Features
Mick Houghton
Sandy Denny was well known within the folk world by 1968 (writes Kieron Tyler). Although the recordings were as-yet unreleased, in July 1967 she had recorded with The Strawbs. She featured on two albums which were in the shops in August 1967: Alex Campbell and His Friends, and Sandy and Johnny, made with Johnny Silvo. Early the next year, she was contemplating her next move.The story is picked up in Mick Houghton’s I’ve Always Kept A Unicorn: The Biography of Sandy Denny as Fairport Convention audition for a new singer in the wake of Judy Dyble being asked to leave the band. The group already Read more ...
Tom Birchenough
Russia’s national gallery, the Tretyakov, bears the name of its founder Pavel Tretyakov, the 19th-century merchant who bequeathed his huge collection of Russian art to the city of Moscow in 1892. His bust stands proudly overseeing the entrance to the gallery’s old building, a fine, purpose-built example of early Russian 20th-century architecture.But the Tretyakov has a new wing, dating from the mid-1980s and less architecturally august, that is far less known (and much less visited), which houses its collection of Russian and Soviet art of the 20th century. If any figure deserved a memorial Read more ...
Bill Knight
We are sitting in the lobby of the National Theatre in the early afternoon waiting for the photocall for Dara to begin. Six or seven photographers, one woman, all dressed in jeans and dark jackets with large camera bags, some on wheels. There is not much conversation. As a relative newcomer I don't normally speak, but on this occasion I venture a remark.“I have seen this play.”After a pause one of the company says, “You're keen.”I explain that I went to a preview. Another silence then, “In one sentence, what's it about?”“It's about Sharia law.”Complete silence.Then Susie arrives and ushers us Read more ...
fisun.guner
As Shakespeare is to these native isles, so Pushkin is to Russia. And Eugene Onegin, Alexander Puskin’s enduring verse novel first published in serial form in 1825, is the most honoured and beloved of all Russian classics. Outside Russia, the story is, of course, most familiar to us through Tchaikovsky’s great opera. We also have John Cranko’s 1965 ballet, set to other music by Tchaikovsky, a production of which is currently selling out at the Royal Opera House. Now a rare spoken-word adaptation is setting the bar. Presented in two acts, and running at nearly three and a half hours, it Read more ...
bruce.dessau
The death of Steve Strange, aged 55, was both a surprise and not a surprise to me. His adult life in and out of the spotlight had been something of an unpredictable rollercoaster ride where anything could happen.I had followed his career since the late 1970s and the early 1980s when he was at the forefront of the New Romantic movement, minding the door and acting as general tastemaker at the Blitz Club in Covent Garden. Then in 2001 I was approached by a publisher to ghostwrite his autobiograply, Blitzed!. His contemporary Martin Kemp had just had great success with his book, True, and there Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
It’s the kind of care-worn venue that’s obviously seen some history. The walls are plastered with handbills for uncompromising bands like Billy Childish’s The Headcoats and America’s God Bullies. Some nosing reveals that it opened in 1983 and Green Day played here in 1993 while paving the way to conquering the world. 1000FRYD – “tusanfrid” if you’re Danish – is low-ceilinged, narrow, tiny and has a stage which would struggle to hold a band with more than five members.In Britain, 1000FRYD would be considered a “toilet venue” with all the downsides that brings but here in Denmark, despite the Read more ...
Mark Kidel
Artangel continues to instigate extraordinary events in extraordinary places. Over the past two decades and more, directors Michael Morris and James Lingwood have helped generate major and ground-breaking work by Rachel Whiteread, Brian Eno, Laurie Anderson, Roni Horn, Jeremy Deller, Steve McQueen, Matthew Barney, Gregor Schneider, Francis Alÿs and many others. It's a long list. Their latest collaboration with PJ Harvey is no less thought-provoking and inspiring than the best of their unique collection of imaginative and risk-taking projects. Artangel has always excelled at finding new Read more ...
fisun.guner
Whether you’re interested in buying, just looking or attending one of the many talks and events, the London Art Fair is the place to be over the next few days if you’re keen on modern and contemporary British art. theartsdesk has two pairs of tickets to give away which can be used for the duration of the fair. In addition to both the main fair, which features 128 galleries specialising in modern British art, and Art Projects, featuring curated displays of contemporary British art, the London Art Fair is partnering with Chichester-based Pallant House Gallery, a museum with one of the Read more ...
Tom Morton-Smith
That the truth will always be so much bigger than we can comprehend is something I had to accept as I started to write Oppenheimer. There are so many sources, so much information, so many hundreds of books, declassified files, interviews and history. One biography of the man took its authors 25 years to write. And there are still the hidden thoughts that were never written down, conversations long forgotten by people now long dead. There have to be so many omissions that it is an impossible task to tell this "truth" over the course of one evening’s entertainment. And people have told this Read more ...
Sean Foley
The (pronoun) Walworth (area in South London, near the Elephant and Castle) Farce (a comedy that aims at entertaining the audience through situations that are highly exaggerated, extravagant, and improbable: often incomprehensible plot-wise, they are also characterised by physical comedy, the use of deliberate absurdity, and stylised performances).When Enda Walsh asked me out for a coffee in London last summer, little did I know that 18 months later I would be in Dublin coaxing pratfalls from all manner of Gleesons while having in-depth discussions about dysfunctional families... Or should Read more ...
james.woodall
Summer was nigh. In May 1969 the Lennons bought Tittenhurst Park, an 85-acre estate in the same stockbroker belt as John’s first Beatles home, Kenwood. It needed work and a while would pass before they moved in. At EMI, John and Yoko busied themselves with their resistible third LP, The Wedding Album. Heroin intake was vigorous.There were many soi-disant Apple-Allen Klein business meetings through April and May, most of which went nowhere. One of them, however, at Olympic Studios in Barnes in south-west London (on 9 May), was overshadowed by three Beatles having, the previous day, pledged Read more ...
Hanna Weibye
You usually know a good piece or performance when you see one, but sometimes you only identify a great one as such significantly after the fact. What better way to test a work's durability, then, than by seeing what remains of it in the memory after six or 12 months? I admit this "best of" exercise is pretty subjective, but 2014 was such a rich year for dance that I've had to be ruthless: an item only makes my list if I still feel excited when I recall it.This list doesn't sum up the whole year by any means. Some of the biggest events don't get a look in – the Royal Ballet's new Winter's Read more ...