mon 28/07/2025

New Music Interviews

theartsdesk Q&A: Shakespears Sister

Russ Coffey

When goth-pop duo Shakespears Sister split in 1993, the music press dubbed it the break-up of the decade. Partly it was because at the time they were one of the biggest, and coolest, bands around (their single "Stay" managed a record eight weeks at number one).

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10 Questions for musician Craig Finn

Lisa-Marie Ferla

As frontman and lyricist of US rockers The Hold Steady, Craig Finn specialises in vivid storytelling featuring larger than life characters. It’s a writing style that he has carried with him into his solo work too even if, as he says, the stories are “more vulnerable and maybe a little more personal” than fans of his other band may be used to.

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10 Questions for conductor Charles Hazlewood

Thomas H Green

Charles Hazlewood (b. 1966) has worked across the gamut of orchestral music, his career showcasing the multitude of ways it can be perceived and enjoyed.

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Bob Dylan Special - theartsdesk Q&A: Scarlet Rivera

Tim Cumming

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, ...

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Chamber Music, Brighton Festival 2019 review - Wu-Tang Clan depths divined

Nick Hasted

Martial arts mayhem, Shaolin philosophy, a tribe of masked hip hop warriors emerging from the mist of Staten Island, a Funkadelic-Parliament collective sprawling through the music industry in the age of black mass incarceration: the Wu-Tang Clan were all these things, immediately....

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10 Questions for Musician Soumik Datta

Mark Sheerin

“I think we need to get rid of labels, certainly World Music,” insists Soumik Datta, who is both composer and musician, and has lived in the UK since the age of 11. “It is possible to be a musician in the Indian tradition, as well as an electronic musician, as well as a contemporary musician...

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theartsdesk Q&A: Bananarama

Thomas H Green

Bananarama are one of the most successful girl groups of all time. Consisting of Sara Dallin and Keren Woodward, the band’s third original member Siobhan Fahey left in 1988 to form Shakespears Sister. The trio reunited in 2017 for a tour but new album, In Stereo, sees them back as the long-standing duo. The pair have been friends since their school days.

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theartsdesk Q&A: Musician, writer and performance artist Cosey Fanni Tutti

Guy Oddy

Cosey Fanni Tutti was born Christine Newby in Hull in 1951. She is a musician, performance artist and writer and is best known for her time with COUM Transmissions, Throbbing Gristle and Chris and Cosey. Her memoir Art Sex Music came out in 2017 and her second solo album, Tutti is released on 8 February.

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theartsdesk Q&A: Robert MacFarlane's Spell Songs

Tim Cumming

With books including Mountains of the Mind, The Wild Places, The Old Ways and Landmarks, Robert MacFarlane has established himself as one of the leading writers on landscape in the English language, continuing a literary tradition that contains talents as diverse as John Muir, Robinson Jeffers, Edward Thomas and Laurie Lee. His 2017 collaboration with the...

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theartsdesk Q&A: Composer Michel Legrand

Jasper Rees

“I want to be a man without any past,” said Michel Legrand, who has died at the age of 86. He had perhaps the longest past in showbiz. Orchestrator, pianist, conductor, composer of countless soundtracks, who else has collaborated as widely - with Miles Davis and Kiri Te Kanawa, Barbra Streisand and Jean-Luc Godard, Gene Kelly, Joseph Losey and Edith Piaf? When I visited him at his house at his splendid classical manoir 100km south of Paris, on the mantelpiece in the large white sitting room...

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