Features
Ismene Brown
On Thursday the London Symphony Orchestra plays a night of epic movie music by the man who gave America’s cowboy heroes their most stirring tunes. Dimitri Tiomkin was one of Hollywood’s film-score giants, John Wayne’s choice as composer for The Alamo, Wayne’s magnum opus, and Tiomkin's was the music that urged Gary Cooper and Clint Eastwood to ride out in iconic glory in landmark adventures such as High Noon or Rawhide.He was also a composer of suspense, of the knife-edge when a young wife is framed by her husband for murder, of the fateful convergence that brings two strangers together on a Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
Iceland is remote. Strategic too. Vikings stopped off there on the way to North America. It hosted the Reagan-Gorbachev summit 25 years ago. On the anniversary, visitors from America, Canada and across continental Europe are in Reykjavík for the 13th annual Iceland Airwaves. Over its five days the festival brings an extraordinary range of music to Iceland’s capital. Three years on from the country’s financial meltdown, Iceland remains strategic. Culturally strategic.Reykjavík, though, is small. Walking from the dockside to the fringes of the built-up area takes 20 minutes. The city's streets Read more ...
Jasper Rees
A reporter can be certain of two things: death, and the ephemerality of journalism. Written yesterday, published today, an article will usually be forgotten by tomorrow. The one exception who proves the rule hasn't been heard of in years, but his image adorns T-shirts and watchfaces, dangles from keyrings and greets people on birthday cards. Yes, the only guarantee of wholesale and everlasting fame is in merchandise, and it is a fate not reserved for many of us in the profession.theartsdesk has traced Tintin to the city of Wadyasah in Khemed, where he runs a shop down a side alley of a busy Read more ...
Claire Tomalin
Over their lifelong friendship Dickens sometimes mocked Forster and quarrelled furiously with him, but he was the only man to whom he confided his most private experiences and feelings, and he never ceased to trust him and rely on him. It was not a perfectly equal friendship, and Dickens sometimes took Forster for granted, and went through periods of coolness towards him, turning to another friend for a time; but when he was in real need of help it was always Forster to whom he went.They were always at ease with one another, with no need to pose or pretend, and much in common. Each knew that Read more ...
Mark Kidel
My relationship with the artist Brian Clarke, the subject of my forthcoming film, goes back a long way: when I first filmed him for a documentary I made for BBC Two in 1993 - a film about windows as symbols and metaphors in the series The Architecture of the Imagination - I was not only struck by the outstanding quality of his work as a painter and stained-glass artist, but by the exceptionally articulate and perceptive way in which he talked about art.There was an eloquence there – as well as charm and a great deal of biting humour – and an unusual intellectual freshness and depth. He Read more ...
Peter Culshaw
One of the problems with Peter Gabriel’s back catalogue for me, I tell him, as he is reclining in an office at EMI in London, is the sounds - some of them really are very dated. Gabriel would often pioneer a sound like the reverse-gated drum sound - others would imitate, it becomes trendy, over-used, and then hugely unfashionable.“Exactly!” he concurs. The excuse for our chat is that he has a new album out called New Blood, reworkings of some of his most celebrated songs done with an orchestra working with arranger and composer John Metcalfe. “The subtext of your question I take to be that Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
It’s almost dark. Frescoes depicting the cycle of life are barely visible. They could be shadows. Waves of sound pulse through the mausoleum of Norwegian artist Emanuel Vigeland. Fiddle player Nils Økland is feeding the 15-second delay with peals that reverberate around the space, folding back into themselves. It’s a spooky, unforgettable introduction to FolkeLarm, Oslo’s annual festival of Nordic folk music.FolkeLarm is a jolt. Not only because of it being a deep-dish serving of Nordic folk music, but also because previous visits to Oslo have found the city under half a metre of snow. Read more ...
graeme.thomson
The great folk guitarist Bert Jansch died early this morning, aged 67. Whether as a prime mover in London's 1960s folk scene, or as part of pioneering folk-jazzers Pentangle, or as a songwriter and solo artist, his influence on everyone from Paul Simon, Donovan, Led Zeppelin and Neil Young to, later, Johnny Marr, Graham Coxon and Beth Orton is simply immeasurable. Young compared Jansch's impact on the possibilities of the acoustic guitar as comparable to that of Jimi Hendrix's on the electric. Right up until his illness (he died after a struggle with lung cancer) Jansch remained one of music' Read more ...
Mark Kidel
In the generation of twentysomething rock musicians bottle-fed on world music, the Bristol band Zun Zun Egui really stand out. They make some of the most exciting music to have emerged in the last 12 months.The Afro-tinged sophistication of Vampire Weekend and Foals borrowed a sound in which distinctions between lead and rhythm guitar were blurred, in the style of classic soukous from Zaire and the East and Southern African dance music it inspired, but Zun Zun Egui take it one step further, ploughing African beats back into a rich and breathtaking mix which draws from heavy metal, avant-garde Read more ...
graeme.thomson
Formed in 2000 by thirtysomething sisters Catherine and Allison Pierce, Alabaman duo The Pierces have spent over a decade flitting from style to style and label to label, the nuggets of critical acclaim heavily outweighed by public indifference. Everything finally clicked, however, with their fourth album, You & I, which entered the UK charts at number four earlier this year. Produced by Coldplay's bass player Guy Berryman (but really, don’t let that put you off), You & I bears all the hallmarks of a band knuckling down and turning pro, but its atmospheric AOR and rootsy pop-rock Read more ...
Joe Muggs
I know nothing about Brazil, I have come to realise. A Sergio Mendes album here, a Gilles Peterson compilation there, a blurred memory of catching City of God on Film4 once – these do not add up to even the beginnings of insight into a country big and diverse enough to be more like a continent in its own right. As one person I meet early on in Brasilia says, asking someone to tell you what's happening in another of Brazil's regions or cultures “could be like asking someone in Athens to tell you about the scene in Helsinki”.That said, Brasilia itself does bring together a strange blend from Read more ...
David Nice
Does any city in the world, apart from Edinburgh or Venice, offer a better point of arrival by train than Cologne? There, above the steel and glass of the Hauptbahnhof, tower the twin spires of one of northern Europe’s noblest cathedrals. Walk across the square behind, past two excellent museums - another, the Wallraf-Richartz, is just down the street - and there’s the Philharmonie, one of the world’s best concert halls: its auditorium beneath Rhine level, the skateboarders on its roof silenced for the duration of each concert.I’m glad the 500-or-so-year-old Gürzenich-Orchestra of Cologne and Read more ...