festivals
Tampere Nights: Lost in Music Festival 2012Friday, 26 October 2012
Nightclub Tähti is on the seventh floor of an anonymous-looking building along Tampere’s main shopping street, Hämeenkatu. Black-suited security wave you into a lift which zips straight up there. After surrendering your coat at the cloakroom –... Read more... |
theartsdesk in Dublin: Your City, Your StoriesSunday, 21 October 2012
Irish theatre generates high expectations. So much so, that if there isn’t a premiere of a play by one of Ireland’s leading playwrights – Sebastian Barry, Enda Walsh, Marina Carr, Frank McGuinness, Martin McDonagh, Conor McPherson or Mark O’Rowe –... Read more... |
theartsdesk at Bestival 2012: Wild Times Across the WaterWednesday, 12 September 2012
Friday 7th September“Satisfaction” by the Rolling Stones famously came to Keith Richards in a dream. Now it haunts mine. Not their classic version, though, oh no. Within an hour of pitching up my tent, setting sausages on the disposable barbecue and... Read more... |
theartsdesk at the Berlin Festival and Music WeekTuesday, 11 September 2012
Sometimes, it doesn’t matter who you are. You might be a charismatic performer, or the most energetic band in the world. But some settings can’t be outperformed. Holding Berlin Festival at the city’s astonishing out-of-commission Tempelhof airport... Read more... |
theartsdesk at the End of the Road FestivalTuesday, 04 September 2012
“There’re a lot of turds out there, ladies and gentlemen. But they’re not one of them.” It’s Friday afternoon in Larmer Tree Gardens, a wood-rimmed, laurel-trimmed, urn-decorated corner of Dorset, and thank yous are coming thick and fast for Bella... Read more... |
Bloodstock Open Air 2012, Catton Hall, DerbyshireWednesday, 15 August 2012
It’s Sunday lunchtime and Swiss thrash metallers Battalion are hammering out jagged, smashed up riffage with gleeful ferocity. Indeed, every one of Bloodstock Open Air’s four stages contains bands playing the hardest metal. To aficionados this music... Read more... |
Edinburgh Art Festival: From Symbolists to ColouristsWednesday, 08 August 2012
East coast haar seeping into sun-drenched streets – familiar Edinburgh monuments disappearing dreamlike under blankets of mist, vibrant colour draining from the landscape as the city transformed into its more usual symphony in grey. The dramatic... Read more... |
theartsdesk at Camp Bestival 2012Wednesday, 01 August 2012
FRIDAY 27 JULY Whatever happened to roughing it? Camp Bestival is, famously, more an upmarket middle England fete than a festival in the Hawkwind-play-Stonehenge sense but, still, why would anyone queue two and a half hours for the “Posh Wash”... Read more... |
WOMAD 2012, Charlton ParkWednesday, 01 August 2012
You know, as someone tweeted, that the acid has kicked in when you see Prince Harry wearing a duck’s hat backstage, writes Peter Culshaw. For every newcomer like Harry or Channel 4’s Jon Snow, who raved about it, there were as many others others for... Read more... |
theartsdesk at the Avignon FestivalMonday, 30 July 2012
The vast Avignon Festival is not a neatly curated sequence of works which can be experienced - like certain art biennales or the Proms - as if on a conveyor belt. There are 50 productions in the official “In” during three weeks, and more than a... Read more... |
theartsdesk in The Faroe Islands: G! FestivalSunday, 29 July 2012
Iceland’s kings of heavy metal Momentum are launching into an assault called “The Creator of Malignign Metaphors”. It’s broad daylight and they’re playing about 10 meters from the kitchen window of a suburban-looking house. The stage is sited on an... Read more... |
theartsdesk at the Porretta Soul Music FestivalSaturday, 28 July 2012
Way up in the mountains of northern Italy sits a small spa town called Porretta Terme. For many visitors it is the resort’s healing waters that brings them here. Yet for others it is the healing music – once a year the Porretta Soul Music Festival... Read more... |
