new music reviews, news & interviews
the future of arts journalism
You can stop theartsdesk.com closing!
We urgently need financing to survive. Our fundraising drive has thus far raised £33,000 but we need to reach £100,000 or we will be forced to close. Please contribute here: https://gofund.me/c3f6033d
And if you can forward this information to anyone who might assist, we’d be grateful.

latest in today
We are bowled over! We knew that theartsdesk.com had plenty of supporters out there – we’ve always had a loyal readership of arts…
Alabaster DePlume, aka Mancunian Gus Fairbairn, has been an antically charming performer, confounding unsuspecting crowds with tenderly…
If it's possible for snippets from live theatre to play in the mind on a perpetual loop, the London theatre during 2025 offered many such…
It’s 1952 on Manhattan’s Lower East Side, seven years after the Enola Gay dropped a bomb on the Japanese empire, but one skinny New Yorker…
It was a year for outstanding individual performances, especially from relative newcomers, and at least three flawless ensembles, less so…
Image
My album of the year came as a real surprise to me, Arvo Pärt’s output…
What is a documentary maker supposed to do when someone as gifted and empathic as Francis Whately has already covered most of the Bowie…
SASKIA BARON1 One Battle After Another2. Sinners3 It was Just an Accident4 Palestine 365 Don’t Let’s Go to the Dogs Tonight6…
For as long as I can remember – back when I was not yet a teenager, listening to Joan Baez first as a way to learn guitar – voices and…
If this time of year should prompt everyone to count their blessings, then one precious musical gift shines brightly over Smith Square Hall…
Most read
Image
My album of the year came as a real surprise to me, Arvo Pärt’s output…
If it's possible for snippets from live theatre to play in the mind on a perpetual loop, the London theatre during 2025 offered many such…
What is a documentary maker supposed to do when someone as gifted and empathic as Francis Whately has already covered most of the Bowie…
It’s 1952 on Manhattan’s Lower East Side, seven years after the Enola Gay dropped a bomb on the Japanese empire, but one skinny New Yorker…
It was a year for outstanding individual performances, especially from relative newcomers, and at least three flawless ensembles, less so…
Whether there really was a poisonous professional rivalry between Mozart and Antonio Salieri, composer to the Imperial court in Vienna,…
Alabaster DePlume, aka Mancunian Gus Fairbairn, has been an antically charming performer, confounding unsuspecting crowds with tenderly…
Is there a neuroscientist in the house? I need a latterday Oliver Sacks to tell me about earworms, specifically earworms issuing from the…
In a warehouse, Tube trains rumbling below, Noah, his sister Tamara and his (Gentile) girlfriend Maud, live in a disused space, a North…
Some albums announce themselves with a roar. Others arrive quietly, kind of casually strolling into your life when you weren’t looking.…