Features
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 ...
Matt Wolf
When West Side Story won 10 Academy Awards, that was back in a Hollywood era during which movie musicals regularly garnered such acclaim. Gigi, My Fair Lady, The Sound of Music and Oliver! all bookended the 1961 film adaptation of the landmark Broadway show when it came to copping the Best Picture Oscar; indeed, songs from the musicals that became films were part of the Hit Parade of that particular time to a degree that is unthinkable nowadays - though the popularity of TV phenomena such as Glee has done much to push the (comparative) marginalia of Broadway back toward the mainstream.West Read more ...
sam.price
A spectre is haunting Britain - the spectre of a film called Big Fat Gypsy Gangster. Poised for release in just over a week’s time, this Ricky Grover vanity project is described generously as “Monty Python meets Snatch”, chronicling the life and times of Bulla, apparently “Britain’s hardest man”, as he roams over London with a shotgun, blowing the heads off his gangland opponents. It’s a crime comedy-drama for the ages, boasting performances from Peter Capaldi, Steven Berkoff and, less illustriously, comedian Omid Djalili, Tulisa from The X Factor, Big Mo from EastEnders as “Aunt Queenie” and Read more ...
Ismene Brown
To celebrate theartsdesk's second birthday on Friday, we held a panel discussion on The Art of Performance at Kings Place, London, in the Kings Place Festival. Actor Toby Jones, singer-songwriter Mara Carlyle, harpsichordist Mahan Esfahani and ballerina Bridgett Zehr discussed the challenge of turning work into performance and the moment of offering their artistry to the audience - their goals and inspirations, their best (and worst) performances, and their attitude to critics like us. We filmed the talk live, and below you can watch the event again as it happened, or you can read the Read more ...
Demetrios Matheou
This year’s Venice Film Festival has been awash with great directors from what one might call the old guard: David Cronenberg, Roman Polanski, William Friedkin, Aleksander Sokurov, Philippe Garrel. But when the jury presents its prizes tonight, I hope that it honours some of the new, young film-makers who have been the ones to set this festival alight.Chief amongst those has been a Brit, Steve McQueen, who follows his extraordinary debut, Hunger, with a second film that has shaken and stirred the critics here. The focus of Shame is Brandon (Michael Fassbender), a successful New Yorker whose Read more ...
Ismene Brown
A new production opens tonight at Sadler's Wells based on the graphic novels of Osamu Tezuka, Japan's master of manga art. Choreographer Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui and composer Nitin Sawhney shared a love of comics as a boy that turned into the more sophisticated admiration for the narrative subtlety and precise visions that the best of comics led to. And to Cherkaoui it seemed a compelling world for theatrical treatment.Tezuka (1928-1989) was the most influential cartoonist in Japanese manga, credited with having invented the “big eye” cartooning characteristic in Japan, itself a deliberate take Read more ...
Veronica Lee
When The Lion King first opened in London in October 1999, there were cries from some quarters that it was merely following in a long line of stage shows that had been lifted lazily from films. Indeed its creator, Julie Taymor, didn't depart too far from Disney's 1994 animated film of the same name for dramatic inspiration, but why would she when the movie had been a huge hit, winning two Oscars (for composer Elton John, lyricist Tim Rice and Hans Zimmer's original score), grossing nearly $800 million worldwide on its release and selling more than 60 million DVDs. The stage version was, then Read more ...