California
Reissue CDs Weekly: The United States of AmericaSunday, 29 June 2014
The United States of America: The United States of America – The Columbia RecordingsNothing sounded like The United States of America. The release of their only album in March 1968 must have been greeted with a lot of head scratching. Although... Read more... |
Reissue CDs Weekly: Too Slow to DiscoSunday, 08 June 2014
Various Artists: Too Slow to DiscoToo Slow to Disco is about the five years from 1975 onwards when men and woman alike sported billowing white shirts, had wind-swept, pouffed-up hair and sang frozen-nosed, freeze-dried songs in sensitive... Read more... |
theartsdesk Q&A: Soprano Nicole CabellMonday, 07 April 2014
Last year a DVD appeared featuring the 15 winning performances from the start of the BBC Cardiff Singer of the World Competition up to 2011. I watched them all, skimming if any seemed a notch below par but staying with most. You could see the star... Read more... |
Other Desert Cities, Old VicTuesday, 25 March 2014
Jon Robin Baitz learnt his craft writing on big American television shows including The West Wing and he created Brothers & Sisters, and Other Desert Cities - his first Broadway play - is another family drama with a political edge. The... Read more... |
DVD: StarletFriday, 07 March 2014
“Only connect!” might be the unexpected motto for this Hollywood Hills story – hard to call it a drama – from writer-director Sean Baker (Prince of Broadway). Because the worlds coming into contact in Starlet could hardly be more different: think,... Read more... |
Berlinale 2014: Cathedrals of CultureFriday, 14 February 2014
Back at the Venice Biennale in 2010, the German film director Wim Wenders showed a 3D video installation titled “If Buildings Could Talk”.Exploring the theme of how architecture interacts with human beings, and attempting to capture the soul of the... Read more... |
The Girl of the Golden West, Opera NorthWednesday, 22 January 2014
Puccini’s unlikely Spaghetti Western still convinces in Aletta Collins’ vivid new production. The incongruities in this uneven yet powerful work aren’t dodged but embraced. Most of them are musical: the sheer delight, for instance, of seeing stage... Read more... |
El Niño, London Philharmonic Orchestra and Choir, Jurowski, Royal Festival HallSunday, 15 December 2013
John Adams’ millennial conflagration of musical poems about childbirth, destruction and the divine made manifest not only served as a seasonal farewell and a transcendent epilogue to the Southbank’s year of 20th-century music The Rest is Noise; it... Read more... |
Linda Perhacs, Kantine am Berghain, BerlinWednesday, 04 December 2013
There's been a quiet but nevertheless palpable sense of anticipation surrounding psych-folk enigma Linda Perhacs' first-ever European tour. Comparatively low-key advance publicity certainly proved no impediment to a sold-out house for the recent... Read more... |
CD: Katy Perry - PRISMMonday, 21 October 2013
While it wouldn’t have been fair to expect 100 percent authenticity from a performer whose last stage show began with her rising from a trapdoor with two giant peppermint patty pinwheels spinning over her breasts, the follow-up to Teenage Dream was... Read more... |
CD: Jonathan Wilson - FanfareWednesday, 09 October 2013
If there’s a problem with Jonathan Wilson’s astonishing second album, it’s the potentially distracting presence of the stunningly heavy list of contributors. Those mucking in to help out include Jackson Browne, David Crosby and Graham Nash who... Read more... |
Reissue CDs Weekly: Dino Valenti, Monterey FestivalSunday, 29 September 2013
Dino Valente: Dino ValenteDino Valenti’s reaction to his sole solo album being credited to Dino Valente isn’t recorded, but any confusion probably wouldn’t have mattered as he had such high-profile cheerleaders. Before its release in October... Read more... |
