festivals
European Festivals 2011 Round-UpMonday, 23 May 2011
Be different - take a festival break in Europe instead of the UK, and catch a different landscape. While artists in both new music and classical are constantly circling the world in search of more picturesque settings, you can find your alternative... Read more... |
Fanfare Ciocârlia vs Boban Marcovic - Balkan Brass Battle, The Dome, BrightonSunday, 22 May 2011
Subtlety is overrated. I've always thought so. Critical consensus too often rates nuanced, emasculated emoting over music that smashes you over the head with an iron bar. From hardcore punk to gabber to speed metal to the sort of dubstep that... Read more... |
Kutlug Ataman, Brighton Festival/Thomas Dane Gallery, LondonSunday, 22 May 2011
One of the highlights of this year’s Brighton Festival, curated largely via web chats and long-distance phone conversations by Aung San Suu Kyi, is Kutlug Ataman’s silent film installation Mesopotamian Dramaturgies. The leading Turkish artist, a... Read more... |
theartsdesk in Western Sahara: The World's Most Remote Film FestivalSunday, 22 May 2011
During the 1960s, when decolonisation movements were sweeping the world, it was joked that, after achieving independence, a country had to do three things: design a flag, launch an airline and found a film festival. Western Sahara has a flag but... Read more... |
UK Festivals 2011 Round-UpSaturday, 21 May 2011
It's time to dust down your tent and ice-box and plan some summer breaks with theartsdesk's definitive clickable festival guide - listings and links for all the UK festivals this summer, from rock by the lochs to DJs in London parks, and catching... Read more... |
Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui's Apocrifu/ Gardenia, Brighton FestivalFriday, 20 May 2011
Apocrypha is a word that has acquired a dubious meaning, for books of questioned value and authenticity, texts in various religions that may not necessarily be held divine. The Belgian-Moroccan dancemaker Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui's dance work Apocrifu... Read more... |
theartsdesk in Brighton: At the Festival Where Anything GoesSunday, 15 May 2011
Persecuted Burmese freedom fighter Aung San Suu Kyi may be this year’s guest director, provoking a loose theme of "freedom of expression, liberty, and the power of the individual voice" that’s all the more powerful for her enforced absence. But a... Read more... |
Asian Dub Foundation - Music of Resistance, Brighton DomeTuesday, 10 May 2011
It's been a while since I've spent time with Asian Dub Foundation. In the mid-Nineties, when they first appeared, they were one of the most exciting acts around and I enthused about them in print at every opportunity. They were born of an east-... Read more... |
theartsdesk in Clonter: The Opera FarmSaturday, 07 May 2011
Deep in rural Cheshire farmland, music is in the air. It’s not the music of the spheres from the Jodrell Bank radio telescope nearby, nor even the sound of the birds and the bleating of the lambs nearby. It is the music of human voices at work on... Read more... |
theartsdesk in Cuenca: Religious Music WeekSaturday, 23 April 2011
It’s Holy Wednesday in Cuenca, and going round the corner into Cathedral Square I’m surrounded by hordes of guys in multicoloured mufti who look like the Ku Klux Klan, with unnecessarily pointy hoods. Twenty of them are carrying a heavy float with a... Read more... |
BBC Proms 2011 In FullFriday, 22 April 2011
The 2011 BBC Proms open on Friday 15 July and close on Saturday 10 September. Strands linking the 90 concerts include Choral Sundays, film and TV music proms, French music, unusual concertos, Liszt and Frank Bridge focuses, and the first Comedy Prom... Read more... |
Cage 99, St George's BristolTuesday, 19 April 2011
John Cage, the focus of an adventurous three-day mini-festival in Bristol, is possibly one of the most influential figures in 20th-century culture. As much a practical philosopher as a composer of note, he made artists, writers and musicians think... Read more... |
