Above: Anish Kapoor’s Non Object (Door) and Non Object (Pole) at the Royal Academy
Festival: recommended by Ivan HewittKings Place Festival 2009 Kings Place, 4th-6th September, Tel: 020 7520 1490, www.kingsplace.co.uk
It takes chutzpah to mount a music festival in London just when the “world’s greatest music festival” (the Proms) reaches its climax. But then boldness has always been a virtue of Kings Place, the new concert hall located behind King’s Cross station. By any sober commercial assessment, the chances of a new chamber-sized concert hall thriving a bus-ride away from the Wigmore Hall and the South Bank Centre were slim. But a year after opening, Kings Place has proved its worth. The idea of inviting musicians and organisations to “curate” a week’s programming has thrown up some remarkable things, bold in content and stylish in execution. Now Kings Place is celebrating its first birthday with a three-day, 100-event festival.
The range of events is extraordinary. Every kind of music gets a look-in: classical, contemporary, blues, world music, jazz and folk. There’s even an event devoted to makers of “sound sculptures” and new-fangled instruments. The things that caught my eye are the “traditional folk innovators” on the evening of Friday 4th; the “Classical and Experimental” series on Saturday 5th, and the free Atrium concert at lunchtime on the same day, which offers a feast of Tudor sacred music.
Ivan Hewett is the Telegraph’s music critic
Fiction: recommended by William SkidelskyLove and Summer by William Trevor (Viking)
William Trevor is the supreme fictional chronicler of memory. Few writers have better understood—or more expertly conveyed—the way in which a person’s past can overwhelm their present, fixing them in a mould from which they cannot escape. This dual emphasis on past and present gives Trevor’s fiction its satisfying complexity, even when his plots—as in this new novel—are straightforward.
Love and Summer tells the story of a one-sided love affair that takes place in and around an Irish town in the 1950s. Ellis, a young farmer’s wife, is befriended by and falls in love with Florian, a man from a more sophisticated background who, unbeknownst to her, is preparing to leave the country. Their liaison is observed by the town’s inhabitants, who interpret it in the light of their own past misfortunes. It’s a scenario that seems primed for tragedy—but Trevor subverts our expectations. By deploying multiple perspectives and overlaying the present with his characters’ memories, Trevor builds up what feels almost like an emotional ecology of the affair. This skilful and subtle work, more ambitious than many of his previous novels, proves Trevor to be the great under-sung (if not unsung) Anglo-Irish writer.
William Skidelsky is books editor of the Observer
Film, recommended by Nick JamesThe September Issue On general release from 11th September
The fearsome reputation of Anna “nuclear” Wintour, editor-in-chief of US Vogue, inspired Meryl Streep’s intimidating magazine boss in The Devil Wears Prada. So when Wintour gave permission to RJ Cutler to make a documentary about the Vogue team putting together the September 2007 issue, a hymn of bland sycophancy seemed certain. Fortunately Cutler’s hugely entertaining, subtly revealing The September Issue is about as warts-and-all as one could possibly hope for from such a self-obsessed industry. Cutler has no need of confessional revelations of staff terror because he shows it in action. Wintour disparages poor work and trashes expensive pages with a withering economy of expression. Slack-jawed as one feels at the astonishing waste of resources, her certainty leads to hilarious moments—when she says “excuse me,” an assistant vanishes like a bee-stung whippet; the portly, camp editor-at-large André Leon Talley tells us, as he gently pats away tennis balls, that Wintour suggested he get some exercise. But though she is the focus, Wintour is not the film’s star. That honour belongs to Grace Coddington, Vogue’s chief stylist and a former model of stubborn charm. Her war with the ice queen is a fascinating larger-than-life contest and this beautifully shot feature documentary is as gripping as a psychological thriller.
