Reviews
Matt Wolf
Sun, snow, and some unadorned silliness danced to the music of Björk: no one can accuse San Francisco of casting an insufficiently wide tonal (or climatic) net in this second of four programmes on view from San Francisco Ballet as part of their Sadler's Wells season (continuing to June 8). Having largely thrilled to their all-Shostakovich opener, I found this line-up more of a literally mixed bag. And yet, just when the sobriety of Cathy Marston's take on the American novel Ethan Frome is beginning to pall, along comes the tinsel-infused, take-no-prisoners kitsch of Arthur Pita's Read more ...
Sebastian Scotney
Percussionist Pedrito Martinez is one of those musicians who forces you to re-think what instruments are capable of – while making you wonder if there is actually anything he can’t do. He plays congas, batá drums and bongos with breathtaking facility and flow. He sings everything from Yoruba chants to “Quizás”. He dances. And he can turn a side drum and a hi-hat (no sticks, all played with hand/foot) plus cajon drum as if by magic into a rock drum kit.Last night at Ronnie Scott’s was the first show of a duo tour with a fellow Cuba-born US-based musician, pianist Alberto Rodriguez, touring the Read more ...
Thomas H. Green
Only those who’ve just popped in from an early 20th century Tennessee cotton field will have recently observed more pairs of dungarees in one place than at Red Rooster. It’s a festival that prides itself on a rich diet of Americana alongside a defiantly retro aesthetic. Red Rooster offers up expertly curated, off-the-beaten-track sounds, but there’s a strong sense that it’s as much about hanging out, about having all day/all evening picnics soaked in bourbon cocktails while somewhere not too far away a banjo is twanged by a stetson-wearing someone you’ve never heard of.The festival runs from Read more ...
Sarah Kent
If you know of any chauvinists who dare to maintain that women can’t paint, take them to this astounding retrospective. Lee Krasner faced patronising dismissal at practically every turn in her career yet she persisted and went on to produce some of the most magnificent paintings of the late 20th century.Despite her brilliance, she is still known to most people as the wife of Jackson Pollock, whom she married in 1945, so it comes as no surprise to discover how hard it was for her to pursue her own path amid the male egos that dominated the New York art scene at the time. Among the abstract Read more ...
Ellie Porter
With thousands of people trooping in to see headliners including The Strokes, Bring Me the Horizon, Mumford and Sons and, tonight, Bon Iver, this corner of London’s beautiful Victoria Park has become a bit of a dustbowl – and the dust certainly gets kicked up as the 10-day festival concludes.A lot of that is down to energetic early main-stagers Kokoko!, a phenomenal, yellow-boiler-suited collective from Kinshasa whose instruments are made of everything from washing-up liquid bottles to tin cans, and an energetic solo set from The Tallest Man on Earth (aka Swedish singer-songwriter Kristian Read more ...
Tom Birchenough
The huge achievement of the last two decades of August Wilson’s life, right up to his death in 2005, was his “American Century Cycle”, in which he charted the African American experience over that time frame decade by decade, its action set largely in the downtown Hill District of Pittsburgh where the playwright grew up.Premiered in 1999, King Hedley II represents the Eighties – the front curtain makes much of it being the beginning of the Reagan years – though Wilson’s concerns go far beyond standard documentary. History in this black neighbourhood extends back a long way, something that Read more ...
Sebastian Scotney
It is a coincidence - and probably no more than that - that Garsington Opera has opened its 30th birthday season with the “founding work of modern Czech opera” in the year that also marks the 30th anniversary of the Velvet Revolution in Prague.Musically, Bedřich Smetana’s The Bartered Bride is marvellous, vivid, dance-infused work. In the second performance of the run, conductor Jac van Steen and the Philharmonia Orchestra were achieving miracles of clarity, pacing and ensemble with it. The score is peppered with instructions to ratchet up the tempo or to pull it back, or Read more ...
Robert Beale
The BBC Philharmonic have given memorable accounts of Shostakovich’s Symphony No 4 in Manchester before – notably conducted by Günther Herbig in 2010 and by John Storgårds in 2014 – but surely none as harrowingly grim as under Mark Wigglesworth this time. A welcome foil to it, then, were Mahler’s five dream-like Rückert-Lieder, forming the 20-minute first section of the concert programme, and winsomely sung by Roderick Williams.He is a master of so many vocal genres, and in these poem settings demonstrated a surprising variety of expression within the confines of their superficially simple Read more ...
Adam Sweeting
This fifth edition of Sundance’s London offshoot covered the first moon landing in Apollo 11, probed philosophical pranksters The Satanic Temple in Hail Satan? and took a trip through the alt-right world of Steve Bannon in The Brink. In between there was drama, melodrama, black comedy and social commentary. Theartsdesk took a tour. The FarewellBased on the experiences of writer/director Lulu Wang, The Farewell is a perceptive examination of family bonds, generational differences and cultural contrasts. Awkwafina (former YouTube rapper turned rising film actress) plays Billi, a Chinese Read more ...
Tom Birchenough
Stalingrad is the companion piece to Vasily Grossman’s Life and Fate, which on its (re)publication in English a decade ago was acclaimed as one of the greatest Russian (and not only Russian) novels of the 20th century. For its sense of the sheer sweep of history, of a society passing through a period of momentous conflict, comparison was often made with Tolstoy’s War and Peace. Stalingrad is the prequel to Life and Fate, and its appearance now allows readers to assess Grossman’s magnum opus – he considered the two novels to be effectively a single work – in its entirety. Tolstoy Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
Jeanette’s “Porque Te Vas” is a prime example of a type of Europop which – beyond a brief flirtation around 1968 to 1971: think Clodagh Rogers – Britain had little time for. It’s not quite schlager, but still has the tell-tale martial rhythm. The singing voice conforms with the breathy stereotype still favoured in France. Like the best bubblegum pop, the melody and brass-studded arrangement are instantly hooky.“Porque Te Vas” is a fantastic single. Issued in Spain in 1974 by Jeanette it got wider exposure after being heard in the film Cría Cuervos, which was screened at the 1976 Cannes Film Read more ...
Bernard Hughes
Last night saw the official unveiling of 33-year-old Finn Santtu-Matias Rouvali as Principal Conductor Designate of the Philharmonia Orchestra, an appointment that has been widely welcomed, not least on theartsdesk. And while I enjoyed Rouvali’s work I had some reservations, and I would like to see him again before coming to a firm judgment.Rouvali’s conducting is extrovert, with flamboyant left-hand gestures and a right-hand which is more about the upbeat than the downbeat – indeed at times he abandons the down entirely in favour of a circular beat when building momentum. This gives a Read more ...