thu 22/05/2025

Ismene Brown

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Bio
Dr Ismene Brown designed and launched the original version of The Arts Desk in 2009, and was the Site Coordinator and a board director for three years, as well as its dance editor. A musician trained at the Royal College of Music, she has been dance critic for the Daily Telegraph and the Spectator, and has also written for TAD on classical music, theatre, TV and film. Since then she has gained an MA at UCL and DPhil at Oxford University for work on the Soviet politician and arts minister Ekaterina Furtseva.

Articles By Ismene Brown

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It all started on 09/09/09. That memorable date, September 9 2009, marked the debut of theartsdesk.com.

It followed some...

Mission: Impossible - The Final Reckoning review - can this...

Whether it is or isn’t the final Mission: Impossible film, there’s a distinct fin-de-siècle feel about this eighth instalment, and not...

Code of Silence, ITVX review - inventively presented reality...

In the guided tour of Britain’s cathedral cities that is the primetime TV...

The Crucible, Shakespeare's Globe review - stirring acc...

A society ruled by hysteria. Lurid lies that carry more currency than reality. There’s no shortage of reasons that...

Pixies, O2 Academy, Birmingham review - indie veterans pack...

Pixies might just be the ultimate Radio 6 Dad band. They’ve been around (on-and-off) for around 40 years; they’ve got a fine back catalogue of...

Album: Sports Team - Boys These Days

How do you solve a problem like Sports Team? Taking them at face value, they’re a living metaphor for the slow music biz relegation of the working...

Pygmalion, Early Opera Company, Curnyn, Middle Temple Hall r...

With French baroque opera all but banished from the UK’s major...

Album: Stereolab - Instant Holograms on Metal Film

Stereolab always walked a knife edge between deadly serious and dead silly. Their sound was constructed around the sort of reference points –...

The Fifth Step, Soho Place review - wickedly funny two-hande...

The plays of David Ireland have a tendency to build to an explosion, after long stretches of caustic dialogue and very funny banter....

Josefowicz, LSO, Mälkki, Barbican review - two old favourite...

Every now and then a concert programme comes along that fits like a bespoke suit, and this one could have been specially designed for me. Two...