Features
Hannah Hutchings-Georgiou
“Is she at a pivotal point in her life but unable to pivot…?” Eve, the young heroine of Chloë Ashby’s dazzling debut novel, Wet Paint, asks this question standing in front of Édouard Manet’s painting "A Bar at the Folies-Bergère" (1882). Yet she could easily be asking herself the same question.Unable to “pivot” in life, but at a pivotal stage, Eve goes from job to job, is thrown out of her flat, becomes increasingly reckless and then spirals downwards in an effort to stave off the memories of the past. Initially, art – the viewing and co-creation of it – keeps her afloat, but past traumas Read more ...
mark.hudson
Cecelia Alemani's vision for The Milk of Dreams, the International Exhibition at the Venice Biennale 2022 had me excited – and perplexed – from the moment I heard about it.Never mind the national pavilions which tend to dominate coverage of the world’s biggest and oldest art festival, the International Exhibition is the central event at any Venice Biennale: the chance for a single curator to stamp their vision on the culture of their time in a truly epic exhibition traversing two colossal venues. The Milk of Dreams features works by 213 artists from 58 countries Read more ...
István 'Szalonna' Pál
There's a famous saying that Hungarians are in the middle of Europe. From the West, we have Bach and Palestrina holding our hands; from the East, the Caucasian Turkic peoples. Other nations still need 1,000 years to understand what it means to be Hungarian. In Liszt Mosaics, we want to show our culture, our history and show what the Hungarian soul consists of.When we go abroad, we show it to the world. They feel how important it is – and then they start to search for their roots as well. When we played at the celebration for Prince Charles’ 70th Birthday, we were presented to the audience as Read more ...
Christina McMaster
In 2020, during a gentle easing of lockdown restrictions, I was asked to play for the Culture Clinic sessions at Kings Place, a creative initiative where small groups of up to six people could book a ticket for a private, personally tailored performance. After speaking together briefly, I would then prescribe and perform music I felt they needed to hear.One concert-goer described my role as "Physician of the soul", a job title I like the sound of, and a way to use music that feels meaningful. I’ve been thinking about this format since and how different it was from performing to a large Read more ...
Gavin Dixon
Dresden is filled with music at this time of year. The Dresden Music Festival runs through May and early June, with concerts at all the famous venues – the Frauenkirche, the Semperoper – but also recitals in smaller halls and unlikely settings.My visit also coincided with the Dresden Dixieland Festival. This is a huge outdoor event, with stages in each of the city’s historic squares. Walking through the Baroque streets, you find your footsteps synchronising with a gently persuasive bass line from some distant Sousaphone. Then you’ll turn a corner and be confronted with the abrasive tone of an Read more ...
John Tomlinson
It has been a difficult couple of years for us in the world of opera, losing several of our most respected and admired colleagues who have inspired us over several decades. The names of Harry Kupfer, Graham Vick, Bernard Haitink come immediately to mind, and now must be added Harry Birtwistle to the list of losses which I have felt most personally in recent times.We were actually born in the same place, though twelve years apart; the same building in fact: the Rough Lea Nursing Home in Accrington, Lancashire. We were both brought up within a couple of miles of Accrington, he in Huncoat (fixed Read more ...
Tim Cumming
In a little over two week’s time, the three remaining ones will kick-start their 60th year as The Rolling Stones by taking to the stage at a stadium on the edge of Madrid on June 1, around the same time that Elizabeth Windsor marks her own @70 jubilee across the UK.The Stones will stop by in Munich’s old Olympic Stadium, which dates, like quite a chunk of their set list, from the early Seventies, before SIXTY’s opening UK date in Liverpool, the band’s first gig there since 1971. That was the year they bade farewell to Britain before decamping to the south of France to make Exile on Main Read more ...
Christian Forshaw
The idea of recording an album with Tenebrae has been bubbling away for a number of years. Nigel Short and I first worked together in 2007 when I asked him to direct the vocal consort for a UK tour I was doing with my own group. Since then we have worked together on a number of projects and regularly discussed the idea of a collaboration with Tenebrae.The juxtaposition of saxophone and voices has been central to my work as a composer, arranger and performer for almost 30 years. The way sound can morph from one to the other in an almost imperceptible way has fascinated musicians from all Read more ...
Naomi Wallace
The Breach is a coming of age story and an age-in-the-making story. The play takes place in the U.S. in the 1970s and 1990s, switching back and forth between teenagers in Louisville and their older selves 15 years later. The promise of the 1970s in the US (and UK) when inequality was actively being reduced, and the undoing of that potential, are played out amongst this group of young friends. What I wanted to examine in the play is how societal pressures divide us from one another and how, when a betrayal strikes - that's to say, betrayal of one another and of youthful Read more ...
Michael Price
There are lots of ways that we respond to great works of art – intellectually and emotionally, then visually, aurally and even by taste and smell, depending on the art in question. I have a habit of screwing my eyes tight shut and bringing to mind a piece of favourite music, or book, or person, and it seems a glowing imprint forms behind your eyelids. You could try it now!I’ve been fascinated with Bach’s Second Brandenburg Concerto since I was at school, mostly because I was a trumpet player, and Bach’s super-high trumpet part was regarded as the Mount Everest of brass playing – a peak I Read more ...
Daniel Hahn
Daniel Hahn began his translation of Jamás el fuego nunca, a novel by experimental Chilean artist Diamela Eltit, in January 2021. Considering the careful, difficult but not impossible “craft” of translation as he worked, Hahn kept a diary, describing the “discrete choices” made during the process of writing Never Did the Fire: an English version of Eltit’s original with Hahn’s “fingerprints” all over it.A record in real time of the translator’s pleasures and pitfalls, the diary is the first in Charco’s Untranslated Series. In the extract below, Hahn discusses how gender is encoded differently Read more ...
Chinonyerem Odimba
People often ask how long a play takes to make its way out of you. And it’s always a valid question because no matter how beautiful, soft, joyful, or short a play is, there is a wrestling match that takes place between the idea lodging itself somewhere in you, and it turning into words that actors can have fun getting to know. With Black Love, opening this week at the Kiln Theatre, that journey from the story embedding itself to a rehearsal script took almost seven years.When I was first commissioned in 2019 to write a play for Paines Plough, I had no idea what it was I wanted to write. Or Read more ...