Norway
CD: Gard Nilssen Acoustic Unity - To Whom Buys a RecordWednesday, 21 August 2019
To Whom Buys a Record roams through 12 crisply recorded pieces confirming that jazz which isn’t shy of acknowledging its heritage can still have an edge. Though structured and tight, each composition is defined by an attack positing this as an... Read more... |
theartsdesk in Oslo: Øya Festival 2019 reviewSunday, 11 August 2019
The timing seemed odd. Sigrid is internationally successful. She’s Norway’s highest-profile musical ambassador since a-ha. Yet instead of headlining at 2019’s Øya Festival, she hits the stage at 6.45. Has she been demoted in favour of Tame Impala,... Read more... |
Blu-ray: Lords of ChaosWednesday, 17 July 2019
“All this evil and dark crap was supposed to be fun,” complains exasperated Norwegian black metal overlord Euronymous, played by Rory Culkin, as his world spirals out of control in a cataclysm of murder, suicide and church burnings. The true events... Read more... |
theartsdesk in Svalbard: cultural excellence at the top of the worldFriday, 21 June 2019
You should not die or be born on Svalbard, 1,985 kilometres above Norway's northernmost coast, and at 18 you work or leave for the mainland. Hunting is over, mining nearly so. Tourism, carefully managed, and Arctic research are the future; the... Read more... |
theartsdesk in Bergen: Gothic shocks and Romantic treatsSunday, 09 June 2019
Ole Bull sounds like some legendary gun-slinging hero of the Wild West. A legend he definitely was, and he spent long enough in the US to found a migrant community in Pennsylvania. But the Norwegian virtuoso (1810-1880) made his name not with a... Read more... |
Classical CDs Weekly: Ståle Kleiberg, Lise Davidsen, Park Avenue Chamber SymphonySaturday, 08 June 2019
Do You Believe in Heather? Chamber music by Ståle Kleiberg (2L)Ståle Kleiberg's String Quartet No 3 is a masterpiece, I think. Small but perfectly formed, it's unassumingly brilliant. Kleiberg’s use of “extended tonality” is fascinating:... Read more... |
Rosmersholm, Duke of York's Theatre review - little-known Ibsen lands with forceSaturday, 04 May 2019
The past haunts the present and looks likely to torpedo the future in Rosmersholm, the lesser-known Ibsen play now receiving a major West End revival in welcome defiance of the commercial odds. The protean Sonia Friedman, this venture... Read more... |
Karl Ove Knausgaard: So Much Longing in So Little Space review – smiles more than screamsSunday, 24 March 2019
Around the works canteen, a dozen huge wall-paintings depict, in bright cheerful colours spread across radically stylised forms, happy scenes of women and men at work and play beside a sunlit sea. They till, pick, dance, chat, dream, wander or water... Read more... |
CD: Sigrid - Sucker PunchThursday, 07 March 2019
You’d be forgiven for thinking, in the age of streaming, that the promotional single was a dying art. And yet there’s already something familiar about Sigrid’s long-awaited debut album. It’s almost two years since “Don’t Kill My Vibe” was the song... Read more... |
CD: Susanna & The Brotherhood of Our Lady - Garden of Earthly DelightsTuesday, 19 February 2019
Lyrics such as “are we hunting for life among misery, Satan have pity on my long distress” and “we’re on a ship of fools, sails laughing and singing to hell” telegraph that, as a commentary on the present, Garden of Earthly Delights isn’t painting a... Read more... |
The Lady from the Sea, Print Room at the Coronet review - freedom to choose?Monday, 18 February 2019
Ellida (Pia Tjelta) has a choice to make, the outcome of which will bind her future to her past or her present, each represented by a man. On the one hand, there is the tempestuous seafaring Stranger (Øystein Røger) to whom, long ago and in a fit of... Read more... |
theartsdesk Q&A: Hedvig Mollestad, Norway's bridge between heavy metal and jazzSaturday, 19 January 2019
Norway’s Hedvig Mollestad Trio reset the dial to what jazz fusion sought to do when it emerged, and do so in such a way that it’s initially unclear whether they are a jazz-influenced heavy metal outfit or jazzers plunging feet-first into metal.... Read more... |
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