Nick James is editor of Sight & Sound
Play, recommended by Michael CoveneySpeaking in Tongues by Andrew Bovell, dir Toby Frow, Duke of York’s Theatre, 18th September-12th December, www.dukeofyorkstheatre.co.uk
It goes against the current west end trend of stage versions of films (Dirty Dancing, Hairspray, Sister Act and soon Legally Blonde) to have a good movie restored to its possibly better original stage version. Australian playwright Andrew Bovell’s Speaking in Tongues was reworked as Lantana (2001), starring Geoffrey Rush, Barbara Hershey and Anthony LaPaglia. The film is a gripping suburban thriller, laying bare two interweaving adulterous affairs in an emotional cockpit of recrimination and bitterness. But the play, seen briefly at Hampstead Theatre nine years ago, is an even more challenging artefact, with actors doubling roles on a split stage of two simultaneously occupied hotel rooms. Long solo speeches break up the dialogue, while “speaking in tongues,” or glossolalia, suggests people coming out with stuff they never knew they had inside them.
Bovell, who co-authored Baz Luhrmann’s Strictly Ballroom, had a big success earlier this year with When the Rain Stops Falling, his climate-change epic at the Almeida Theatre. He should consolidate that stage reputation if rising young director Toby Frow gets the best out of a cast led by John Simm, best known for Life on Mars on television, New Zealand actress Kerry Fox (An Angel at My Table, Intimacy) and the brilliantly versatile Ian Hart.
Michael Coveney is a theatre critic for Whatsonstage.com and author
Art, recommended by Emma Crichton-MillerAnish Kapoor Royal Academy, 26th September-11th December, Tel: 0844 209 1919, www.royalacademy.org.uk
Anish Kapoor, magician of the visceral, the erotic and the sublime, has imperceptibly become the artist of the moment. Hailed almost from the start of his career as a significant and original talent, there has been recognition before—representing Britain in Venice in 1990, the 1991 Turner prize, and, seven years ago, the commission of his extraordinary whale-like-trumpet Marsyas, filling Tate Modern’s Turbine Hall and terrifying children. But this last 12 months, as Kapoor reaches 55, have seen a new ubiquity. There have been exhibitions in Boston, Vienna, Berlin, New York, Brighton and London. Last year Tees Valley Regeneration invited him to create five giant public sculptures in the region; this year the Brighton Arts Festival made Kapoor guest artistic director and accommodated four recent sculptural installations, including his new and gruesome Dismemberment of Jeanne d’Arc. Soon you will be able to descend into the Naples underground like Orpheus into the underworld via two of Kapoor’s “vulva-like” openings, one of several architectural projects.
This major solo exhibition at the RA is a rare honour for a living artist. It will range from the intense early pigment pieces, drawing you into pure form and colour, to the reflective stainless works (such as the Non Object series, above) which lure you into a suggestion of infinity. Recent kinetic works—Svayambh (Sanskrit for “auto-generated”), a vast mass of wax that barely moves on sunken rails, leaving a trail in its wake; Shooting into the Corner, a cannon firing wax repeatedly to create a fresh work; and a new sculpture in the Annenberg Courtyard—reveal current preoccupations without any loss of his power to amaze.
Emma Crichton-Miller is an arts writer
Concert, recommended by Nick CroweOrchestre Poly-Rythmo de Cotonou Barbican, 27th September, Tel: 020 7638 8891, www.barbican.org.uk
Ethnomusicologists will have a field day when this 12-piece, West African orchestre complete their first ever European tour at the Barbican later this month. Formed in Benin in 1966, the band are famous for mixing traditional rhythms such as sato (performed on a huge vertical drum) and sakpata (reputed to ward off smallpox) with the funk-soul beats and guitar riffs of the James Brown mania which gripped the region in the early 1970s. If that isn’t enough, the “protosamba” rhythms brought back to Benin from Brazil by repatriated slaves in the late 19th century are also woven in, creating a fluidity rare in the disjointed world of fusion music.
Remarkably, the band recorded more than 100 LPs and 50 singles over the course of its career, equipped only with a Swiss made reel-to-reel tape recorder and two microphones. A selection of these were re-released for the first time last year on London’s Soundway label, whose intrepid boss, Miles Cleret, has travelled much of West Africa sourcing rare material for his much praised Nigeria Specials and Ghana Soundz compilations (one of which was made famous by featuring on the soundtrack of the film The Last King of Scotland). But it was French music journalist Elodie Maillot who in 2007 finally tracked the original band members down, convincing them to reform and, in the spirit of Cuba’s Buena Vista Social Club, tour Europe. Before reaching the Barbican they will play with Poly-Rythmo enthusiasts Franz Ferdinand in Marseille.
