wed 02/04/2025

Wales

10 Questions for Musician Cerys Matthews

“He who sings frightens away his ills.” Cerys Matthews has spent a lifetime heeding the wise counsel of Don Quixote. Born at the tailend of the Sixties, she grew up in the Welsh tradition of musical surroundsound before veering right into the heart...

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theartsdesk at the 26th Hay Festival

Which came first: the performance or the platform? Writers used to say that festivals were never part of the deal. They’ve long since stopped now that the publishing industry has changed and the public demand has grown for authors who don’t simply...

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Who was Dorothy Squires?

Very few young people know her name today, but Dorothy Squires was the singing sensation of the Fifties and Sixties, and even 30 years ago this talented but difficult star was a regular feature of the headlines thanks to offstage dramas and scandals...

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Tir Sir Gâr, Carmarthenshire County Museum

The play is the thing, to quote one famous bereaved theatrical son, and in this new collaboration between Theatr Genedlaethol Cymru, artist Marc Rees and playwright Roger Williams, it is most definitely the thing. A Welsh-language multi-media...

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The Bloody Ballad, Riverfront Theatre, Newport

If you’re one of those who always felt the opening credits of True Blood held more substance and delicious dark corners than the comic-book titillation of the programme that followed, then The Bloody Ballad could be exactly what you’re looking for....

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CD: Stereophonics - Graffiti on the Train

Stereophonics’ meat’n’potatoes Brit-rock is very easy to knock. So here goes. No, only kidding. Well, sort of kidding. The Welsh band were a fixture of the charts from the late Nineties until relatively recently. Initially punted hard as the first...

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Saer Doliau, Finborough Theatre

Last weekend it was the 50th anniversary of an important event in postwar Welsh history. In early February 1963 the Welsh Language Society – Cymdeithas yr Iaith Gymraeg – protested for the first time about the right of Welsh speakers to live their...

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CD: Bullet For My Valentine - Temper Temper

There’s a certain kind of melodic post-millennial metal band where the songs seem to be merely a process of ritualistic, firmly fixed reference points. From Avenged Sevenfold to Bring Me The Horizon and thousands more, gargle-shouted thrash vocals...

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DVD: The Last Days of Dolwyn

Years before Cleopatra (1963), Richard Burton played an orphaned shopkeeper in a quaint melodrama. It was his film debut. The Last Days of Dolwyn is written and directed by Emlyn Williams, a fellow Welshman, who gave Burton his...

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CD: Katherine Jenkins - This Is Christmas

Does this disc succeed in doing what it sets out to do? Yes, it does, which makes my minor carpings irrelevant. It’s already selling in industrial quantities. But, to quote a review of another Christmas album on this site, “an album full of tunes...

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CD: Cerys Matthews - Baby, It's Cold Outside

An album full of tunes you’ve been hearing all your life needs to be adept at reinvention. Cerys Matthews has already proved that she has a gift for repackaging the familiar in her enchanting Tir, which anthologises much loved Welsh folk songs and...

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Artes Mundi Prize, National Museum Wales, Cardiff

An award for artists whose work engages with "social reality, lived experience and the human condition" has been won by a Mexican forensic technician whose works deals intimately with her country’s brutal drug wars. Britain’s most valuable art award...

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