Barbican
Josh Ritter, BarbicanFriday, 24 September 2010
This was a warm and convivial evening in the company of the American folky-rootsy-rocky singer and songwriter Josh Ritter. His band made a rich noise, and his voice was keen and true, almost every lyric clearly audible. At the end of this, the last... Read more... |
Beautiful Burnout, York HallFriday, 17 September 2010
It's a strange thing that boxing, that most dramatic of sports, hasn't been the subject of more plays. It has a protagonist and antagonist, the ring is a ready-made stage, and the sport has thrown up more than its fair share of larger-than-life... Read more... |
Interview: Alim Qasimov, Mugam MaestroThursday, 16 September 2010
With his sublime renditions of Azerbaijan's classical music, Alim Qasimov is one of the world's great performers. On the eve of the singer's appearance at the Barbican’s Transcender Weekend of spiritual trance music, where he is performing this... Read more... |
Site-Specific Theatre: theartsdesk round-upSaturday, 10 July 2010
There is no consensus about what site-specific theatre actually constitutes. Does it grow organically out of the space in which the theatre piece is performed, and can therefore be staged nowhere else? Or is it no more than any theatre piece which... Read more... |
Nevermore, Barbican TheatreThursday, 08 July 2010
If there was an opposite to the limitless “ever after” of fairytales, the relentlessly nullifying "nevermore" of Edgar Allan Poe’s raven would come pretty close. A deformed, sickly smiling "musical fable for adults", the ominously named Nevermore is... Read more... |
Caetano Veloso, Barbican HallSunday, 04 July 2010
He's a small man, wiry, bespectacled. His three band members - guitarist Pedro Sá, bassist Ricardo Dias Gomes, percussionist Marcelo Callado - must each be about a third his age: a case of three pupils and a professor? Behind them is a screen which... Read more... |
Bassekou Kouyaté & Ngoni ba, BarbicanFriday, 02 July 2010
Many press releases from now up until Christmas are sure to begin with the words, “Fresh from wowing the crowds at Glastonbury…”, but that’s not going to stop me using them now with reference to this great Malian band. This is because we world music... Read more... |
Semele, Théâtre de Champs-ÉlyséesThursday, 01 July 2010
David McVicar's revival production of Handel's oratorio-cum-opera Semele isn't terribly clever or beautiful or impressive, or fecund with ideas or detail or emotion. But it does work. It does tell the story. And what brings colour to its initially... Read more... |
The song remains the same?Friday, 11 June 2010The wind instrument in everyone's ears at the moment is the vuvuzela (pictured) a South African horn which comes in various lengths and pitches but is of unvarying volume: very loud. You'll be hearing a lot more of it during the World Cup, as it is... Read more... |
The Surreal House, Barbican Art GalleryFriday, 11 June 2010
Surrealism, it occurred to me while looking round this fine exhibition, is like pornography: it is hard to define, but everyone knows it when they see it. The Surreal House examines what precisely is conjured up in our collective minds by the word “... Read more... |
Michael Clark Company, Come, Been and Gone, BarbicanTuesday, 08 June 2010
A second coming for Michael Clark's recent Barbican commission Come, Been, Gone. Eight months after the London premiere (on which I opined unenthusiastically below last October), he has added another 20 minutes of choreography, they said, with new... Read more... |
Thomas Adès, London Symphony Orchestra, Barbican HallSunday, 06 June 2010
If the second half of the 20th century saw opera throttled by existential crises, and left composers wondering whether the only future for the art form was for it to be hung out to dry, or to become an arcane intellectualised annex for the musical... Read more... |
