https://www.scmp.com/rss/1583/feed Victoria Finlay is the critically acclaimed author of Fabric: The Secret History of the Material World and Colour: Travels Through the Paintbox, and a former arts editor of the South China Morning Post. She studied social anthropology and has travelled around the world in search of stories about her subjects, from color to jewels to fabric to the arts. In addition to writing, Victoria has worked in international development. en https://assets.i-scmp.com/static/img/icons/scmp-meta-1200x630.png https://www.scmp.com In 2021, as the world entered its second year of lockdown, Hong Kong-born conductor Elim Chan was asked if she might be available (why, yes, she was, along with just about every musician in the world at the time) to conduct. But not conduct an orchestra as she was used to. For this assignment, should she choose to accept it, she would be conducting … cars. The query came from Porsche, which, realising its annual motor show was obviously not going to happen as a live event, wanted Chan to help... https://www.scmp.com/postmag/culture/article/3285765/elim-chan-acclaimed-hong-kong-born-conductor-returns-home?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/postmag/culture/article/3285765/elim-chan-acclaimed-hong-kong-born-conductor-returns-home?utm_source=rss_feed Mon, 11 Nov 2024 03:15:08 +0000 When the Qing dynasty’s Kangxi Emperor turned 60, in 1713, Beijing played host to a huge festival. A parade of decorated elephants, officials looking officious, drummers thumping dragon drums, parents lifting their children to see, other people not paying the least attention as they negotiate over baskets: so many aspects of everyday life in China could be seen in the streets of the Qing capital that day. We know all this because of two 12-metre printed scrolls that, placed end to end, provide... https://www.scmp.com/magazines/post-magazine/travel/article/3213874/new-gallery-britains-manchester-museum-charts-chinas-historic-links-what-lonely-planet-calls-one?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/magazines/post-magazine/travel/article/3213874/new-gallery-britains-manchester-museum-charts-chinas-historic-links-what-lonely-planet-calls-one?utm_source=rss_feed Sat, 18 Mar 2023 05:15:13 +0000 When Zhu Xiaowen flew from Germany to England in 2022 to interview for the job of director of Manchester’s then Centre for Chinese Contemporary Art (CFCCA), she had a challenge. Although she had never before visited the centre, in its heritage red brick building in the city’s trendy Northern Quarter, she had to give a full presentation on what she would like to do with the place. She spoke for 20 minutes. She spoke of openness and diversity, of the great opportunity of art to not only reflect... https://www.scmp.com/lifestyle/arts-culture/article/3210001/former-chinese-art-centre-uk-shut-after-racism-claims-reopens-heres-whats-coming-its-inaugural?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/lifestyle/arts-culture/article/3210001/former-chinese-art-centre-uk-shut-after-racism-claims-reopens-heres-whats-coming-its-inaugural?utm_source=rss_feed Tue, 14 Feb 2023 08:15:11 +0000 Something interesting is going down in London’s Trafalgar Square. Outside, people are queuing for hot chocolate and mulled wine at the annual Christmas fair. Behind them, huge hoardings have gone up to obscure major renovations at the National Gallery, which dominates the square. Inside, behind the hoardings, 52 masterpieces of European art dating from the 1400s to World War I are being checked, conserved, reframed and meticulously packed up before being sent to China for the very first time. An... https://www.scmp.com/lifestyle/arts-culture/article/3202497/van-gogh-turner-fashion-designer-paul-poiret-european-art-masterpieces-come-china-most-ambitious?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/lifestyle/arts-culture/article/3202497/van-gogh-turner-fashion-designer-paul-poiret-european-art-masterpieces-come-china-most-ambitious?utm_source=rss_feed Sat, 10 Dec 2022 09:15:12 +0000 [Sponsored article] When the Covid-19 pandemic took hold in 2020 the Hong Kong Sinfonietta – like just about every performing arts organisation anywhere – struggled to think of ways to keep performing. Could the professional symphony orchestra fulfil its mission to bring classical music to new and existing audiences when venues were having to close amid rapidly changing strict social-distancing rules, which meant groups of people could not gather and performers needed to wear masks while seated... https://www.scmp.com/presented/lifestyle/arts-culture/topics/connecting-beyond/article/3177289/ispa-congress-hong-kong?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/presented/lifestyle/arts-culture/topics/connecting-beyond/article/3177289/ispa-congress-hong-kong?utm_source=rss_feed Thu, 12 May 2022 04:00:28 +0000 A play about a time where humans talk through machines so much that they almost become machines. A play about a boy who is locked in his own body because of an inability to speak. A play where there’s just one member of the audience, and each performance requires them to have a conversation with the single actor, by camera, via the internet, from little screen rectangle to little screen rectangle. 6 highlights of 50th Hong Kong Arts Festival including ‘Game of Thrones’ star’s transhumanism... https://www.scmp.com/native/lifestyle/arts-culture/topics/all-worlds-stage/article/3170534/3-virtual-plays-isolation?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/native/lifestyle/arts-culture/topics/all-worlds-stage/article/3170534/3-virtual-plays-isolation?utm_source=rss_feed Wed, 16 Mar 2022 02:00:10 +0000 NUNO: Visionary Japanese Textiles, by Reiko Sudo and Naomi Pollock, pub. Thames & Hudson NUNO: Visionary Japanese Textiles is an artefact in its own right. Big, gorgeous, almost architectural, it is packed with images of some of the extraordinary fabrics made in the past 50 years or so by the textile company NUNO from its headquarters in Kiryu, two hours north of Tokyo. Nuno is the Japanese word for “cloth”, but somehow by naming itself so simply, the company has brought material-making almost... https://www.scmp.com/magazines/post-magazine/books/article/3169366/stitching-drawing-reiko-sudo-creative-force-nuno?