tue 08/07/2025

Featured Buzz

Amy Winehouse, 1983-2011

Amy Winehouse, who was found dead at her London home this afternoon, was the greatest female pop singer of her time, in the way that Billie Holiday was of hers, says Peter Culshaw, the first of theartsdesk's writers who tell below what she signified...

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Lucian Freud, 1922-2011

Lucian Freud, who died aged 88 at his west London home on Wednesday, was often described as Britain's greatest living artist. In the six decades he was active, figurative painting went in and out of fashion - though mostly it was out - but...

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Belarus Free Theatre: no gags on art

Whatever the quality of the material with which they're grappling, there are two undeniable truths about the Belarusian actors who've put their already curtailed freedom on the line by coming to the Almeida Festival this week: they're skilled...

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BBC Proms 2011: theartsdesk recommends...

Tonight the doors open for the biggest classical music festival in the world, the BBC Proms at the Royal Albert Hall. To help you plan your summer visits and listening, theartsdesk's critics gently steer you with their own preferences from the 90...

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Master of French Ballet Chic Roland Petit Dies

Roland Petit died this morning aged 87, a world choreographer of chic and erotic theatricality who blew away the French classical ideal in a roar of post-war sexual liberation. He created an all-male corps of swans for Swan Lake long before Matthew...

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Lil B's I'm Gay (I'm Happy): a rap revolution?

It's not often you can call pop music revolutionary, but this record is - in more ways than one. Bringing together techniques of engagement that have been honed by Radiohead, Lady Gaga, Lil Wayne and... um... Justin Bieber, the 21-year-old Berkley,...

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Birmingham - Home of Metal

This site has never acknowledged a distinction between high and popular culture. Nor, it seems, does the city of Birmingham. Currently bidding for UK City of Culture 2013, it is also promoting itself as the "Home of (Heavy) Metal". This summer, at...

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Just One More Thing: Peter Falk, 1927-2011

Peter Falk: 'I’ve always said that Columbo was an ass-backwards Sherlock Holmes'

A few years ago I chanced upon something truly surreal. I was driving along a track in New Zealand. The way you do. There was a field on the left. In it there was a man sitting on a portable chair, a sketchpad in his lap, a pencil in his hand....

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What's your title? This is the ROYAL Opera House

The Royal Opera House prides itself on knowing exactly who is registering on its mailing services, and just how high-class they are. Mr, Mrs, Ms, Miss, Dr, really can’t cover the possibilities. Hence the hilarity greeting their online registering...

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RIP house music singer Darryl Pandy

A still from the 'Love Can't Turn Around' video

The house music of Chicago, led by producers and DJs, has long had a tendency to feature the greatest vocals of any genre yet not make stars of its singers. And for most of his working life, Darryl Pandy, who died yesterday aged 48, was not the star...

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Showtime! - UK dancehall on the rise again

Lady Chann: The face of the new wave of UK dancehall

This month sees an audacious attempt to showcase British dancehall music, when the Cargo venue in Shoreditch hosts the multi-artist revue Showtime!. The Heatwave collective have brought together vocalists from various UK underground scenes, linked...

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National Theatre Wales announces its second season

NTW's 'The Radicalisation of Bradley Manning' will ask questions about the imprisoned Wikileaks fall guy, who spent his teenage years in West Wales

The inaugural year of National Theatre Wales included an immensely ambitious body of work which tested to the limit the definition of what a national theatre can and should be. In new venues and old, found spaces and open spaces, it staged several...

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