Birmingham
CD: Napalm Death - Coded Smears and More Uncommon SlursWednesday, 28 March 2018
Sometimes music reaches a point beyond which there's no point in going. Thus it is with Napalm Death who, 30 or so years ago, hit on a formula for furious noise generation, and though they've shifted line-ups many times since then, continue to make... Read more... |
La Vie Parisienne, Royal Birmingham Conservatoire review - vintage champagne in a new bottleFriday, 23 February 2018
Don’t you just love that new concert hall smell? The main hall at the Royal Birmingham Conservatoire is so new that as soon as you walk in you get the scent of fresh woodwork; so new, in fact, that it won’t even be officially opened until next... Read more... |
Feng, CBSO, Gražinytė-Tyla, Symphony Hall Birmingham review - pulling it out of the hatThursday, 18 January 2018
Say what you like about Mirga Gražinytė-Tyla’s partnership with the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra – and plenty has already been written – but sometimes the facts speak for themselves. At the end of this midweek matinee concert, an... Read more... |
David Lodge: Writer’s Luck - A Memoir 1976-1991 review - literary days, in detailSunday, 14 January 2018
Metaphor, metonymy, simile and synecdoche, anyone? FR Leavis, Roman Jakobson, Jacques Derrida, Frank Kermode? If any of this, and more, turns you on, this lengthy memoir will be irresistible. It is almost a day-by-day account of 15 years of the... Read more... |
theartsdesk Q&A: Steven Knight and Cillian Murphy of Peaky BlindersSaturday, 11 November 2017
Like a lot of people, I came late to Peaky Blinders, bingeing on the first two brutal, but undeniably brilliant, series like the proverbial box-set sensation it quickly became. With its focus on the turmoil and fortunes of a particularly unruly... Read more... |
Fierce: the Birmingham festival which reaches out to Europe and beyondWednesday, 18 October 2017
Since its inception in 1997 Fierce, Birmingham’s International Festival of Live Art & Performance, has championed the work of performance makers not often seen in Britain. The pantheon of body artists under Mark Ball’s era as director included... Read more... |
Widmann, CBSO, Gražinytė-Tyla, Symphony Hall Birmingham review - when Mirga met JörgFriday, 06 October 2017
Apparently it was Mirga Gražinytė-Tyla’s idea to invite Jörg Widmann to be the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra’s Artist in Residence this season – indeed, according to backstage rumours she made the phone call herself. If that’s true, it’s a... Read more... |
Prom 50 review: Josefowicz, Clayton, CBSO, Gražinytė-Tyla - personality in every barTuesday, 22 August 2017
Everything you may have read about Mirga Gražinytė-Tyla's wonder-working with her City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra is true. Confined to a Turkish hospital bed when their first Prom together took place last August, I wondered from the radio... Read more... |
Supersonic Festival 2017, BirminghamTuesday, 20 June 2017
The Supersonic Festival is Birmingham’s annual gathering of the sonically weird and wonderful pitched at “curious audiences” happy to lend their ears to sounds that would ordinarily be difficult to discover without a lot of effort. An urban event,... Read more... |
theartsdesk Q&A: Nicholas Bullen, founder of Napalm DeathThursday, 15 June 2017
Nicholas Bullen is an artist and composer, based in Birmingham. He works across disciplines and media, including sound, installation, film, performance and text. In 1981, Bullen founded the Grindcore legends Napalm Death with Miles Ratledge. He will... Read more... |
Little, CBSO, Seal, Symphony Hall BirminghamFriday, 02 June 2017
The CBSO is justifiably proud of its association with Benjamin Britten. There’s rather less proof that he reciprocated, dismissing the orchestra as "second-rate" after it premiered his War Requiem in 1962. Throughout the 1950s, he’d repeatedly... Read more... |
Classical CDs Weekly: Joubert, Mahler, Simon Thacker & Justyna JablonskaSaturday, 20 May 2017
John Joubert: Jane Eyre April Frederick, David Stout, English Symphony Orchestra/Kenneth Woods (Somm)This is the second Brontë opera to have come my way in the past year; Carlisle Floyd’s Wuthering Heights is now joined by this involving adaptation... Read more... |
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