sun 29/06/2025

Features

Alfred Brendel 1931-2025 - a personal tribute

Alfred Brendel’s death earlier this month came as a shock, but it wasn’t unexpected. His health had gradually deteriorated over the last year or so, and I was fortunate to see him just a few days before he died. I visited him for one of our regular...

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10 Questions for musician Michael Gira

Michael Gira (born 19/2/54) is an American singer-songwriter, composer, author and artist. He founded Swans, a band in which he sings and plays guitar, in New York during the late 1970s. Since that time, Gira and Swans have been a major influence in...

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'Classic-era prog’s Olympian pinnacle': Pink Floyd's 'Echoes' returns in their restored Pompeii concert film and as Nick Mason's band's vinyl hit

Pink Floyd’s “Echoes”, the ineffable progressive rock epic that occupies side two of 1971’s Meddle, is having a moment. Nick Mason’s Saucerful of Secrets released a sensational one-sided 12-inch vinyl version of the track on Record Store Day, April...

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First Person: young cellist Zlatomir Fung on operatic fantasies old and new

My new album, Fantasies, recorded with pianist Richard Fu, is the culmination of my years-long fascination with the wonderful genre of instrumental opera fantasies. I first fell in love with opera fantasies while attending summer music camps as a...

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First Person: rising folk star Amelia Coburn on her French inspiration

“Sandra” is one of my favourite tracks from my album Between The Moon and the Milkman which was released last year.  While living in Paris a few years ago I shared a flat with an older French lady. We loved to chat every night when I came home...

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First Person: St John's College choral conductor Christopher Gray on recording 'Lament & Liberation'

When I arrived at St John’s College, Cambridge, in April 2023, it was a daunting prospect to be taking over the reins of a choir with such a distinguished recording heritage: there have been more than 100 albums since the 1950s on some of the UK’s...

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First Person: singer-songwriter David Gray on how the songs on his new album came to him

Occasionally, when I pass my own reflection, out of the corner of my eye I catch a glimpse of the likeness of my father, shining out through the bones in my face. In this way his ghost walks with me. Sometimes the making process can feel like...

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Oscars 2025: long day's journey into 'Anora'

Amid these troubling times, can we not all live in the world of the 2025 Oscars' runaway success story, an ever-smiling Sean Baker? That thought increasingly crossed my mind as the 97th Academy Awards crawled towards its close, a promise early on...

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First Person: writer Lauren Mooney on bringing bodies together in the new Royal Court play, 'More Life'

It started with a Guardian long-read. I’m ashamed to admit it since so many shows could say the same, but that was the beginning.It was the summer of 2022, and James [Yeatman] and I had just finished making two shows back-to-back with our company,...

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David Lynch: In Dreams (1946-2025)

David Lynch’s final two features mapped a haunted Hollywood of curdled innocence and back-alley eeriness. Mulholland Drive (2001) seemed the ultimate LA noir, till Inland Empire (2006) dug into deepest Lynch. The eighteen fallow big-screen years...

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Best of 2024: Books

Billie Holiday sings again, Olivia Laing tends to her garden, and Biran Klaas takes a chance: our reviewers discuss their favourite reads of 2024.Joe Boyd’s And the Roots of Rhythm Remain (Faber & Faber, £30) delivers handsomely on the promise...

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Best of 2024: Film

 Saskia BaronAnoraBetween the TemplesIo CapitanoDahomeyEmilia PerezGreen BorderIo CapitanoMonsterA Normal ManSoundtrack to a Coup d’EtatThe usual perverse list unfolds. Two beautifully made and thought-provoking films about emigration, an...

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