sun. In turn, the uniqueness of the country helps fuel Björk’s individualism.Her early work may be best remembered for a series of dance-pop singles, but there has also always been plenty of musical Read more ...
Karen Krizanovich
It’s rare to get excited about a DVD release. It is even rarer to get excited about a director. Margin Call and its director JC Chandor are rare exceptions. Devised in 2005, the idea for the film came about when the director and his chums, testing the waters of the volatile yet lucrative New York property market, were offered $10m by a bank - few questions asked. By 2006, their plan of buying a building, renovating and flipping it became an undone deal as one of Chandor’s group pushed them to sell up - an act thatproved to be prudent in hindsight.Built upon those real-life tensions, Margin Read more ...
Ismene Brown
On 25 November cinemas all over Britain and overseas will host a live relay from the Bolshoi Ballet of a rampantly OTT and enormously entertaining ballet set in ancient Egypt, The Pharaoh's Daughter. It has mummies coming to life, English tourists in timewarps, frenzied cobras, underwater ballets, jaunty tunes, and phalanxes of delectable archeresses. The original ballet premiered exactly 150 years ago, and what you'll see is a recreation of the fantastical, surreal exotica of the kind of theatre provided at the dawn of classical ballet. It is a sight that had been thought lost until 12 years Read more ...