Features
O for Muse of FireMonday, 23 September 2013
The idea behind Muse of Fire was a simple one. We wanted to spend a year travelling the world and find out from as many sources as we could why Shakespeare is both so loved and so feared. We wanted to try and eradicate our own deep-rooted anxieties... Read more... |
theartsdesk in Banff: Where quartets competeSunday, 22 September 2013
There are few more beautiful places in the world to make music than Banff, the arts community founded in 1933, originally to teach drama. From small beginnings it became a name uttered with a certain reverence among the music world. And that is... Read more... |
Darbar Festival: The ancient art of DhrupadFriday, 20 September 2013
This is a key weekend for lovers of Indian classical music or the merely sonically adventurous – the Darbar Festival in the Southbank has some of the most extraordinary practioners of the art from both the Carnatic (South Indian) and Hindustani (... Read more... |
Gallery: Derwent Art PrizeFriday, 20 September 2013
You can use a computer to draw, as Hockney does, every day on his iPad, yet, despite all the technological advances the 21st century has thrown our way, the pencil continues to be the artist’s most basic tool. And though there are those who lament,... Read more... |
'Always on, never alone'Sunday, 15 September 2013
While newspapers alternately praise and panic about the glittering world of the Internet, there is a generation of children who have grown up with 24/7 connectivity and a smart phone in their hand.Public discourse seems to revolve around "grooming"... Read more... |
Listed: The 20 best movie songsSunday, 15 September 2013
Seeing and hearing A Field in England's Richard Glover sing "Baloo, My Boy" while in bedraggled character reminded me of the power often exerted by songs explicitly or implicitly germane to a movie's narrative. They tend to have far greater... Read more... |
theartsdesk in Katowice: On tour at Tauron Nowa Muzyka FestivalWednesday, 11 September 2013
Day 1During the Soviet era, Katowice was the industrial hub of Upper Silesia, a poisoned region of multiple coalmines and rivers running yellow with chemicals. It now prides itself on 20 years of ecological clean-up and being one of the less... Read more... |
theartsdesk in Australia: The oldest civilisation on showSunday, 08 September 2013
London is by now festooned with images showing the back-end of a horse surmounted by a black figure holding a gun across his chest. The man's head is a square black mask – a rectangular slit in it fails to reveal the expected eyes, instead taking us... Read more... |
David Frost, giant of the small screen, diesMonday, 02 September 2013
David Frost, who has died at the age of 74, was a character. The obituaries will tour the entirety of his career as swinging young presenter of TW3, as the first transatlantic celebrity of the gogglebox who gave his name to a sugary brand of... Read more... |
theartsdesk in Stavanger: A touch of FröstSunday, 01 September 2013
Three great pianists, one of the world’s top clarinettists and two fine string players in a single concert: it’s what you might expect from a chamber music festival at the highest level. What I wasn’t anticipating on the first evening in Stavanger... Read more... |
Listed: Freudian AnalysisSaturday, 31 August 2013
Hysteria is back. Terry Johnson’s comedy was written for the Royal Court in 1993, and for its 20th anniversary it is being revived at Hampstead Theatre. It is a homecoming in a sense: the play is set in the Hampstead home of Sigmund Freud, where he... Read more... |
theartsdesk in the Hamptons: The $26 Million BarnWednesday, 28 August 2013
There’s never a good day for traffic in the Hamptons, and a Friday in August takes the biscuit. The Montauk Highway, also known as Route 27, was bumper to bumper on the way to the Parrish Art Museum, recently relocated from nearby Southampton... Read more... |
