New York
CD: Beastie Boys – Hot Sauce Committee Part TwoTuesday, 26 April 2011
The question used to be: “Can white men rap?” A more apt variant today is, “Can white men in their middle forties with juvenile nicknames rap?” Mike D, Ad-Rock and MCA recorded Hot Sauce Committee Part Two in 2009, but then put the release on... Read more... |
ArthurWednesday, 20 April 2011
Back in 2004, Russell Brand performed Russell Brand's Better Now at the Edinburgh Fringe, one of the best shows I have ever seen. In it he described his recovery from addictions to alcohol and drugs and how he had lost his job as an MTV presenter... Read more... |
Filthy Cities, BBC TwoTuesday, 19 April 2011
Dan Snow's toxic trilogy climaxed in New York, where he crawled voyeuristically through the rotten core of the Big Apple. It was part Discovery Channel documentary, part Gangs of New York dirty realism, as Snow took a frankly indecent relish in... Read more... |
theartsdesk in New York: Spruce Flats by GehrySunday, 17 April 2011
“Do you realise we’re talking about a rental apartment building? It’s unheard of,” says a friend. We’re standing on a street corner discussing the new Frank Gehry building in lower Manhattan. Most new apartment buildings here are concrete and... Read more... |
Smash!, Menier Chocolate FactoryFriday, 01 April 2011
If you're going to put on a show about putting on a show, you gotta get a gimmick, as a wise man not unconnected with the late Jack Rosenthal's autobiographical comedy once wrote. Put it another way: if the show/film/TV series depicted is... Read more... |
Opera-house pecking order: Luisi goes for Met goldTuesday, 22 March 2011
So it's official: the Metropolitan Opera is more "important" than Covent Garden - at least to the rather image-conscious Fabio Luisi, currently rated as one of the possible successors to New York's now-ailing supremo of the last 40 years, James... Read more... |
Laurie Anderson, Trisha Brown, Gordon Matta-Clark, Barbican Art GalleryMonday, 21 March 2011
I can still remember the excitement of pounding the pavements of SoHo in the early 1970s. Nowadays, this part of downtown Manhattan is awash with expensive restaurants, boutiques and smart galleries, but then it was a scruffy industrial area of... Read more... |
CD: The Strokes – AnglesFriday, 18 March 2011
Follow that. It's the inevitable two-word mantra after a band has released a defining debut. The Strokes delivered their seminal statement of intent with Is This It in 2001, proving that a decent leather jacket, attitude and a rock riff will never... Read more... |
Birmingham Contemporary Music Group, CBSO Centre, BirminghamMonday, 14 March 2011
This latest BCMG concert had its pleasures; and it had its irritations. Among the pleasures was a pair of works, one of them newly commissioned, by the under-performed Japanese composer Jo Kondo. The irritations were of the BBC variety: long pauses... Read more... |
An American Experiment: George Bellows and the Ashcan Painters, National GalleryTuesday, 01 March 2011
The National Gallery has done it again: a small but perfectly formed exhibition in their little Room 1, now a by-word for intelligent show-making. Something new, something revelatory, something profoundly beautiful – what more can the gallery-goer... Read more... |
Now McCartney writes a ballet...Thursday, 24 February 2011Hot on the heels of the Pet Shop Boys’ foray into ballet for Sadler’s Wells next month, it’s revealed that Sir Paul McCartney has composed a ballet for New York City Ballet, a love story called Ocean’s Kingdom.Scheduled to premiere on 22 September,... Read more... |
theartsdesk in New York 1: Guitar MonthSunday, 13 February 2011
February is guitar month in New York City. Synchronicity rules at those two giants, the MoMA and the Met. At MoMA, Picasso: Guitars 1912-1914 shows his austere guitar paintings, collages and drawings - often using newspaper, wallpaper and sand - as... Read more... |