Nick Crowe is a music writer
Festival: recommended by Ivan HewittKings Place Festival 2009 Kings Place, 4th-6th September, Tel: 020 7520 1490, www.kingsplace.co.uk
It takes chutzpah to mount a music festival in London just when the “world’s greatest music festival” (the Proms) reaches its climax. But then boldness has always been a virtue of Kings Place, the new concert hall located behind King’s Cross station. By any sober commercial assessment, the chances of a new chamber-sized concert hall thriving a bus-ride away from the Wigmore Hall and the South Bank Centre were slim. But a year after opening, Kings Place has proved its worth. The idea of inviting musicians and organisations to “curate” a week’s programming has thrown up some remarkable things, bold in content and stylish in execution. Now Kings Place is celebrating its first birthday with a three-day, 100-event festival.
The range of events is extraordinary. Every kind of music gets a look-in: classical, contemporary, blues, world music, jazz and folk. There’s even an event devoted to makers of “sound sculptures” and new-fangled instruments. The things that caught my eye are the “traditional folk innovators” on the evening of Friday 4th; the “Classical and Experimental” series on Saturday 5th, and the free Atrium concert at lunchtime on the same day, which offers a feast of Tudor sacred music.
Ivan Hewett is the Telegraph’s music critic
Fiction: recommended by William SkidelskyLove and Summer by William Trevor (Viking)
William Trevor is the supreme fictional chronicler of memory. Few writers have better understood—or more expertly conveyed—the way in which a person’s past can overwhelm their present, fixing them in a mould from which they cannot escape. This dual emphasis on past and present gives Trevor’s fiction its satisfying complexity, even when his plots—as in this new novel—are straightforward.
Love and Summer tells the story of a one-sided love affair that takes place in and around an Irish town in the 1950s. Ellis, a young farmer’s wife, is befriended by and falls in love with Florian, a man from a more sophisticated background who, unbeknownst to her, is preparing to leave the country. Their liaison is observed by the town’s inhabitants, who interpret it in the light of their own past misfortunes. It’s a scenario that seems primed for tragedy—but Trevor subverts our expectations. By deploying multiple perspectives and overlaying the present with his characters’ memories, Trevor builds up what feels almost like an emotional ecology of the affair. This skilful and subtle work, more ambitious than many of his previous novels, proves Trevor to be the great under-sung (if not unsung) Anglo-Irish writer.
William Skidelsky is books editor of the Observer
Film, recommended by Nick JamesThe September Issue On general release from 11th September
The fearsome reputation of Anna “nuclear” Wintour, editor-in-chief of US Vogue, inspired Meryl Streep’s intimidating magazine boss in The Devil Wears Prada. So when Wintour gave permission to RJ Cutler to make a documentary about the Vogue team putting together the September 2007 issue, a hymn of bland sycophancy seemed certain. Fortunately Cutler’s hugely entertaining, subtly revealing The September Issue is about as warts-and-all as one could possibly hope for from such a self-obsessed industry. Cutler has no need of confessional revelations of staff terror because he shows it in action. Wintour disparages poor work and trashes expensive pages with a withering economy of expression. Slack-jawed as one feels at the astonishing waste of resources, her certainty leads to hilarious moments—when she says “excuse me,” an assistant vanishes like a bee-stung whippet; the portly, camp editor-at-large André Leon Talley tells us, as he gently pats away tennis balls, that Wintour suggested he get some exercise. But though she is the focus, Wintour is not the film’s star. That honour belongs to Grace Coddington, Vogue’s chief stylist and a former model of stubborn charm. Her war with the ice queen is a fascinating larger-than-life contest and this beautifully shot feature documentary is as gripping as a psychological thriller.
Nick James is editor of Sight & Sound
Play, recommended by Michael CoveneySpeaking in Tongues by Andrew Bovell, dir Toby Frow, Duke of York’s Theatre, 18th September-12th December, www.dukeofyorkstheatre.co.uk
It goes against the current west end trend of stage versions of films (Dirty Dancing, Hairspray, Sister Act and soon Legally Blonde) to have a good movie restored to its possibly better original stage version. Australian playwright Andrew Bovell’s Speaking in Tongues was reworked as Lantana (2001), starring Geoffrey Rush, Barbara Hershey and Anthony LaPaglia. The film is a gripping suburban thriller, laying bare two interweaving adulterous affairs in an emotional cockpit of recrimination and bitterness. But the play, seen briefly at Hampstead Theatre nine years ago, is an even more challenging artefact, with actors doubling roles on a split stage of two simultaneously occupied hotel rooms. Long solo speeches break up the dialogue, while “speaking in tongues,” or glossolalia, suggests people coming out with stuff they never knew they had inside them.
