Birmingham
CD: Editors - The Weight of Your LoveThursday, 27 June 2013
Being assigned to review Editors on the Other Stage at Glastonbury 2007, when Shirley Bassey was on the main Pyramid, was not a good way to consolidate my already fragile critical relationship with the Brummie quartet. Their music pushed my mind to... Read more... |
Birth of a Collection: The Barber Institute, National GalleryFriday, 31 May 2013
Lady Barber (1869-1933) née Hattie Onions, had her portrait painted in sumptuous style about 30 times, mostly in a sub-Orpen vein, and almost all by the unknown Belgian Nestor Cambier. But that was the very least of her occupations. Her husband, the... Read more... |
Playhouse Presents: Snodgrass, Sky Arts 1Friday, 26 April 2013
What if John Lennon had left The Beatles in 1962? What if they had continued without him? And what if he had still become the acid-tongued, ready-with-a-quip character the real world became familiar with? Snodgrass took those what-ifs and ran with... Read more... |
George Benjamin, CBSO Centre, BirminghamMonday, 08 April 2013
“A book,” says the Boy-Illuminator in George Benjamin’s latest opera Written on Skin, “needs long days of light.” He speaks for Benjamin himself, a composer who, for all his fabulous musical mind and ear, has never found composition easy and has... Read more... |
theartsdesk Q&A: Musician Nick RhodesSaturday, 23 March 2013
Nick Rhodes (b 1962) is a founding member of the group Duran Duran. Their synthesizer player and driving force, he is the sole member to have been in every incarnation of the band. Duran Duran started in Birmingham in 1978 when Rhodes was only 16, a... Read more... |
The Secret Life of Rubbish / The Toilet: An Unspoken History, BBC FourFriday, 30 November 2012
Is scatophilia on the loose at the BBC? After The Secret Life of Rubbish, billed as "a view of the history of modern Britain - from the back end where the rubbish comes out", creatively programmed with a repeat of The Toilet: An Unspoken History on... Read more... |
Mittwoch aus Licht, Birmingham Opera CompanyThursday, 23 August 2012
Singing camels, paddling trombonists, airborne string quartets and a libretto so barmy it makes David Icke sound like Richard Dawkins. Birmingham, welcome to the world of Karlheinz Stockhausen. The German composer devoted 25 years of his life... Read more... |
The Grand Tour/ Faster/ The Dream, Birmingham Royal Ballet, Birmingham HippodromeThursday, 28 June 2012
Cafés, ballets, it’s all the same to the mighty petty bullyboys of the London Olympics, who have not only devised two of the most revolting mascots in Olympic history (the one-eyed slugs Wenlock and Mandeville) but also employed teams of... Read more... |
CD: Go-Kart Mozart – On the Hot Dog StreetsMonday, 25 June 2012
Bloopy Seventies synths. Glitter Band drums. The fuzz guitar of Sweet’s “Blockbuster”. Eighties electro-robot-pop. New wave chug. The hot dog streets of West Bromwich. Morning TV. Bailiffs at the door, The secularisation of institutions and the... Read more... |
CD: Dexys - One Day I'm Going To SoarSunday, 03 June 2012
Bob Dylan talked, after his 1966 motorcycle crash, about having to learn to do consciously what he once did instinctively. That quote kept popping into my head as I listened to One Day I’m Going to Soar, the fourth Dexys album and their first for 27... Read more... |
Knussen Sixtieth Birthday, CBSO Centre, BirminghamSaturday, 26 May 2012
Ask any young composer in this country who is the most important figure in modern British music, and the answer is likely to come back quick and sharp: Oliver Knussen. Himself a composer of dazzling brilliance when he gets round to it, and a... Read more... |
CD: Guillemots - Hello Land!Saturday, 19 May 2012
It's hard to remember sometimes, as you hum along to the singalong refrains and soaring choruses of their relative hits such as "Trains to Brazil" or "Get Over It", that Guillemots have never been a pop band. Rather, the four-piece have always... Read more... |
