New Music Features
2011: King Lear, Breaking Bad and Afro-FuturismThursday, 29 December 2011
The Mayans say 2012 is The End, so this may be the very last round-up of the year. I saw possibly the best Shakespeare I’ve ever seen – a chamber version of King Lear at the Donmar Theatre directed by Michael Grandage with Derek Jacobi as the mad old King, presenting a perfectly credible mix of vanity, vulnerability, craziness and tenderness. Read more... |
2011: Ladies With Ukuleles and Blockbusters With BiteThursday, 29 December 2011
2011 was an excellent year for highly original music from female musicians, two of whom brandished ukuleles yet found quite different ways of using them. Read more... |
theartsdesk Christmas QuizSunday, 25 December 2011
You're going to test your stomach and sweet temper to the maximum today - test your brain and memory too with our monster quiz about the arts covered by theartsdesk in 2011. Every artform is represented here in 12 dozen questions. Settle down between courses, films and presents and see how many you and your near and dear can do. Read more... |
theartsdesk Christmas Quiz - AnswersSunday, 25 December 2011
Here are the answers to our monster Christmas arts quiz of 12 dozen questions on the year past, as seen by theartsdesk writers. There are clues in all the questions in the main quiz page. If you don't want to know the answers just yet till you've grappled with them, close this page now. Read more... |
Christmas on theartsdesk: Brainteasers, Bran Tub, and the Best of 2011Wednesday, 21 December 2011
Any day now most of us will be hunkering down and for the most part drawing a curtain about the world outside. Before that happens, we’d like to tell you about theartsdesk’s plans for Christmas and the New Year. Read more... |
Cesaria Evora, 1941-2011Monday, 19 December 2011
Cesaria Evora was one of the great singers, her lived-in voice and poignant, heart-wrenching music affecting nearly all who heard it. She had been in poor health after a heart attack in 2008 and a stroke last year, and died on the island of São Vicente in Cape Verde where she was born. I had the honour and pleasure of meeting her in Lisbon in 2001, on the occasion of the release of one of her best albums, São Vicente Di Longe. Read more... |
theartsdesk in Doha: Vangelis at Katara AmphitheatreSunday, 18 December 2011
If you need music for a ceremonial occasion, Greek composer Vangelis is your man. He has, after all, even had a small planet named after him, and in 2001, NASA used his piece Mythodea as the theme for its Mars Odyssey mission. The following year, FIFA hired Vangelis to concoct the official anthem for the 2002 World Cup. In 2004, he draped aural grandiosity across Oliver Stone's implausible Alexander. Read more... |
Unfinished Business: Writing Songs With the DeadSunday, 18 December 2011
Creative time travel is very much in vogue. For musicians especially, it appears that death is not so much The End as an opportunity to extend the possibilities of the franchise. Early in 2012, American alt-country type Jay Farrar and My Morning Jacket’s Jim James will release New Multitudes, an (excellent) album of new songs based on some of the thousands of unrecorded lyrics left by Woody Guthrie after his death in 1967. Read more... |
DVDs for Christmas: New MusicFriday, 16 December 2011
Whether it's via the Disc of the Day column or our eclectic mix of overnight live reviews, on theartsdesk we try to traverse as much of the world of New Music as we possibly can. As Christmas swings around we consider it our duty to help guide readers through the thicket of music DVDs. Read more... |
theartsdesk in Rennes: 33rd Trans Musicales FestivalThursday, 08 December 2011
Glass crunches underfoot. It’s been raining constantly, but the odour reveals that a fair amount of what's in the cobbled street's central gutter is urine. Everyone appears to be drunk. The French equivalent of crusties aren’t content with one dog-on-string. Some have four. During the annual Trans Musicales festival, Saturday night in and around the Place St-Anne of Brittany’s capital Rennes is a keep-you-on-your-toes experience. Read more... |
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