Features & Interviews
First Person: Rachel O'Riordan on the enduring power of a sad, funny, and extraordinary play
Wednesday, 13 October 2021
The Beauty Queen of Leenane is a vicious, sad and extraordinary play.
'The din is loud these days': playwright Cordelia Lynn on her imminent premiere at the Donmar Warehouse
Monday, 11 October 2021
As I write this, we've just had our final day in the rehearsal room and are going into tech onstage next week with my new play, which is also reopening the Donmar not only to live performance but follows major renovations at their home address.
Extract: The Breaks by Julietta Singh
Wednesday, 06 October 2021
How do we mother “at the end of the world”? Among the ruins of late capitalism, climate catastrophe, and entrenched white state violence?Julietta...
K-Music 2021: striking the right note for musical...
Wednesday, 06 October 2021
It’s been eight years since the first K-Music landed in London, courtesy the Korean Cultural Centre UK, along with world, folk and jazz concert...
'Rest now, you God': remembering bass-...
Friday, 24 September 2021
Few singers really change your life. Norman Bailey did that for me [writes David Nice of theartsdesk]. The occasion wasn't my first experience of a...
Summer seasons in a Covid world: five opera company movers and shakers reflect
The admins are the heroes now: how festivals surmounted all obstacles |
First Person: theatre director Christopher Haydon on how the Rose Theatre, Kingston, can bloom anew
The former artistic director of the Gate Theatre moves his theatrical vision further west |
Out of the shadows: Dylan’s Eighties reappraised
Bootleg Series co-producer Steve Berkowitz gives an insider’s run-down on the latest Bootleg Series release, 'Springtime in New York' |
First Person: pianist Filippo Gorini on head, heart and the contemporary in Bach's 'The Art of Fugue'
Taking off from a masterly marriage of rigorous means and expressive ends |
Through hoops and hurdles to sheer joy: BBC Proms Director David Pickard on a season like no other
It isn't over yet, but an international institution has already triumphed against the odds |
First Person: composer Joseph Phibbs on rescoring Britten
Tonight at Snape: chamber arrangement of an early masterpiece, 'Our Hunting Fathers' |
Remembering Graham Vick (1953-2021) - top colleagues on one of the greatest opera directors
Five singers, a conductor and a casting director recall an irreplaceable visionary |
First Person: theartsdesk writer Bernard Hughes on composing for the BBC Proms
Classical music reviewer on sitting on the other side of the artist-critic fence |
First Person: young musicians Brooke Simpson and Erin Black on the National Youth Orchestra's 'Hope Exchange' project
NYO double bass player and orchestral pianist on their part in a very special collaboration |
First Person: conductor Enrique Mazzola on Verdi's time-travelling 'Luisa Miller'
Notes from the musician who knows Glyndebourne's last main-season production best |
10 Questions for Harry Grafton of Red Rooster Festival
On The Rolling Stones, Americana, and his festival surviving COVID-19 |
First Person: Héloïse Werner on a live collaboration with fellow composers and performers
New music in a trio concert with a difference |
An Oral History of Glastonbury Festival 1992
Take a 29 year time-trip back to the world's greatest festival with those who were there |
'In music, we are together': saxophonist Jess Gillam on returning to concerts with audience
One of our liveliest musical communicators on the slow journey out of lockdown |
First Person: Roxanna Panufnik on a new version of her 'Letters from Burma' in aid of Myanmar refugees
The composer on why she expanded a chamber piece for London Mozart Players |
From cancellation to new vigour: pianist and artistic director Joseph Middleton on Leeds Lieder
One of our most enterprising younger-generation performers on renewing a major festival |
First Person: Director Maria Aberg on drawing fresh inspiration for the future
The theatre-maker sets out her stall for an ambitious, pan-European venture |
First Person: playwright Tanika Gupta on being back in the rehearsal room once more
The writer expresses her joy at going 'Out West' |
Glastonbury Festival: Live at Worthy Farm livestream review - glitched access upstages beautifully shot live footage
Calamitous technical upset overshadows Coldplay, HAIM, Damon Albarn, Kano, IDLES and the rest |
Music books to end lockdown: Sam Lee, Hawkwind, Dylan, Richard Thompson, and the Electric Muses
From nightingale song to sonic attack via folk rock and the world's greatest songwriter, spring 2021's best music books |
Christa Ludwig, 1928-2021: a selective tribute
The German mezzo-soprano embraced the light and the dark at a transcendental level |
Extract: Blackface by Ayanna Thompson
Examining the history and legacies of this racist performance mode |
First Person: Boris Giltburg on lockdown interruptions to filming Beethoven's 32 piano sonatas
The Moscow-born Israeli pianist on an odyssey that took several unexpected turns |
First Person: composer and Renaissance man Tunde Jegede on transcending genres
Crossing boundaries for Southampton's 'Mayflower 400: Voyages of the Heart' project |
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