New Music Features
Reviewing music off-piste: reflections on working beyond the comfort zoneWednesday, 17 February 2021
Writing for theartsdesk offers a freedom that I‘ve never experienced before. Encouraged by the much-missed Sue Steward and by Peter Culshaw, two of the website's founders, I started by writing solely about music – something I've done since I was a student. But very soon, I was covering theatre in Bristol, where I lived at the time, and I occasionally wrote about the visual arts, and then the cinema. Read more... |
First Person: Paul Bullock on making BBC Young Jazz Musician 2020Saturday, 21 November 2020
Producing music programmes for TV with live performance during the past few months has not been without its challenges, but somehow doing so right now feels more important than ever – both for the pleasure it brings audiences and as support for the performing arts. Read more... |
Singer-songwriter Mary Chapin Carpenter: 'I wanted to do something. I wanted to be useful in some way'Tuesday, 08 September 2020
Music has never been more important than in these dark, dislocating and death-stalked days, fear and grief visiting us in ways once unimaginable. The lack of live music – the lack even of the possibility of live music in the near future – is an absence keenly felt. However much we love to listen in the isolation of our own headphones, nothing can ever replace the communal concert event. Read more... |
Ennio Morricone 1928-2020: A lost afternoon in his apartment in RomeTuesday, 07 July 2020
Ennio Morricone was a genius, or as close to that description as makes no odds. If we mean someone who created a unique body of work, one that changed culture, had a distincive style and was massively influential, then Morricone fitted the bill. theartsdesk's Joe Muggs was discussing today on Facebook and Mixmag his influence on dubstep and Jamaican music, for example. Read more... |
The Songs of Coronavirus and Lockdown LifeTuesday, 26 May 2020
At the start of March an obscure alt-metal outfit called Cegvera released a concept album titled The Sixth Glare. The physical album featured the headline “DISEASE” alongside a photograph of a woman in a protective facemask, and the sleeve notes expand on the idea that, if we don’t tend to our environment, an illness will arrive to which the world doesn’t have immunity. Read more... |
Little Richard (1932-2020) - sexuality, spirituality and rock'n'roll's gospel rootsWednesday, 13 May 2020
The day that Little Richard’s death was announced, my friend the soul singer PP Arnold wrote on her Instagram feed, of a “sanctified boogie-woogie piano style that was just electric”. She went on, recalling first hearing the man’s undiluted craziness: “I loved it when he did that "ooo" thing after the “Tutti Frutti aw Rudi” bit that sounded like one of the high soprano sisters in church”. Read more... |
Now is the hour - 103 and trending: Dame Vera Lynn eight decades after her debutThursday, 23 April 2020
Last Sunday evening I was making lentil soup (words I never thought I’d type) when Radio 4’s discussion of wealth, or lack thereof, gave way to a profile of Dame Vera Lynn. She was “trending”, her NHS fundraising duet with Katherine Jenkins of “We’ll Meet Again” having hit number one on iTunes. A mash-up of the song, in aid of West End artists, is to follow. Read more... |
Joe Boyd's Recording HeavenWednesday, 08 April 2020
When it comes to making records, I love deadlines. Embarking on an open-ended project, particularly with the infinite number of overdubs made possible by ProTools, is my idea of hell. Back in the Nineties, I once spent an afternoon combining vocal takes line-by-line into a master track for one song. That’s when I started to think writing books might be a better way to make a living. Read more... |
Jazz musicians adapt to the lockdown - 'Welcome to our world!'Wednesday, 01 April 2020
“Jazz people,” one commentator has written this week “are amongst the most adaptable of our species as life mirrors art and we improvise our way through – we're uniquely qualified to weather the storm.” Read more... |
A simple twist of fate - how a chance encounter with 'Joan Baez, Vol 2' 50 years ago led to a festival in Downtown ManhattanMonday, 30 March 2020
We’ve all spent time considering our desert island discs, which is of course why the programme Roy Plomley devised one winter’s night in 1942 is still thriving. The choices are perhaps less favourites than music that takes you back to a specific moment in time, that reminds you of someone, or something, special. Read more... |
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