festivals
Interview: Heiner Goebbels, on staging strange worldsMonday, 26 April 2010![]() First, the name. There’s no family link between the 57-year-old German composer and Hitler’s Doctor Death. This Goebbels cuts an impressive figure. Solidly built, with thick white hair and slightly cherubic features, and speaking fluent English, he’... Read more... |
Berlin Sounds, Ether Festival, Queen Elizabeth HallSunday, 25 April 2010![]() One of the recurring themes in BBC4's recent documentary, Krautrock: The Rebirth Of Germany, was the importance placed by so many of its participants upon transcending Germany's then-recent past. Move on several decades, and you now have a country... Read more... |
Bronco Bullfrog, East End Film FestivalFriday, 23 April 2010![]() One evening in 1970, Princess Anne ventured forth from her manor to attend a screening of Bronco Bullfrog at the Mile End ABC. Three decades later, the same cinema, now called the Genesis, hosted a screening of Barney Platts-Mills' debut feature... Read more... |
Dan Arborise, The Roxy Room, EdinburghWednesday, 21 April 2010![]() Sometimes the back story doesn’t lead you to where you expect it might. Sometimes that turns out to be a good thing. Dan Arborise was born in Borneo to Polish parents, which opens up all sorts of musical possibilities, most of them probably far less... Read more... |
theartsdesk in Glasgow: Glasgow International Festival of Visual ArtSunday, 18 April 2010![]() During my two-day whistlestop tour of various galleries and arts venues across Glasgow, I’m afraid I didn’t spot one white bike. There are, apparently, 50 of them that punters are free to use for the two-week duration of the city’s second biennial... Read more... |
theartsdesk at Savannah Music FestivalWednesday, 31 March 2010![]() Over four days I've gorged on some world-class music. If you take a pretty city in the full swing of spring, add a dose of Southern US hospitality, some exquisite venues, and a music promoter able to garner the cream of musical talent from across... Read more... |
theartsdesk in Oxford: Food, Sex and AmisSunday, 28 March 2010![]() “If I were a woman I would shag as many of you as had pubes and pricks that gave me sexual pleasure…” No less elderly than he is eminent, Professor Stanley Wells – editor of the Oxford Shakespeare and international authority on the Bard – smiles... Read more... |
New World theme for Edinburgh International Festival 2010Wednesday, 17 March 2010Jonathan Mills has announced the programme for Edinburgh International Festival 2010, on a theme of modern culture in the New Worlds of the Americas and Australasia. Ranging from California to Canberra, New York to New Zealand, from Santiago to... Read more... |
Literary giants gather in OxfordWednesday, 17 March 2010The Sunday Times Oxford Literary Festival kicks off this week with a dazzling line-up of today's literary giants - including Martin Amis, Ian McEwan, Hilary Mantel, Rose Tremain, Tracey Chevalier, John Le Carré, Philip Pullman and Sebastian Faulks.... Read more... |
English Journey Revisited, AV Festival, NewcastleMonday, 15 March 2010![]() The description of the AV Festival’s closing event was vague in the promotional material. Going only by the promise of “music/performance,” and the undeniably odd combination of Alan Moore and Iain Sinclair with performance musicians including the... Read more... |
theartsdesk in Newcastle: The AV FestivalSunday, 14 March 2010![]() At seven o'clock on a Friday night, with the first spring twilight of the year as a backdrop, Newcastle’s Civic Centre reverberated to a new composition for its Carillon bells. Mingling eerily with birdsong, it marked a rather different start to the... Read more... |
theartsdesk in Galle: Beer and Roving in literary Sri LankaSunday, 28 February 2010![]() Thursday Never been to the Galle Literary Festival before. Very excited. A long weekend of bona fide book-nerdishness is just what I need – if only to stop me lying on the roof for three days with a book. Also I have one-on-one time lined up... Read more... |
