festivals
Jasper Rees
It becomes increasingly hard for a music festival to stick out from the crowd these days. But high culture, high summer and high altitude create a rousing major chord each July in Verbier, which can genuinely claim to be the only festival you reach by cable car. When you get up there you are greeted by an alpine symphony of glaciers slithering off peaks and pastures clanging with cowbells. Streams descant and trill along gutters between chalets. No wonder stellar musicians drop their fee to return, both to play and listen. Egos are left at the bottom of the mountain.But location is only part Read more ...
hilary.whitney
As I alight from the train at Macclesfield and scramble into the back of the taxi which will take me on the 20-minute journey across the Pennines to Buxton and its eponymous festival, the driver announces with grim satisfaction, “I am now going to take you on one of the most dangerous roads in Britain.”Certainly, as we drive along the A537, I can see how the sharp bends we frequently encounter have earned the Cat and Fiddle, as the A537 is commonly known, this reputation but I’m too busy drooling at the impossibly green countryside stretching out on either side of the road to care, and Read more ...
theartsdesk
It's that time again. The BBC Proms - in classical music terms, the greatest show on Earth - begin tonight with Mahler's massive Eighth Symphony. From Bryn Terfel in Wagner on the second night of the Proms to Sir John Eliot Gardiner and Monteverdi's Vespers on the second-to-last night. theartsdesk's music writers choose the performances they're looking forward to. IGOR TORONYI-LALICThe credit crunch has no doubt played havoc on this year's season. Only one visit from an American orchestra and three big-gun orchestral visits from Europe will find their way to the Royal Albert Read more ...
peter.quinn
It's Friday afternoon, the sun's beating down, and I'm kicking back with a cold one in Kongens Have, Copenhagen's oldest and most idyllic park. From the bandstand, the music of Duke Ellington falls mellifluously on my ears, the languorously swinging, behind-the-beat groove of the specially assembled Band Leader Session perfectly suiting the sultry atmosphere. We can't know for sure what heaven will be like, but I'm hoping it'll be something like this.I'm here for the opening weekend of the Copenhagen Jazz Festival – a 10-day jamboree with 1,000 concerts in 100 venues - and what's Read more ...
Tim Cumming
Come the end of June in Essaouira on Morocco’s Atlantic coast, up to half a million festival-goers team the narrow, traffic-free streets of the medina, its two huge open squares, and numerous courtyards and riyads around town, for what must be the world’s biggest free festival. It is dedicated to Gnawa, the trance and healing music of African Moroccans who had been inveigled into slavery in centuries past – there was a slave market in Essaouria until the early part of the 20th century – and whose music, until the festival kicked off in 1998, was regarded with suspicion and disdain by Read more ...
Thomas H. Green
The Tapestry Festival is a labour of love. It's the ongoing adventure of a Camden plasterer called Barry Stilwell who decided a decade ago that he wanted a festival of his own. Irritated by the way corporate branding was piggy-backing festival culture, and disgusted by stringent spoilsport ground-rules at many outdoor events, he started his own in 2003, mostly showcasing bands who'd played his monthly Euston-based club night.In previous years Tapestry has taken place at a Cornish Wild West theme park and a medieval castle in Wales, with attendees dressing to match. This year, Barry Read more ...
Ismene Brown
Get your tent and ice-box and plan your summer's entertainment with theartsdesk's definitive clickable festival guide - listings and links for all the UK festivals this summer, from heavy rock by Scottish lochs to Morris-dancing in the south west, and taking on opera, classical and major international arts festivals for good measure. If you know of a festival we've missed, please email info@theartsdesk.com with brief details of venue, booked artists and the website and we'll put it in for the world to see. ScotlandRock Ness, 11-13 JuneDores, Inverness-shire, ScotlandFatboy Slim, Read more ...
david.cheal
“It’s been one of the greatest experiences of our lives,” said Kings of Leon's lead singer Caleb Followill towards the end of this big outdoor gig on a warm summer’s night in London. “Thank you very much.” I’m glad he had a good time, and his diffident Southern charm was appreciated by the vast crowd, but I wish I could say the same; for me, this was certainly an experience, but not a great one. Here’s why.First, there’s the mysterious process by which Kings of Leon have become a globe-conquering, arena-packing, Hyde Park-filling band, which they seem to have achieved by becoming duller, Read more ...
miss.kittykowalski
Well folks, it wasn’t glamorous, it wasn’t showbiz, it wasn’t all fun ‘n’ games. It was Glastonbury, in all its dirty, pungent and chaotic glory. But, despite all the pitfalls, The Strumpettes did it, and, somehow, did it in style.
First off, let me get the bellyachin' outta the way. Call us naïve if you want, but when we were told we would have “artists’ facilities” backstage, we kinda believed it – maybe ‘cause the alternative was too horrible to contemplate. We were expectin’ decent powder rooms, showers, maybe even somewhere to plug in our curling irons. Hell, this look don’t come Read more ...
Russ Coffey
On the face of it, comparisons could be drawn between Dawn Kinnard and fellow preacher’s-offspring-cum-country-singer, Diane Birch. Except Birch’s music comes from every musical advantage, whereas Kinnard still has a day-job as a hairdresser. Moreover, her voice remains totally unproduced - a glorious mix of Tom Waits and Marge Simpson. This summer, for the second time in three years, she has put her savings on the line to try to make it here. Last time round, Kinnard, then staying chez Cerys Matthews, enjoyed a barnstorming session on Later with Jools Holland. Last night things Read more ...
Peter Culshaw
The interior world of Morocco seems a magical place where music and words have more power than in the disenchanted, cold light of the North. On the plane on my first trip to Fes I met a businessman, in import-export, wearing a Burton suit. The strangeness of Morocco revealed itself when he started telling me of his current problem, that his daughter has been put under a spell by a djinn (he translated the word as “devil”) residing in a frog. His mother was a member of the Hamdashas, sects who are known to cut themselves, and his grandmother, he said, drank boiling water when under trance. Read more ...
sarvenaz.sheybany
The Los Angeles Film Festival would seem to have everything going for it. There's the perfect Californian weather, the vast number of stars who live and work in the city, and this year there’s been a glamorous new venue in downtown Los Angeles. The 16th festival has also brought in an ambitious new artistic director, former Newsweek film critic David Ansen, who hopes to unite high and low, screening both crowd-pleasers with major Hollywood talent and small, finely crafted foreign films. And yet something has been amiss.The new broom brought new disorganisation. At the festival village ticket Read more ...