Jack the Ripper’s frenzied killing spree in Victorian London has never ceased to fascinate and appall. Iain Bell, composer of the ambitious new opera of the same name, and his librettist Emma Jenkins, decided, when creating their new work, to rid the stage of his presence altogether and to focus instead on the Ripper’s…
Category: Music
McBurney’s Magic Flute Enchants Again.
Mozart’s Magic Flute is an unusual opera, full of Viennese slapstick, magic and strange journeys through a fairy-tale landscape. Emanuel Schikaneder, who wrote the libretto, was a theatre-manager, actor and most importantly, Mozart’s friend. The two relished working together and being both a little strapped for cash in 1791, they strove to create an opera…
Dior and the Story of the Perfect Dress
In his autobiography Christian Dior tells the story of a fortune teller he met at a 1919 charity event for veterans of the Great War. He was an impressionable, imaginative young man. The fortune teller told him that he would suffer poverty earlier on in his life but that his luck would change and that…
Love In a Creative Climate
Artistic duos tend not to receive the attention they deserve in art history. We often read about the art movements and the artists who create them. The artist’s partner or lover meanwhile is often overlooked, or simply seen in terms of a muse. An ambitious exhibition at the Barbican, entitled Modern Couples: Art, Intimacy…
Sax and Jazz. Jean Toussaint Still Has Youth Appeal
Sunday night in Camden. The temperature has plummeted and there are few people about on the high street. Outside the Jazz Cafe however there is a queue forming. I rush to join it and edge my way forwards between the metal barriers to get my wrist stamped. A young man runs alongside us peddling…
LOST HISTORY RECLAIMED: William Kentridge’s ‘The Head and the Load’
‘…shadow-play, defunct documentation, African dance, early jazz, Dada-ist insanity and historical fact…’
EAST MEETS EAST END: A NEW DIVAN AT WILTON’S MUSIC HALL
…the combination of music and poetry can be blissful, or it can be exhausting. On Thursday it was exhilarating, high-spirited, unexpected and delightful.
Iconoclassics with Anthony Hewitt – Classical music in an iconic jazz venue
The Jazz Room in Barnes, SW London, affectionately known as “the suburban Ronnie’s Scotts” (and almost as longstanding as the eponymous Soho jazz club), resonated to a different vibe on Sunday evening when internationally-renowned pianist Anthony Hewitt – an artist more used to playing in hallowed gilded spaces such as the Wigmore or Carnegie Halls…
Rowan Hudson Trio at The Bull’s Head
I admit it, I’m a jazz ingenue. I know very little about the genre and even less about how to write a convincing review of a jazz gig or album. People say the rubric of classical music is complex and inaccessible; for me, jazz is even more complicated – there are genres and sub-genres aplenty….
A first quarter of fine concerts at St John’s Smith Square
Having declared that I intended to “do less” in 2017 to focus on more academic activities, my concert-going has been as busy as ever, and I have enjoyed some really fine performances in the first quarter of 2017. St John’s Smith Square (SJSS), now my favourite venue alongside the Wigmore Hall, is proving a rich…
ARTMUSELONDON 