New Music Features
Jazz musicians adapt to the lockdown - 'Welcome to our world!'Wednesday, 01 April 2020
“Jazz people,” one commentator has written this week “are amongst the most adaptable of our species as life mirrors art and we improvise our way through – we're uniquely qualified to weather the storm.” Read more... |
A simple twist of fate - how a chance encounter with 'Joan Baez, Vol 2' 50 years ago led to a festival in Downtown ManhattanMonday, 30 March 2020
We’ve all spent time considering our desert island discs, which is of course why the programme Roy Plomley devised one winter’s night in 1942 is still thriving. The choices are perhaps less favourites than music that takes you back to a specific moment in time, that reminds you of someone, or something, special. Read more... |
theartsdesk in Brussels - jazz, openness and youth at the start of the cultural yearTuesday, 14 January 2020
“Brussels – The Cultural Guide” for 2020 is a very substantial book. It consists of 212 tightly-packed pages in a quite small font. The message is that there is indeed a lot going on culturally in Belgium’s capital city. Read more... |
10 Questions for Techno Musician Carl CraigSaturday, 23 November 2019
In the eight years since theartsdesk last spoke to Carl Craig, a lot has happened. He moved from his native Detroit for a sojourn in Barcelona (partly for ease of access to his summer DJ residencies in Ibiza), then recently returned. Read more... |
Is this Jimi Hendrix’s greatest posthumous release? Producer Eddie Kramer talks about a legendary live albumFriday, 22 November 2019
This week, one of the finest gems in the entire Hendrix catalogue finally sees the light of day in its full unedited glory – Songs for Groovy Children comprises all four sets from the Band of Gypsys New Year’s Eve 1969-70 residency at the Fillmore East in New York City. Read more... |
theartsdesk in Hamburg: Reeperbahn Festival 2019 reviewSunday, 22 September 2019
Hatari’s 10th placing in this year’s Eurovision Song Contest hasn’t done them any harm. Neither did ruffling the feathers of the European Broadcasting Union and host nation Israel with their stance on Palestine. Read more... |
Bob Dylan Special - Rolling Thunder Revue, NetflixTuesday, 11 June 2019
Tomorrow, Martin Scorsese delivers, via Netflix, two hours and 22 minutes of screen time devoted to Bob Dylan’s Rolling Thunder Revue, following on from the release last week of the latest Bootleg Series boxed set, 14... Read more... |
Bob Dylan Special - theartsdesk Q&A: Scarlet RiveraTuesday, 11 June 2019
As Martin Scorsese’s new feature film, Rolling Thunder Revue: A Bob Dylan Story, hits Netflix and cinemas, and a new 14 CD boxed set enters the official Bootleg Series, ... Read more... |
First Person: Sam Lee on singing with endangered nightingalesFriday, 03 May 2019
Every spring for the last five years, we have gathered around a camp fire in hidden locations in a wood in Sussex, to join the nightingales and to “re-wild” ancient folk ballads. We walk in silence through the forest at night, with no torches, reawakening our aural senses. These meditative pilgrimages give people permission to be in a state of communion with nature, to be silent to hear the birds. Read more... |
theartsdesk in Zanzibar - behind the veilSaturday, 09 March 2019
Damn exotica. Read more... |
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latest in today
Album: Peter Gabriel - I/O
Some 28 years in gestation, Peter Gabriel’s eighth studio album (minus soundtracks) of wholly original songs – his first...
A Christmas Carol, The Old Vic review - older, wiser, and ye...
Familiarity has bred something quite fantastic with the Old Vic Christmas Carol, which is back for a seventh season and merits ringing...
Boat Story, BBC One review - once upon a time in Yorkshire
It was as long ago as January last year that the prolific Williams brothers,...
Dariescu, BBC Philharmonic, Storgårds, Bridgewater Hall, Man...
John Storgårds found himself literally facing both ways for the third item on the BBC Philharmonic’s programme on Saturday: towards the audience,...
Mark Rothko, Fondation Louis Vuitton, Paris review - a show...
The vast and various spaces of Frank Gehry’s monumental Fondation Louis Vuitton in Paris suit the needs of the thrilling Mark Rothko exhibition...
Blu-ray: King and Country
British anti-war films inspired by “the war that” failed “to end all wars” include Oh! What a Lovely War, The Return of the Soldier...
The Witches, National Theatre review - fun and lively but wh...
The National Theatre these days seems to be...
The Dante Project, Royal Ballet review - brave but flawed ta...
Singular in its variousness, this is a three-act ballet that need some unpicking. No wonder those hooked on first acquaintance in 2021, like t...
CMAT, Barrowland Ballroom, Glasgow review - an evening of ex...
There was a moment towards the end of this exuberant evening when Ciara Mary-Alice Thompson compared the show to a pantomime. This was an...
MacMillan's Christmas Oratorio, Lois, Williams, RSNO, M...
It is not every day that a new choral work by a living composer can confidently be labelled a masterpiece. Yet this is what we have here. James...