mon 10/03/2025

New Music Features

The Seckerson Tapes: Nigel Richards

Edward Seckerson

Edward Seckerson talks to actor/singer Nigel Richards about his new album A Shining Truth - a handsome compendium of 14 hitherto unrecorded musical theatre songs by major talents as Howard Goodall, Adam Guettel, Michael John LaChiusa, Conor Mitchell, Richard Taylor, and others no less significant. Musical Theatre aficionados will recall Nigel's unforgettable performance in the title role of Adam Guettel's masterpiece Floyd Collins at London's Bridewell Theatre and will...

Read more...

The Seckerson Tapes: Jamie Bernstein on Leonard Bernstein

Edward Seckerson

theartsdesk.com presents The Seckerson Tapes, a series of live and uncut audio interviews from acclaimed broadcaster Edward Seckerson. We start with Jamie Bernstein - Leonard Bernstein's eldest daughter - who has been in London launching the year-long Bernstein Project at the South Bank. Seckerson, a long-standing Bernstein devotee and disciple, sat down for a frank and open discussion about exactly who her "dad" was.

Read more...

Magma, Barbican, the Cosmos

Peter Culshaw

I am not that objective about Magma. For one thing, when I saw them as a 16-year-old in the Seventies the intensity of the band caused me to have an out-of-body experience, something that has happened neither before or since. It’s the kind of thing you remember. It’s hard to formulate balanced critical opinions when you are floating up near the ceiling, looking down on your body. I met the leader and creative visionary behind the band, Christian Vander, a couple of weeks before last night’s...

Read more...

Mott The Hoople Reunion Interview

Robert Sandall

Reputations, it seems, can grow in ways that elude even their owners. When the original five members of Mott The Hoople finally decided to re-form, 35 years after they drifted apart, they booked two shows at the Hammersmith Apollo in October and crossed their fingers. According to their 70-year-old vocalist Ian Hunter, “we realised if we were ever going to do it, it was now or never, but we still thought we’d be lucky to fill the second night.”...

Read more...

Tom Russell's Juarez Journal

Tom Russell

To mark the release of Tom Russell's superb new album Blood and Candle Smoke this week,  the cowboy singer-songwriter reports on his trip earlier this month to the Mexican city of Juarez, one of the most dangerous cities in the world, just over the border from where he lives in El Paso, Texas.

"Down below El Paso lies Juarez, / Mexico is different, like the travel poster says…"
Burt Bacharach and Bob Hilliard, "Mexican Divorce"

Read more...

Pages

Subscribe to theartsdesk.com

Thank you for continuing to read our work on theartsdesk.com. For unlimited access to every article in its entirety, including our archive of more than 15,000 pieces, we're asking for £5 per month or £40 per year. We feel it's a very good deal, and hope you do too.

To take a subscription now simply click here.

And if you're looking for that extra gift for a friend or family member, why not treat them to a theartsdesk.com gift subscription?

latest in today

Help to give theartsdesk a future!

It all started on 09/09/09. That memorable date, September 9 2009, marked the debut of theartsdesk.com.

It followed some...

A Form of Exile: Edward Said and Late Style, CLS, Wood, QEH...

You could plan an entire concert season around the theme of “late style”, its paradoxes and variations. For this one-off, many of us expected a...

Edward II, RSC, Swan Theatre, Stratford review - monarchs, m...

“Don’t put your co-artistic director on the stage, Mrs Harvey,” as Noel Coward once (almost) sang. 

Tamara...

BBC Philharmonic, Bihlmaier, Bridgewater Hall, Manchester re...

Anja Bihlmaier returned to the BBC Philharmonic – for the first time in the Bridgewater Hall as principal guest conductor – with a programme to...

Album: Reg Meuross, Fire & Dust: A Woody Guthrie Story

I come to this album from a week or so spent among the denizens of the New York and Boston...

Music Reissues Weekly: Liverpool Sunset - The City After Mer...

What happens after the spotlight is directed towards another target? In the case of Liverpool and the Merseybeat boom – which, in terms of chart...

Sheku Kanneh-Mason, Czech Philharmonic, Bychkov, Barbican re...

Exactly half a century ago, Semyon Bychkov fled the USSR for the United States as he sought to swap tyranny for liberty. Last night, in a world...

Drive to Survive, Season 7, Netflix review - speed, scandal...

Last year’s sixth season of Drive to Survive radiated an air of diminishing returns. It was as though the novelty of its spy-in-the-...

Bonhoeffer review - flawed biopic of a saintly man of courag...

The German theologian, pastor and anti-Nazi dissident Dietrich Bonhoeffer (1906-1945) was a saintly, courageous figure, of major historical...

Matt Forde, Touring review - politics, poo and Viagra

Matt Forde gives a warning: “Don’t heckle the disabled – that’s a hate crime.” What an opener for his latest touring show, The End...