festivals
Kieron Tyler
For a Brit navigating Denmark’s annual showcase of home-grown music, it’s impossible to eradicate thoughts of the Danish TV seen in the UK recently. Obviously, detecting Borgen-style intrigue while wandering around is unfeasible. But something else might be more obvious. However bright the sun, the wind is cold and warmish clothing is essential. Yet no one sports a Sarah Lund jumper. It’s a reminder that TV drama isn’t a guidebook. SPOT’s cutting-edge crowd has no idea about foreign notions of what might constitute Danish. Over the head-spinning three days of the festival, the 121 separate Read more ...
Dylan Moore
Four weeks ahead of its core event in the Welsh border town of Hay-on-Wye the world’s leading festival of literature, ideas and the arts rolls into Budapest. Celebrating its 25th year and 15th location, this is the first time “the Woodstock of the Mind” – Bill Clinton’s phrase - has been held in a country behind what used to be the Iron Curtain.Two decades ago, Central and Eastern Europe was where people looked for glimpses of the future; the removal of the Iron Curtain fomented excitement in uncertainty, the retreat of the Soviet empire created a vacuum. Now, with the future even more Read more ...
bella.todd
If you weren’t already aware that the Guest Director of the 2012 Brighton Festival is acting royalty, the preponderance of fop fringes and artfully flung scarves at the Dome Concert Hall on Saturday night was a good clue. Vanessa Redgrave is the figurehead for this year’s reliably eclectic (if a little conceptually convoluted) programme. And judging by the opening Q&A, dotted with as many grassroots political activists as members of the Redgrave clan, she’s going to be a busy one.Would she come to a meeting next Saturday? asked a hopeful man from the Labour History Movement. Alas, she Read more ...
Ismene Brown
A new publicly funded UK web channel for performing arts opens tomorrow morning, preparing for a major launch this weekend streaming top international streetdancers to the web audience and publishing John Peel's notes on his record collection. The channel, called The Space, is funded by the Arts Council England in partnership with the BBC, and will run for six months over and through the Olympics period as an on-demand channel to put performance out via smartphones, tablets and computers.Described as an experimental digital arts channel and "communal playground", The Space clearly hopes to Read more ...
Ismene Brown
The full programme is announced today for the London 2012 Festival, from 21 June-9 September, celebrating the London 2012 Olympics and Paralympics.Among more than 25,000 artists from all 204 participating nations, star names include theatre stars Cate Blanchett, Alan Ayckbourn, Mike Leigh and Julie Walters, musicians Damon Albarn, Daniel Barenboim, Gustavo Dudamel, Gilberto Gil, Zakir Hussain, Yoko Ono, Simon Rattle, Rihanna and Scissor Sisters, visual artists Ai Wei Wei, Tracey Emin, Damien Hirst and Anish Kapoor, and TV characters Stephen Fry, Wallace and Gromit and Dr Who.More than 10 Read more ...
theartsdesk
Southbank Centre’s current season has included weekends devoted to three contemporary giants: Pierre Boulez, Conlon Nancarrow and George Benjamin. But it closes with a festival devoted to not to one contemporary composer but 20. The New Music 20x12 weekend, initiated by the PRS for Music Foundation, is a Olympic celebration of the range and diversity of new British composition. Indeed, the only thing all 20 pieces will have in common is that – you’ve guessed it - they will last 12 minutes.Performances will take place all over the Southbank Centre, and 14 of them will be freeSome of Read more ...
igor.toronyilalic
The 2012 BBC Proms open on 13 July and end on 8 September. This is the full list of the 76 concerts. Book tickets here. Prom 1: First Night of the PromsFri 13 July 2012, 7.30pm, Royal Albert HallMark-Anthony Turnage - Canon Fever (3 mins)Elgar - Overture 'Cockaigne (In London Town)' (15 mins)Delius - Sea Drift (25 mins)Tippett - Suite for the Birthday of Prince Charles (16 mins)Elgar - Coronation Ode (33 mins)Prom 2: Lerner & Loewe – My Fair LadySat 14 July 2012, 7.00pm, Royal Albert HallLoewe - My Fair Lady (170 mins)Prom 3: Debussy – Pelléas et MélisandeSun 15 July 2012, 7.00pm, Read more ...
Dylan Moore
The Laugharne Weekend has become a fixture in the crowded calendar of festivals that now punctuates not just high days and holidays but the whole six months that make up British Summer Time. Carving a niche for itself as a halfway house between literature and music, Laugharne’s success is built on two key factors.First, its remarkable natural location in a remote corner of Carmarthenshire, southwest Wales and the village’s associations with Dylan Thomas, whose Boathouse, writing shed and the string of local pubs with legendary stories of the poet’s drunken antics make up Laugharne’s year- Read more ...