Bovell, who co-authored Baz Luhrmann’s Strictly Ballroom, had a big success earlier this year with When the Rain Stops Falling, his climate-change epic at the Almeida Theatre. He should consolidate that stage reputation if rising young director Toby Frow gets the best out of a cast led by John Simm, best known for Life on Mars on television, New Zealand actress Kerry Fox (An Angel at My Table, Intimacy) and the brilliantly versatile Ian Hart.
Michael Coveney is a theatre critic for Whatsonstage.com and author
Art, recommended by Emma Crichton-MillerAnish Kapoor Royal Academy, 26th September-11th December, Tel: 0844 209 1919, www.royalacademy.org.uk
Anish Kapoor, magician of the visceral, the erotic and the sublime, has imperceptibly become the artist of the moment. Hailed almost from the start of his career as a significant and original talent, there has been recognition before—representing Britain in Venice in 1990, the 1991 Turner prize, and, seven years ago, the commission of his extraordinary whale-like-trumpet Marsyas, filling Tate Modern’s Turbine Hall and terrifying children. But this last 12 months, as Kapoor reaches 55, have seen a new ubiquity. There have been exhibitions in Boston, Vienna, Berlin, New York, Brighton and London. Last year Tees Valley Regeneration invited him to create five giant public sculptures in the region; this year the Brighton Arts Festival made Kapoor guest artistic director and accommodated four recent sculptural installations, including his new and gruesome Dismemberment of Jeanne d’Arc. Soon you will be able to descend into the Naples underground like Orpheus into the underworld via two of Kapoor’s “vulva-like” openings, one of several architectural projects.
This major solo exhibition at the RA is a rare honour for a living artist. It will range from the intense early pigment pieces, drawing you into pure form and colour, to the reflective stainless works (such as the Non Object series, above) which lure you into a suggestion of infinity. Recent kinetic works—Svayambh (Sanskrit for “auto-generated”), a vast mass of wax that barely moves on sunken rails, leaving a trail in its wake; Shooting into the Corner, a cannon firing wax repeatedly to create a fresh work; and a new sculpture in the Annenberg Courtyard—reveal current preoccupations without any loss of his power to amaze.
Emma Crichton-Miller is an arts writer
Concert, recommended by Nick CroweOrchestre Poly-Rythmo de Cotonou Barbican, 27th September, Tel: 020 7638 8891, www.barbican.org.uk
Ethnomusicologists will have a field day when this 12-piece, West African orchestre complete their first ever European tour at the Barbican later this month. Formed in Benin in 1966, the band are famous for mixing traditional rhythms such as sato (performed on a huge vertical drum) and sakpata (reputed to ward off smallpox) with the funk-soul beats and guitar riffs of the James Brown mania which gripped the region in the early 1970s. If that isn’t enough, the “protosamba” rhythms brought back to Benin from Brazil by repatriated slaves in the late 19th century are also woven in, creating a fluidity rare in the disjointed world of fusion music.
Remarkably, the band recorded more than 100 LPs and 50 singles over the course of its career, equipped only with a Swiss made reel-to-reel tape recorder and two microphones. A selection of these were re-released for the first time last year on London’s Soundway label, whose intrepid boss, Miles Cleret, has travelled much of West Africa sourcing rare material for his much praised Nigeria Specials and Ghana Soundz compilations (one of which was made famous by featuring on the soundtrack of the film The Last King of Scotland). But it was French music journalist Elodie Maillot who in 2007 finally tracked the original band members down, convincing them to reform and, in the spirit of Cuba’s Buena Vista Social Club, tour Europe. Before reaching the Barbican they will play with Poly-Rythmo enthusiasts Franz Ferdinand in Marseille.
Nick Crowe is a music writer
