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3 weeks ago | 
thespectator.com | Philip Clark
The music critic Ian Penman has structured his new book about the great French composer and rascally agent provocateur Erik Satie in three parts, in the manner of classic Satie compositions such as Trois Gymnopédies, Gnossiennes and Trois morceaux en forme de poire. A hundred years after his death, aged 59, in 1925, Satie remains one of the great enigmas of 20th-century composition.
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1 month ago | 
thespectator.com | Philip Clark
In February 1951, Leonard Bernstein led the New York Philharmonic through the première of a symphony by an American composer unknown at Carnegie Hall. The composer in question was Charles Ives, by then too frail to attend in person. He listened from home when the concert was broadcast a few weeks later. An experimenter by instinct, Ives’s work had already proved an inspiration to a younger generation of radical American composers including John Cage, Lou Harrison and Morton Feldman.
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Jan 13, 2025 | 
thespectator.com | Alexander Larman |Byron’s Women |Philip Clark |Aaron Gwyn
The Robbie Williams biopic Better Man opened in American theaters last weekend and, as every single box office commentator predicted, it flopped, and flopped hard. A gross of just over $1 million in its opening three days — less than the Golden Globe-winning The Brutalist, which is only showing on sixty-eight screens nationwide — is utterly disastrous, all the more so because this wasn’t a $10 million indie, or even a $40 million Rocketman, but a movie that it cost $110 million to make.
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Mar 18, 2024 | 
thespectator.com | Philip Clark |Niall Ferguson |Roger Kimball |Tim Rice
In the mid-1950s, alongside his close friend and intimate confidant John Coltrane, the revered saxophonist Sonny Rollins completely revolutionized notions about how the tenor saxophone could function within modern jazz.
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Jan 22, 2024 | 
thespectator.com | Francesca Peacock |Freddy Gray |Philip Clark |Christopher Bedford
One Friday evening in a half-ruined, half-rebuilt city, where smart tourists dine out in restaurants next to refugees in makeshift shelters, a woman walks the streets. In torn clothes and slippers “worn ragged,” she hands out leaflets.
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Jan 22, 2024 | 
thespectator.com | Freddy Gray |Philip Clark |Christopher Bedford |Dot Wordsworth
Manchester, New HampshireNew Hampshire votes tomorrow and today Nikki Haley has just two planned events in New Hampshire. She has a morning meet-and-great in the city of Franklin and a “get out the vote rally” in Salem this evening. Nobody could accuse Haley of not working hard. She’s famously an industrious woman. But given the make-or-break nature of tomorrow’s vote, her campaign seems strangely lacking in urgency. Yes, she’s spending a fortune on campaign ads.
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Jan 22, 2024 | 
thespectator.com | Dot Wordsworth |Philip Clark |Christopher Bedford |Juan P. Villasmil
British prime minister Rishi Sunak mentioned mayoral elections the other day and he pronounced them as though they were conducted by mouth in the month of May: May-oral. There is no doubt that this is an American pronunciation, though some Americans prefer MAY-uhr-uhl to may-OR-uhl. In British English it’s MAIR-uhl. The funny pronunciation has spread to electoral, which on both sides of the Atlantic was uh-LECK-tuh-ruhl. Now broadcasters sometimes say uh-leck-TOR-ruhl.
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Jan 22, 2024 | 
thespectator.com | Christopher Bedford |Philip Clark |Dot Wordsworth |Juan P. Villasmil
In the salad days of early 2023, when Ron DeSantis was the clear insurgent candidate to wrest the GOP nomination from Donald Trump, the Florida governor boasted of his ability to rise above the chaos and office politics that had derailed the populist agenda under Trump’s watch. In March DeSantis said, “In terms of my approach to leadership, I get personnel in the government who have the agenda of the people and share our agenda. You bring your own agenda in, you’re gone,” DeSantis said.
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Jan 22, 2024 | 
thespectator.com | Philip Clark |Christopher Bedford |Dot Wordsworth |Juan P. Villasmil
Before “Walk On The Wild Side” changed everything for Lou Reed in 1972, bringing him status and bolstering his bank account, he had been lead singer of the Velvet Underground, a group, as managed by Andy Warhol, that served up songs about drugs, gender-bending and sexual fetish, all designed to crash the boundaries of what polite America considered acceptable.
