The Singapore Symphony Orchestra is like a teenage athlete just about to hit peak form. This could be one of the great orchestras of the 21st century. So could its rival, the Malaysian Philharmonic. We all know that Asia produces dazzling soloists. But orchestras? I was sceptical until I heard the Singaporeans at the Southbank
Once upon a time, in America, a group of dancers and performance artists gathered in the Judson Church Theater and challenged long-held artistic tenets. The historical significance of their provocative aesthetics led scholars to label their art ‘postmodern dance’, even though there was more to their creations than just dance. A few decades later, their
If you heard Australian bluesman C.W. Stoneking’s first album, King Hokum, then you will know what to expect from his second: Jungle Blues. If you heard Australian bluesman C.W. Stoneking’s first album, King Hokum, then you will know what to expect from his second: Jungle Blues. If you didn’t, then let me point out that
The Dance Umbrella season has always been a unique window on international choreography, as well as a great platform for national talent. This year is no different, and the number of international visitors is delectably high. As always, blockbusters share the season with smaller but no lesser entities. Last week I went to see two
One surefire sign of maturity is the acceptance that you have friends who are more talented than you are. I learnt that lesson early, which, considering my manifold shortcomings, was just as well, frankly. I have mates who are better practical gardeners than I am, and ones who are more creative garden designers. I like
According to some, Onegin is the ultimate expression of John Cranko’s choreographic and theatrical genius. According to some, Onegin is the ultimate expression of John Cranko’s choreographic and theatrical genius. I disagree, for I think that other works are a much better testament to his unique creativity. But I like Onegin because it is one
English National Opera seems, at the start of the season, to be preoccupied, as we should all be, with how long we want to live, and in what kind of condition. In Janacek’s The Makropoulos Case the eponymous heroine is able, if she wants to, to live in a state of perpetual early maturity, but
‘Get inside the creative mind,’ urges the website of Studio 360, an innovative radio programme based in New York. ‘Get inside the creative mind,’ urges the website of Studio 360, an innovative radio programme based in New York. Set up by Kurt Andersen (of Spy magazine), it offers a weekly magazine programme about the arts,
The other weekend the Fawn and I were invited to stay at Chilham Castle. Obviously, if you’re Charles Moore, this is no big deal because it’s the kind of thing you do 24/7, 365 days of the year. For us, though — me especially, the Fawn being slightly posher than me — it was a
Peter Greenaway’s A Zed & Two Noughts, recently released on Blu-ray disc by the BFI, proves that the high-definition format isn’t just for blockbusters: it could have been invented for the British director’s first collaboration with the legendary cinematographer Sacha Vierny, a partnership which made explicit Greenaway’s debt to French auteur Alain Resnais and introduced
Jane O’Hara’s Culture Notes What happens when you take a girl from Scotland and her acoustic guitar, and uproot them to the same studio in Berlin where U2 recorded Achtung Baby? Judging by KT Tunstall’s third album, Tiger Suit, the answer is a collection of moody, blackish songs. Tunstall made her name with the folk-pop
We tend to take for granted the fact that the V&A houses one of the great wonders of the Italian High Renaissance: Raphael’s remarkable tapestry cartoons celebrating the lives of St Peter and St Paul. We tend to take for granted the fact that the V&A houses one of the great wonders of the Italian
Astonishingly, I enjoyed The Town even though it is a heist movie with set-piece shoot-outs and car chases and even though it doesn’t break any new ground, which is just such a faff anyhow. Astonishingly, I enjoyed The Town even though it is a heist movie with set-piece shoot-outs and car chases and even though
Zanzotti’s in Soho: redolent of surreptitious lunches fondly remembered, with its red gingham cloths and crusted tricolore paintwork, its ‘chianti-in-a-basket./ Breadsticks you snap/ with a sneeze of dust…And Massimo himself/ touring the tables / with his fake bonhomie.’ An old haunt, and the setting, in Christopher Reid’s poem ‘The Song of Lunch’, for a reunion
Pakistan. Big problem. Burning issue. Put it on stage so we can find out how we got here. J.T. Rogers’s new play opens in 1981 just after the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. A young CIA officer, with the exotic and suggestive name of Jim, sets off for the badlands of Waziristan to offer his support
Choreographic legacies are tough to handle; there is always the risk of turning a once vibrant dance into a theatrically dead museum piece. The preservation of choreographic milestones is certainly paramount, but so is the need to provide artists with new challenges, especially within those companies that, having formed and thrived around a prominent artistic
As I descended, then descended again, then again, to get to my seat in the subterranean, uncomfortable Linbury Studio at the Royal Opera House, I thought gloomily of the number of miserable evenings I have spent there, and reflected that Philip Glass’s In the Penal Colony was probably all too apt a name for what
Highgrove: Alan Meets Prince Charles (BBC2, Thursday) brought us two men who are not quite national treasures, though who would certainly like to be. It’s interesting that ‘Alan’ apparently needs no surname, though ‘Charles’ requires the identifying title. But in spite of the implied matiness this was a deeply old-fashioned BBC royal slathering operation, in
A.A. Gill talks to his friend Terry O’Neill, whose iconic photographs captured an entirely new kind of celebrity I remember the first time Terry O’Neill took my photograph: he wore blue; I wore grey and the Great War helmet of the third regiment of Pomeranian Grenadiers. We were at the Imperial War Museum, and the
William Pye has observed, somewhat wryly, that he’s better known among architects and designers than he is by the art-loving public. William Pye has observed, somewhat wryly, that he’s better known among architects and designers than he is by the art-loving public. There is a simple reason for this: in recent years he has had