New Music Features
theartsdesk Debate: The Art of PerformanceSaturday, 10 September 2011![]()
To celebrate theartsdesk's second birthday on Friday, we held a panel discussion on The Art of Performance at Kings Place, London, in the Kings Place Festival. Read more... |
Opinion: Is The X Factor back for good?Saturday, 20 August 2011![]()
And so it begins again. Earlier this summer I attended what has become a regular British ritual, exactly like Wimbledon and Henley, the Chelsea Flower Show and Ascot, with only one or two small discrepancies. Read more... |
ELF. Eales, Lee, Findon. Piano, Horn and... Flute?Friday, 19 August 2011![]()
Some things just don’t seem to belong in a pairing. The flute and the French horn both have their distinct sonic personality. It wouldn’t be going out on a limb to suggest that the average listener tends to lean towards one or the other. Even Mozart wrote for the horn out of love but trotted out his flute compositions for money. But opposites can and do attract and so it once more proves in a new recording featuring the horn and the flute and, discreetly chaperoning the pair of them, the... Read more... |
Joe Arroyo, 1955-2011Saturday, 13 August 2011![]()
News about the death of Colombia's greatest salsa singer, Joe Arroyo, has sent shock waves through the salsa world and fan bases internationally, and it brought in streams of digital messages. Read more... |
Riot music: we should have listened harderTuesday, 09 August 2011![]()
I'm not claiming some major prescience or insight here. I am as guilty as anyone of dipping into the music of the sink estates for a small dose of frisson then returning to art and music that confirm my own worldview. But maybe, just maybe, if we had all paid more attention to what was being said by young British men and women from those estates over the last decade, the events of the past few days might not have come as such a horrific surprise. Read more... |
Interview: Bombay Bicycle ClubSaturday, 06 August 2011![]()
If Bombay Bicycle Club had been born on America’s West Coast, their music would no doubt soon be all over the soundtrack of the next big teen drama. All the ingredients are there: the artiness, the phlegmatic cool, and the tunes that form a natural soundtrack to people’s lives. That’s Bombay Bicycle Club, the band. The individuals, however, are refreshingly normal. They are more like a bunch of guys you might meet in a student union. At Jack and Ed’s digs in central London,... Read more... |
theartsdesk at Camp Bestival, Lulworth CastleSunday, 31 July 2011![]()
“Huxley! Electra!” called a plummy mummy to a couple of dawdling children. “Hurry up or you'll miss the BMX display!” Thursday night and Camp Bestival was, to a rather comical degree, looking like a playground for slightly funky middle-class families. Not that I was complaining – with an 18-month-old not so much in tow as leading the charge, I was extremely grateful for the regimented, relatively quiet campsite and the untold entertainments and comforts that CB provides. Read more... |
Opinion: Why are we so ghoulishly obsessed with self-destruction?Tuesday, 26 July 2011![]()
By and large, Adele Adkins chooses to avoid the limelight, and therefore little is known of either her personal life or her indulgences, whatever they may be. The spectacular success of 21 suggests that her audience couldn't care less either way, which I think is quite telling. Compare and contrast, on the other hand, with the shambles formerly known as Amy Winehouse. Read more... |
theartsdesk in La Rochelle: FrancofoliesTuesday, 19 July 2011![]()
The French national holiday of 14 July might be marked by parades and fly-pasts in Paris, but here on the Atlantic coast it’s the central date for Francofolies, the annual festival dedicated to French music. La Rochelle hosted its first Francofolies in 1985. Twenty-six years on, the festival remains the premier showcase for Francophone music. Read more... |
theartsdesk in Copenhagen: The Copenhagen Jazz FestivalTuesday, 12 July 2011![]()
“In jazz music you have the freedom, you have the expression. You have the visceral and you have the intellectual. Everything can be expressed through jazz, and is expressed through jazz and through the medium of improvisation. This is the highest form of being able to create music.” Speaking at the opening press conference of this year's Copenhagen Jazz Festival, that definition of jazz from the 80-year-old saxophone colossus Sonny Rollins seems as self-contained and eloquent as any other I... Read more... |
Pages
Subscribe to theartsdesk.com
Thank you for continuing to read our work on theartsdesk.com. For unlimited access to every article in its entirety, including our archive of more than 15,000 pieces, we're asking for £5 per month or £40 per year. We feel it's a very good deal, and hope you do too.
To take a subscription now simply click here.
And if you're looking for that extra gift for a friend or family member, why not treat them to a theartsdesk.com gift subscription?
latest in today

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

If, like me, chamber music isn’t your most frequent home, there are bound to be revelations of what for many are known masterpieces. Mine in...

This thrilling production of Saul takes Handel’s dramatisation of the Bible’s first Book of Samuel and paints it in...

The first series of The Gold in 2023 was received rapturously, though apparently it only told one half of the story of the 1983 Brink’s-...

Eva Quartet are four outstanding Bulgarian voices of polyphonic purity and depth, drawn from the legendary choir Le Mystere des Voix Bulgares, who...

In those seemingly long-ago times of loneliness and lockdown, artists around the world invited us into their kitchens and living rooms as they...

The Bush Theatre is becoming a garden...

Marianne Moore once famously defined poems as “imaginary gardens with real toads in them”. Operas also fill, or anyway should fill, their...

“Forest and the Shore” by Keith Christmas is remarkable. In his essay for Gather In The Mushrooms, compiler, author and Saint Etienne...