Features
Jess Gillam
For over a year, many concert halls' doors have been firmly shut, the curtains drawn and the lights out. As we begin to emerge into a new world and live performance makes a comeback, I feel we are facing a bittersweet moment in the arts. As some musicians are taking those nerve-wracking steps from the dressing room to the stage, others are at home in despair, still facing hellish uncertainty and some have been forced to walk away from the profession entirely.It’s at once heartwarming to see audience and performers reunited but heartbreaking to see those who haven’t yet felt the glow of warmth Read more ...
Roxanna Panufnik
A month ago, I sat in St Martin-in-the Fields listening to London Mozart Players recording my orchestral version of Letters from Burma. I have never been to Burma but I was inspired to compose this work after reading a collection of 54 letters by Aung San Suu Kyi. The first excitement that morning was to be in the presence of an orchestra. In these times of the pandemic, with borders closed, this novelty can’t to be underestimated – I am devastated not be able to travel to attend the birth of another compositional “baby” at Amsterdam’s Concertgebouw next month.The second excitement was that Read more ...
Joseph Middleton
April 2020 was to have been the celebratory 10th Anniversary Festival of Leeds Lieder, the organisation I’ve been fortunate enough to direct since late 2014. I’d called the Festival Ode to Joy and in a curious turn of programming, geekery had come up with an opening gala I hoped would appeal to our audience: an acrostic programme that spelt out "Happy Birthday, Leeds Lieder" using the highways and byways of the song literature. It included a starry line-up of friends and tickets had flown out of the box office, continuing Leeds Lieder’s success for growing audiences over the past Read more ...
Maria Aberg
When theatres in the UK closed last March, I found myself in a vacuum. Having been a freelance theatre director for over 15 years, I was used to busy – juggling a hectic schedule of directing shows with the reality of being a mum to two toddlers. Inspiration was something I might find in between opening nights, meetings and nursery runs – if I was lucky.In the middle of that first interminable lockdown, I found myself sitting in a small room in the Suffolk countryside, staring at a computer screen. On a whim, I had signed up to a genealogy website and was stumbling head-first down the time- Read more ...
tanika.gupta
On the first day of rehearsals for Out West at the Lyric Hammersmith in May, myself and fellow playwrights Roy Williams and Simon Stephens stood, masked up and lateral flow tested for Covid, and listened as the Lyric Hammersmith's artistic director Rachel O’Riordan welcomed us at the traditional theatrical “meet and greet".As I looked around the room at the producers, stage managers, sound, lighting, costume and set designers, and the communication and theatre staff, I was struck by the enormity of the moment. I’d missed this so much - for over a year! Rachel talked about how important it was Read more ...
caspar.gomez
INTERLUDE 1: INVALID CODE-AGEDDON6.45 PM on Saturday 22nd May and all is well. Like tens of thousands of others across the UK (or maybe even more?) my wall flatscreen is tuned to Glastonbury’s livestream. Prior to the event itself promos for Water Aid and the like roll by, the kind usually on the huge screens beside the Pyramid Stage at the festival.One of my usual Glastonbury compadres, Finetime, is round, the fridge is loaded with beers, posh bottles of Bordeaux breathe by the radiator. Finetime has made his patent fiery quesadillas, timed for the 7.00 PM start. We’re going to make a right Read more ...
Tim Cumming
It won’t be long now before concert halls and back rooms, arts centres and festival grounds fill with people again, and live music, undistanced, unmasked, and in your face, comes back to us. In expectation of this gradual reopening of the stage doors of perception, this round-up of recent, new and forthcoming music books surveys an artist roster disparate enough to grace the finest of festival bills.First up is Sam Lee’s Nightingale, a beautifully made hardback, packed with illustrations, facts, stories, lore, and more. While the focus here is avian song and the projective wonders of the Read more ...
David Nice
I only saw Christa Ludwig twice live in concert, but those appearances epitomise her incredible dramatic and vocal rage as well as her peerless artistry in everything she did. The first event was Schubert’s Winterreise with pianist Charles Spencer at the Southbank Centre, at a time when it was less common for women to take on the role of the heavy-hearted wayfarer: the intensity still resonates. The second time was when she played the one-buttocked, easily-assimilated Old Lady in Bernstein’s Candide, conducted by the composer in his last Barbican concerts: the joie de vivre went beyond the Read more ...
theartsdesk
Nearly a year has passed since George Floyd was killed by Minneapolis police on 25 May. Nearly 200 have passed since the birth of “blackface minstrelsy” as a performance mode: white actors applying racial prosthetics to perform and make a mockery of black characters. In Blackface, an essential history of this racist performance tradition, which examines its legacy as well as its origins, scholar-activist Ayanna Thompson lays bare the logic that links the two events: “a filthy and vile thread” connecting performances of blackness with anti-black racism. The following is an excerpt from the Read more ...
Boris Giltburg
About a year ago, in a distant pre-pandemic world, I remember walking down Edgware Road one cold London evening. I was heading towards Jaques Samuel Pianos, my favourite haunt in London, to meet filmmaker Stewart French from Fly On The Wall. There, we began setting up mics and lights, (im)patiently waiting for everyone to leave, so that we could start filming the first of Beethoven’s 32 piano sonatas, well into the early hours of the night. That was the launching point of a project I took upon myself – to learn and film all 32 sonatas throughout 2020, Beethoven’s 250 anniversary year.To Read more ...
Tunde Jegede
In this era when there is so much talk and discussion around crossing musical boundaries, diversity in music and inter-disciplinary work it seems strange that there is still so little knowledge of how, why and when it works. Ironically, much of this type of work and collaborative process is much older than we often think and give credit to.As a composer I have always been interested in this type of work because it speaks to my experience both socially and culturally. Having studied instruments and traditions in both the UK and West Africa, I was acutely aware from an early age of differences Read more ...
Jasper Rees
Each generation is given an actress who can do everything – be intimate with the camera but also coat a back wall in honey from 100 paces. There was Judi Dench, and then there was Imelda Staunton, both loved by all. Helen McCrory – who has died at the age of 52 – was the next in line, and she was destined to be as great for as long.Even in her late twenties, when she was barely known, she was already and obviously different. She had a face that seemed prematurely mature and wise. She didn’t look like anyone else, nor sound it. Her voice was a husky instrument that moved between Read more ...