London
peter.quinn
There aren't too many pianists who excite jazz aficionados and hip-hop fans in equal measure. But then no other artist has been inspired equally by hip-hop beats on the one hand and Thelonious Monk on the other. And while it appears increasingly that jazz artists are refusing to be straitjacketed by genre convention, US pianist Robert Glasper is perhaps the prime example of this blurring at the edges.Glasper's previous Blue Note album, Double Booked (2009), celebrated this creative duality by featuring his acoustic trio in the first half and the electric Robert Glasper Experiment in the Read more ...
peter.quinn
Funkier than a James Brown bridge, the mighty Soul Rebels Brass Band swung back into town last night and flattened all before them. Possessing that rare combination of serious chops, impeccable stagecraft and down-home soul, they confirmed their position as one of the most explosive live acts on the scene. From the very opening bars of Stevie Wonder's “Living for the City”, taken from their current Rounder album Unlock Your Mind, the Soul Rebels had the entire QEH off their seats.The continuous set featured the reggae-fied uplift of the title track, the dazzling call-and-response interplay Read more ...
peter.quinn
It would be difficult to imagine a more impressive curtain-raiser to the London Jazz Festival than Jazz Voice, and this year's vintage was the finest yet. One sensed from the very opening bars of Gregory Porter and Ian Shaw's a cappella duet, “Feelin' Good”, that something remarkable was about to unfold, and so it proved. Drawing on major anniversaries, birthdays and milestones that link the decades stretching back from 2011, the annual vocal extravaganza – hosted this year by Victoria Wood – featured a typically adventurous mix of singers from the worlds of jazz, pop and soul.With spine Read more ...
alexandra.coghlan
We all know the question at issue last night at the Young Vic where Hamlet was opening, but down the road in the Queen Elizabeth Hall it was one of applause. Clapping between movements is a well-worn topic; we’ve had editorial, essays, even an RPS lecture devoted to the subject with no resolution in sight. Every year the Proms reminds us of the natural release a good clap can provide after a monumental first movement, and every year we return to our hands-clenched ways afterwards. Last night, witnessing some of the finest Beethoven London has seen in a vintage year for the composer, I can’t Read more ...
Sarah Kent
A glittering egg cracks open and, waving a magic wand, Andrew Logan emerges riding his sculpture of Pegasus, the winged horse. He flies across London to waiting friends and relatives and, with one touch of his miraculous wand, transforms them into sparkling glamour queens.The opening credits of The British Guide to Showing Off are a witty, Pythonesque riff on Logan’s extraordinary ability to inspire people. “He appeals to the child in everybody,” says fashion designer Zandra Rhodes. "He’s like your naughty aunty, putting a bit of gin in your tea,” observes artist Grayson Perry, best known for Read more ...
Veronica Lee
The 2012 Cultural Olympiad has been announced and events will take place throughout the UK from 21 June until the last day of the Paralympics, 9 September. Ruth Mackenzie, director of the Cultural Olympiad, said that many events would be free, and that “the festival will offer a once-in-a-lifetime chance to be inspired by the best in the world”. Events will range across the arts, from music, dance, theatre, opera and film to literature, the visual arts and fashion, and some will include a chance for arts fans to participate in the creation of an artwork.The highlight of the opening events, on Read more ...
Jasper Rees
British film-makers tend towards bipolarity. Where French cinema is broadly speaking about the middle classes, we tend to get films about one thing or the other. The national fixation with the past supplies stories about how the nabobs of yore lived (and, as importantly, dressed). But from Ken Loach onwards, British directors of another cadre have always had a real feel for the street, for that tranche of society which bumps along with nothing, where substance abuse is the rule rather than the exception. Such a film, more or less, is Junkhearts.Tinge Krishnan’s big-screen debut as a director Read more ...
judith.flanders
There’s a lot of Soviet art about at the moment – the excellent show that opens this Saturday at the Royal Academy has Constructivist and Suprematist paintings and drawings loaned by the George Costakis Collection in Thessaloniki. Now, at Annely Juda, a smaller, but no less excellent, show highlights one single Malevich painting, Black Square (main picture, above), a tiny gem of the early 20th century, also from the Costakis Collection, together with a series of Malevich’s working drawings.The painting is only 17 x 24cm, not much bigger than a couple of postcards, but what a punch it packs. Read more ...
theartsdesk
It may not have quite the glam tackiness of Cannes in May, nor the pizzazz of Venice in September, nor the chin-stroking seriousness of the Berlinale in February, but each October the BFI London Film Festival takes its own place on the European film festival circuit. theartsdesk has been attending the 55th festival in quadruplicate. On the closing day of a packed fortnight, our critics Nick Hasted, Emma Simmonds, Demetrios Matheou and, in quirkier mode, Matt Wolf bring you their highs and lows, their recommendations and their early warning signs.But first the winners of this year's awards. Read more ...
bruce.dessau
With the scheduled start time of last night's gig long gone and George Michael nowhere in sight, scurrilous jokes, gossip and unfounded rumours were floating around the Royal Albert Hall. We won't reprint them here but, needless to say, funny ciggies and Hampstead Heath were being mentioned. George's offstage antics might keep the red tops interested, but once he kicked the show off, backed by a 41-piece orchestra for the opening performance of the London run of his Symphonica tour, his glittering musical pedigree was absolutely centre stage.This was certainly an odd gig though. Often slow, Read more ...
alice.vincent
It’s a shame that Joseph Steele’s BIBLE didn’t come a week later. Halloween would have been a far better backdrop to the haphazard heathenism that the evening entailed.Presentation, exhibition – it is difficult to define the events which Steele arranged to showcase his latest work BIBLE. The premise is relatively simple: Steele re-wrote the entire 178,440 words of the New Testament, replacing every reference to Jesus or Jesus Christ with the words "Joseph Steele". This was the result of two years’ research attending Alpha courses, and a fortuitous contraction of tuberculosis, out of which a Read more ...
judith.flanders
It may be that there is no sunnier place than Ashton’s La fille mal gardée. Certainly there is no sunnier ballet. It speaks not of great drama, nor ecstasy, but instead of gentle happiness, of quiet content and loving kindness. Not, one might think, the stuff of great art. But one would be – one is – wrong, and Ashton is happy to set us straight.The standard tale of a girl whose mother wants her to marry a rich simpleton, and how she instead gets her way and marries a simple farmer, is not the point. Ashton takes this and embroiders it with magic – a dash of music hall, a splash of folk Read more ...