2016
Robert Beale
The Mancunian tribute to Ralph Vaughan Williams – a symphonic cycle shared by the BBC Philharmonic and Hallé – reached its conclusion with the Eighth Symphony last night. But, unlike most concerts in the RVW150 sequence, in this one (the final performance in the Hallé Thursday concerts series of 2021-22), Sir Mark Elder added an eclectic mix of other composers’ work to the evening. Value for money, without a doubt (main picture: Sir Mark Elder with the Hallé).First up was Stravinsky. The Concerto for piano and wind instruments is a challenge to the ensemble as much as its soloist, and there Read more ...
Gary Naylor
Tuesday, 8 November 2016. Vera is in a New York hospital room giving birth to a son. On anxiously checked phones, the votes are piling up for Hillary, but the states are piling up for Trump. Vera’s world will never be the same again.Mathilde Dratwa’s new play, Milk and Gall (directed by Lisa Spirling, Theatre 503's Artistic Director), takes a searingly unsentimental look at 21st century parenting in the big city, mining plenty of laughs along the way. Speaking from experience, I can vouch that it’s all true – except, perhaps, that the reality is even worse!In her mid-thirties, Vera ( Read more ...
Laura de Lisle
Despite its painfully relevant title, How To Survive An Apocalypse was written in 2016. If only Canadian playwright Jordan Hall knew, eh? The end times aren’t just creeping but hurtling towards us, these days. Luckily for those weary of Covid stories, this play is more about millennials sensing impending doom, and how that experience impacts upon their personal relationships, than the doom itself. Jimmy Walters’ production for the charmingly intimate Finborough Theatre sparks intriguing ideas on which it doesn't quite fully follow through.Jen (Kristin Atherton, who really knows how to wear a Read more ...
Sarah Kent
Hail the Dark Lioness (Somnyama Ngonyama in Zulu) is a powerful celebration of black identity. These dramatic assertions of selfhood are more than just striking self portraits, though. South African artist Zanele Muholi uses the pronouns they and them and refers to themself as a visual activist, since the photographs are a form of protest against the prejudices faced by the queer community of which they are a part.In this series begun in 2012, Muholi ratchets up the contrast, so their skin becomes ebony black, and decks themself in mundane materials such as raffia, rope, electric cables, Read more ...
Daniel Lewis
Strange, that novels like this, which seem to have their finger on the pulse of the zeitgeist, already have a tinge of sepia about them. Set in a bustling east Berlin, this sharply plotted tale of start-up bliss and blunder, then bliss again, sees characters commuting on public transport, working in an office, attending first-thing-in-the-morning “hype sessions” to run-of-the-mill meetings, bouncing in and out of bar-cafes, going on dates in restaurants, jetsetting on same-day return flights, and schmoozing potential clients and buyers at soirees buoyed by champagne, canapes (the least “safe Read more ...
Tom Baily
“Never get rattled”. For some, it might sound like a trite self-help mantra. For Hillary Rodham Clinton, it was an essential daily memo and a practical self-affirmation. In recent public memory, she is the political figure who has been rattled the most, often with sinister intent. The four-part Hillary (Sky Documentaries, 11 June) delves into that life of rattles, placing her biography alongside an in-depth account of the most bewildering election campaign in history.Series director Nanette Burstein gives Hillary centre stage to recount her life the way she saw and felt it. Each episode Read more ...
mark.kidel
Popular music works best when it strikes a chord that goes beyond the beauty of the hook, the seductive quality of the melody, or the catchiness of the lyrics. The resonance can be personal or universal, or perhaps, in order to qualify as a critic’s choice as album of the year, it should be both. Leonard Cohen’s last album, made in the full knowledge that it would be his last, spoke to me with a directness and depth that induced a paradoxical mixture of pleasure and pain.Cohen was, it would seem, born wise, and a certain native maturity coloured his work from the start. As he revisited over Read more ...
Bernadette McNulty
Much like the year itself, 2016's strongest albums tapped into a spirit of restlessness, defiance and disorientation. But unlike the punk explosion of 1977, there was no real sound or even genre that this mood of rebellion cohered around.Grime came closest to embodying a scene, fuelled by blistering albums from two stalwarts – Kano and Skepta. The latter's Mercury prize win gave a focus to the re-emergence of the sound, stripped-down to basics again, shorn of the shinier pop stylings that had diluted it during its brief absorption into the charts a decade ago. This time around, the beats Read more ...
Russ Coffey
Context in rock is everything. Popular music is, after all, essentially a reaction to a moment in time. So, whilst in another year, an album like A Moon Shaped Pool may just have lurked in my top five, political circumstances propelled it straight to number one. It wasn't just that the piece was thick with feverishness and alienation. What really made it embody 2016 was the unmistakable whiff of fear. The album's emotional release began from the get-go. "Burn the Witch" was built on a series of rhythms that pulsated like a montage of Daily Mail headlines. Lyrics Read more ...
Adam Sweeting
Paul Simon has always been as eclectic as anyone in popular music, tapping into latin music, gospel and reggae long before they dreamed up the term "World Music". Simon is now 74, but he's as restless and inquisitive as ever. For Stranger to Stranger, his thirteenth solo album, he picked up his metaphorical pith helmet and machete and trekked deeper into the hinterland of his private musical vision.He returned clutching a batch of cunning, allusive and questioning songs, constructed from many components but defying anybody to pin a nametag on them. Alongside the likes of Nico Muhly and Mark Read more ...
peter.quinn
Despite all of the challenges – more venues going to the wall, scarcity of funding, lack of column inches, and more – jazz in 2016 showed its seemingly endless capacity not only to survive and thrive, but also to innovate and invigorate. As one of 137 jazz writers invited to vote in the 2016 NPR Music Jazz Critics Poll, both the range and vastness of the year’s output, from Old Locks and Irregular Verbs by poll winner Henry Threadgill (adding to his Pulitzer Prize earlier in the year) to Countdown by 13-year-old piano wunderkind Joey Alexander, offered a life-affirming jolt.Noted for its Read more ...
theartsdesk
Prepare to disagree. 2016 has been getting bad reviews all year long, but for film it was actually pretty strong. So strong, in fact, that there are big omissions from this list of our best films from the past 12 months. Our method of selection was arbitrary: each of the theartsdesk’s film reviewers was invited to volunteer one film each as their favourite of the year. No one was allowed to choose two.So there is no place in our top seven for the film which was this year’s winner of the Oscar for best film (Spotlight), nor best adapted screenplay (The Big Short), nor the film with the best Read more ...