21st century
Miranda Heggie
It’s as intricate as it is concise. The depth to the architecture of James MacMillan’s Saxophone Concerto – which was given its world premiere this week by saxophonist Amy Dickson and the Scottish Chamber Orchestra – is quite astounding, and all the more so for being packed into three five-minute movements. As with much of MacMillan’s music, the work is inspired by Scottish folk tunes, which certainly takes the saxophone into unusual territory in this concerto for solo instrument and string orchestra.The first movement, based on a march, strathspey and reel, is tight and spry, with the solo Read more ...
Barney Harsent
The title signalled what was coming so clearly, it may as well have been called When Bands End Badly: the two camps, the arguments and sniping and the eventual collapse of Culture Club’s US and UK tour to promote an album of new material. It’s hardly a surprise though – this is a band that, history shows, would have benefitted from the visible presence of an armed UN peacekeeping force.What is surprising is the way in which Boy George appears to be cast (by the rest of the band at least, if not explicitly the filmmakers) as the architect of this collapse: a sort of Fred Dibnah to the band’s Read more ...
Michael Rakowitz: The Invisible Enemy Should Not Exist, Fourth Plinth review - London's new guardian
Katherine Waters
Fifteen years ago on a cold grey Saturday in mid-February, Trafalgar Square was filled with people marching to Hyde Park in opposition to the proposed invasion of Iraq. A million people gathered in London. Three times that number turned out in Rome. That day, across Europe and the rest of the world, between six to eleven million people participated in the largest coordinated anti-war rally in history. The scale of the movement was unprecedented. Protest globalised. Just over a month later air strikes took out Iraqi observation posts and troops crossed over the borders. The invasion of Iraq Read more ...
Tom Birchenough
McMafia has taught us to recognise one thing – you might call it the “Norton stride”. As the charismatic Alex Godman, James Norton has been advancing, confidently at screen centre, towards one challenge after another, and they have been coming (mildly put) from all sorts of unexpected quarters. He’s dealt with everything by pressing onwards, ignoring advice from all and sundry.Quite who he was propelling ahead to meet at the end of this final episode of Hossein Amini and James Watkins’s series was left a mystery. But if Vladimir Putin himself had slipped into shot, smiling lopsidedly, arm out Read more ...
Adam Sweeting
The “insider’s guide to the music business” tag attached to Hits, Hype and Hustle: An Insider's Guide to the Music Business (BBC Four) dangles the carrot of all kinds of clandestine scams being exposed, such as extortionate recording contracts, systematic chart-rigging or Mafia rackets involving cut-out records. Instead, this episode was merely a meander through the history of live performances in rock music.Our host was John Giddings, a veteran agent and promoter who has worked with almost everyone you can think of, from the Stones and U2 to Genesis, Bowie and Madonna, and currently runs the Read more ...
Tom Birchenough
It’s not the first time that James Norton has kicked off BBC One’s New Year primetime celebrations in Russian style. Two years ago, he was costumed up as the courageous Prince Andrei, in illustrious ensemble company for Andrew Davies and Tom Harper’s War and Peace. To say that Norton’s central role in McMafia, the new eight-parter created by Hossein Amini and James Watkins (who directs the full series), comes with rather more moral ambiguity would be an understatement.If Tolstoy measured human probity in living right by God (and settling your gambling debts), the denizens of this particular “ Read more ...
Sebastian Scotney
Jaron Lanier has quite a story to tell. From a teenage flute-playing goat-herd in New Mexico to an “intense dreamer”, and a maths student capable of arguing, about films for example, with “supremacist. Borgesian flair”, then onwards and upwards, there is much to fascinate.With friends he founded the first virtual reality start-up company VPL Research in 1984, and has co-founded three other start-ups – those stories are not told here. He has been involved with Microsoft since 2006 and currently has the title of Interdisciplinary Scientist at Microsoft Research. He is also a musician and Read more ...
Florence Hallett
Dedicated to a foundation stone of western artistic training, this exhibition attempts a celebratory note as the Royal Academy approaches its 250th anniversary. But if the printed guide handed to visitors offers a detailed overview of working from life, the exhibition itself is a far flimsier construction that never really establishes the purpose of a practice that it simultaneously wants us to believe is thriving today.The study of nature was fundamental to Renaissance thinking, and as artists aspired to the naturalism they perceived in Antique sculpture, working from the life took on a new Read more ...
Owen Richards
Long before Barack Obama spoke about the audacity of hope, the Voyager mission left the Earth driven by something else: the audacity of curiosity. What do the outer planets look like? What are they comprised of? And what’s beyond that?Storyville: The Farthest - Voyager’s Interstellar Journey is an immersive study of NASA’s most audacious mission. Condensed by BBC Four by 30 minutes from a cinematic release, this incredible documentary looks at the infinite and infinitesimal questions that Voyager dared to answer. It makes you proud to be human, and embarrassed to still use your fingers when Read more ...
Helen Wallace
Reading the line-up for Huddersfield Contemporary Music Festival can be a bit of a //+DiGit<ijjjjjjjjjjjjj.ggiiigggggH1-RMXn4000// experience (and no, I haven’t invented those). There are flashing light warnings. Ear defenders are routinely handed out. The message is clear: prepare for a sonic assault course.So what delight to find oneself swept along the luminous stream of an expertly curated programme, whose narrative began with the minutiae of sound and grew into full-blown music theatre. This was Riot Ensemble, offering a string of premieres directed with authoritative poise by Read more ...
Katherine Waters
Word wizard. Grammar bully. Sentence shark. AA Gill didn’t play fair by syntax: he pounced on it, surprising it into splendid shapes. And who cared when he wooed readers with anarchy and aplomb? Hardly uncontroversial, let alone inoffensive (he suggested Mary Beard should be kept away from TV cameras on account of her looks, and shot a baboon), he was consistently brilliant. Wherever he went, he brought his readers with him. His journalist’s eye and performer’s hunger made him a natural raconteur, one who could induce synaesthesia so you could taste words.People dear to me loved his writing Read more ...
Katherine Waters
One of the questions that can be asked of Brecht is whether for a modern audience his Verfremdungseffekt — or alienation effect — still works as intended, provoking genuine reflections on justice by distancing audiences from emotional entanglement with the characters. At a time when verbatim and community theatre is accomplishing just that with exactitude and force, it appears that inducing audiences to think morally is most effective when delivered in unexpected ways. Deeply though Brecht’s work may have influenced these pieces, audiences’ capacity for surprise remains a good Read more ...