St Aldhelm’s chapel stands above the headland of St Aldhelm’s (or St Alban’s) Head on the Dorset coast, near Swanage. The chapel is just visible from the village of Worth Matravers, about 2 miles inland, and is accessed via a rough path from the village. I am by no means a skilled photographer, but I…
Category: review
Retrospecstive 2021: Adrian Ainsworth’s 25 recordings of the year
As ever, blood, sweat, tears and several industrial-strength mugs of tea have gone into this year’s round-up. Even while the ongoing impact of the pandemic continues to make musicians’ lives uncertain at best and hellish at worst, they have still managed to do us listeners proud. I have already written about some of the below…
Karine Hetherington from ArtMuseLondon presents her recording highlights for 2021
Despite the restart of live performance this year, the climate continued to be challenging for artists and audiences alike. 2021 however was a good year for recordings and I felt lucky to be able to listen to a number of fantastic new releases from Orchid Classics, Pentatone, Signum Classics, Deutsche Grammophon and Naxos. From the…
Redefining “normal” in the arts in 2021
In the closing paragraph of my review of 2020, I wrote “I am hopeful that we will be something close to a return to “normal” by the summer of 2021.“ “Normal” has shifted in meaning over the past nearly two years of the covid pandemic. For galleries, concert halls and opera houses – the places…
Life Between Islands Lights up Tate Britain
Life Between Islands at Tate Britain is a large show, so give yourself time to peruse the wealth of Caribbean-British art from the 1950s to the present. The exhibition opens with the old guard artists, who came to settle in Britain between the late 1940s and 1970s. Aubrey Williams’s expressionist art grabbed my attention in the first…
‘The Power of the Dog’ – an intense, disturbing psycho-drama
British actor Benedict Cumberbatch is generally known for playing urbane Englishmen. In his latest role, in Jane Campion’s powerfully compelling film The Power of the Dog, he dons a Stetson and riding chaps to portray Phil Burbank, a tough, hardbitten cowboy who, with his brother George, runs a wealthy ranch in remote Montana. As is…
Spirit levels: ‘Unsettling Landscapes’, St Barbe Museum & Art Gallery, Lymington
How appropriate that on this occasion, during the walks between the car and St Barbe Museum & Art Gallery, the chill in the coastal air was icy enough to penetrate my fleece, and the wind strong enough to bend the bare branches of the trees further in, over our heads. St Barbe has an admirable…
Picture This: Anne Crabbe, photographer
Photography has been a large part of my life for the past 60 years. I have usually worked and exhibited in series; portraits and stories of evacuees of WW2, staff and students at a Cambridge college, local townspeople, book groups, younger family members in my old clothes or still lives of flowers and mantelpieces. These…
Announcement : ‘Picture This’ – a new occasional series
Dear artists and photographers ArtMuseLondon is launching a new occasional series entitled ‘Picture This’ to showcase original works by artists and photographers. You are invited to choose one of your own favourite works (a photograph or painting) and to comment on it in no more than 300 words. We want to hear why you chose…
ENO Riding High with Wagner’s Valkyrie
Opening night at the English National Opera’s Valkyrie and the auditorium was full. The excitement was palpable and understandable – it was ENO’s first stab at Wagner in fifteen years. I was thrilled to be able to attend such a landmark event and all credit to ENO for going ahead with the Valkyrie project. Wagner operas are a rarity in…
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