Features
Tom Greed
For musicians, the period from early 2020 to mid-2021 was one of great reflection, with so many questions to puzzle over. Could we satisfy the basic need to interact with others and express ourselves? What on earth was Zoom, and how, as performers, could we learn to use technology to provide live experiences? Would things ever go back to the way they were? And should they?Avenue Ensemble was a concept that I began to sketch out during the pandemic. It was partly inspired by the longing to perform chamber music with friends once again when restrictions were finally over, but predominantly due Read more ...
Paco Peña
There are moments that forever remain imprinted in our consciousness, engraved on the general map of our lives. I cannot forget the excitement of seeing snow for the first time in Córdoba, aged three or four, rushing to walk on it only to slip straight away and fall on my behind! Or when I discovered the sea, in Cádiz.Nor do I forget the tense moments, such as when my mother left the house every day before dawn to go to the wholesale market with empty pockets, to start the daily adventure of acquiring vegetables, on credit, which she would then sell on her stall in order to settle with the Read more ...
Sean Gandini
I am a juggler. My wife Kati Ylä-Hokkala is also a juggler. Our life for the last three decades has been juggling. We have been fortunate to be practising this art form at a time when mathematical and creative developments meant that our vocabulary went from about 30 patterns to thousands. The Golden Age of juggling.In 2010 our lovely patron Angus MacKechnie asked us to put together a new piece for the outdoor space outside London's National Theatre. The late great Pina Bausch had just died and we decided to make a one-off tribute to her. We made a piece called Smashed. I had been intrigued Read more ...
Hilary Summers
Back in the summer of 2020 when the arts industry was largely dormant and many professional singers were either moodily knocking back the gin or uploading poor quality phone videos of themselves bellowing Puccini arias from their doorsteps, I received an email.Entitled “Small Project”, it was from Maarten Ornstein, a Dutch bass clarinettist working in jazz and classical, who wondered if I’d be up for a collaboration with himself and the Dutch lutenist, Mike Fentross. It seemed like an intriguing combination so I consulted my hectic schedule. I felt that amongst dog walks and the next episode Read more ...
theartsdesk
From wandering Rachmaninoff to Ulysses tribute, or a poet’s boyhood in Dundee to sleeplessness and arboreal inner lives, our reviewers share their literary picks from 2023.Prototype Press continues to publish much of the most interesting British fiction; alongside Jen Calleja’s Vehicle, a particular favourite of mine was Helen Palmer’s Pleasure Beach (Prototype, £12). Set in Blackpool on the 16th June 1999, the novel is a homage to James Joyce’s Ulysses (1922): the homosocial dynamic between Daedelus and Bloom is swapped for two women trying to remember if they slept together at a party the Read more ...
David Nice
However dark the future may seem for UK arts funding, each year begins with a beacon of light, passed on to shine twice more, in the Easter and summer holidays: the ever more resourceful and generous concertgiving of the National Youth Orchestra of Great Britain, always among the highlights of the classical music scene.Their first programme of 2023, under the fascinating French conductor Alexandre Bloch, brought razor-sharp Britten, melodic Anna Clyne and incandescent Richard Strauss (all technical hurdles supply overcome in Also sprach Zarathustra). Three months later they were pushing the Read more ...
Matt Wolf
Wait, and your wishes are answered. That seemed to be the case during the theatre year just gone, following on from 2022 when new British writing of quality seemed thin on the ground.That couldn't have been further from the case during 2023, not just at such venues of choice like the National, which fielded two big, bold new British plays amongst a generally strong output from artistic director Rufus Norris across the year, but in smaller venues too: both the Bush and the Hampstead Downstairs were amongst those punching above their weight, in neither case for the first time.Anoushka Lucas's Read more ...
theartsdesk
Numbers indicate if entries are listed in order of preferenceSaskia BaronAnatomy of a FallBrokerFallen LeavesJoylandKillers of the Flower MoonOtto Baxter: Not a F**ing Horror StoryReturn to SeoulSt OmerScrapperA Thousand and OneThe reason I go to the cinema is mainly to experience other people’s lives and thoughts but also to escape for a few hours from the gerbil wheel of anxiety about the world that spins constantly in my head. 2023 was not a great year for anyone of a fretful disposition, but these were the movies that for a while made me happy and distracted in the dark of the movie Read more ...
David Nice
Does “the practice of opera singing in Italy” need help from UNESCO, which has newly inscribed it on the “Representative List of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity”? Italian opera is surely immensely popular worldwide. But when it comes to practising the art properly, its greatest senior exponent, Riccardo Muti, powerfully argues that Verdi and Bellini, his most recent special projects in the city where he lives, Ravenna, need as much respect and care as Beethoven or Schubert.Since 2004, the now 82-year-old Muti's long-term project for the future has centred around his Luigi Read more ...
graham.rickson
Unlike, say, Hitchcock and Bernard Herrmann, Michael Powell’s working relationships with musicians were cordial, particularly his collaborations with composers Allan Gray and Brian Easdale.Gray, born Józef Żmigrod in Poland in 1902, had met Emeric Pressburger while working for UFA in the Weimar Republic, their paths crossing again in the early 1940s. Fleeing Nazi Germany for the UK in 1934, Gray was briefly interned as an enemy alien on the Isle of Man after war broke out, Vaughan Williams among those calling for his release as “a musician of distinction”.Gray subsequently provided music for Read more ...
Kristin M Jones
“Nothing is stronger than true love,” a young laird says to a headstrong young woman in Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger’s I Know Where I’m Going! (1945), his voice heard above the sounds of wind and waves. She replies, “No, nothing.”Even as they are in danger of drowning in the same way, he is recounting a legend in which a prince is doomed to death in the whirlpool Corryvreckan. Mystical forces are woven through the film, and all conspire to help love conquer materialism.Powell and Pressburger began work on I Know Where I’m Going! after they postponed making A Matter of Life and Death Read more ...
Pip Adam
I know it rattles me, so I try to prepare for it. But I am never fully prepared for the noise.The correctional facilities I have visited over the last 30 years are noisy places. A secure building requires strong doors that are opened and shut – always with the noise of a heavy door returning to its frame but often with a loud buzz or beep. This airlock design creates smaller areas which offer constant opportunity for echo. Prisons are overpopulated and a lot of people make a lot of noise. In my experience, unhappy or upset people make more noise, but laughter and excitement and care can also Read more ...