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/magazines/post-magazine/books/article/3169366/stitching-drawing-reiko-sudo-creative-force-nuno?utm_source=rss_feed Sun, 06 Mar 2022 08:15:20 +0000 Even though the Finnish original opera Laila was conceived back in 2019 before anyone had heard the word “Covid”, it could hardly have been better designed for a pandemic. The production, one of the most extraordinary works in this year’s Hong Kong Arts Festival – performances of which organisers announced on February 10 would be postponed – is held for small audiences of just three or four people in a custom-made dome, where music is “made” through recorded vocal interactions with the other... https://www.scmp.com/lifestyle/arts-culture/article/3166357/how-opera-powered-ai-hong-kong-uses-audiences-voices-create?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/lifestyle/arts-culture/article/3166357/how-opera-powered-ai-hong-kong-uses-audiences-voices-create?utm_source=rss_feed Wed, 09 Feb 2022 08:15:24 +0000 “They can’t fly,” says the manager of the Brochier Soieries silk shop in the old quarter of Lyons, France. “Their bodies are too fat. Or their wings are too big. Or something. Anyway, they’d never get off the ground.” I’ve never seen a silk moth before. And now here are two, on a table outside this shop. When I was a child, I learned that if it flies by day it’s a butterfly and if it flies by night it’s a moth. But what if it doesn’t fly at all? The manager, Eliza Ploia, smiles. “There are some... https://www.scmp.com/magazines/post-magazine/long-reads/article/3153989/how-silk-made-fabrics-chinese-history-and?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/magazines/post-magazine/long-reads/article/3153989/how-silk-made-fabrics-chinese-history-and?utm_source=rss_feed Sun, 31 Oct 2021 02:15:25 +0000 Victoria Finlay Victoria Finlay As I walk up York Way beside King’s Cross railway station, towards one of Hong Kong’s most recent London business openings – and a promising new champion for sustainable innovation – I think of two things. The first is how when I was young, this area was dangerous, with cars crawling the kerbs after dark and the blackened walls of the derelict industrial buildings hiding many indiscretions. And how it now seems bright and safe, with space and glass (and recently cleaned up bricks). The second is... https://www.scmp.com/lifestyle/arts-culture/article/3148781/granddaughter-hong-kongs-king-cotton-yarn-opens-start?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/lifestyle/arts-culture/article/3148781/granddaughter-hong-kongs-king-cotton-yarn-opens-start?utm_source=rss_feed Fri, 17 Sep 2021 04:45:20 +0000 When coronavirus pandemic lockdowns started in the UK exactly a year ago, British choreographer Matthew Bourne and his dance company, New Adventures, had just made several high-definition films of their ballet productions that could be made available for streaming. It has turned out to be an excellent move. The series has already been shown in Los Angeles and Russia. This month it is the turn of Hong Kong – as a highlight of this year’s Arts Festival – and New York, with a different show each... https://www.scmp.com/lifestyle/arts-culture/article/3125446/live-ballet-filmed-high-definition-you-feel-if-you-are-there?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/lifestyle/arts-culture/article/3125446/live-ballet-filmed-high-definition-you-feel-if-you-are-there?utm_source=rss_feed Tue, 16 Mar 2021 21:20:14 +0000 The audience for the National Theatre Brno’s recent production of Leos Janacek’s opera Jenufa, being screened as part of the Hong Kong Arts Festival’s celebration of Czech music this year, might be forgiven for thinking that the staging was inspired by the coronavirus pandemic. As the curtain rises for the second act, we see four square rooms, all in a line, uncannily like the next-door rooms of a quarantine hotel. The furnishings in each are identical: two chairs, a table, a basket of fruit, a... https://www.scmp.com/lifestyle/arts-culture/article/3124012/opera-might-make-you-think-coronavirus-pandemic-jenufa-leos?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/lifestyle/arts-culture/article/3124012/opera-might-make-you-think-coronavirus-pandemic-jenufa-leos?utm_source=rss_feed Sun, 07 Mar 2021 07:45:11 +0000 Wu Qian was 13 when she left China for the UK in 1997. It was the first time she had been away from home, but it was just another step on a journey that had begun years earlier. Her musical ability had been spotted when she was seven, just a year after she started playing the piano. By the age of nine, she was studying at the Shanghai Conservatory of Music. Less than four years later Wu was chosen to play to a delegation from the UK-based Yehudi Menuhin School. They were impressed, and soon... https://www.scmp.com/lifestyle/arts-culture/article/3036792/teenage-sweethearts-who-went-their-separate-ways-were?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/lifestyle/arts-culture/article/3036792/teenage-sweethearts-who-went-their-separate-ways-were?utm_source=rss_feed Sat, 09 Nov 2019 04:15:11 +0000 When hearing the announcement that the Lithuanian Pavilion for this year’s Venice Biennale would be located in a remote part of the old Arsenale naval area, critics predicted that the site would be difficult to locate. They pointed out that the area hadn’t been opened to the public before. Once the pavilion opened, the critics were proven wrong. All you have to do is follow the queues. During the preview week in May, Sun & Sea (Marina) — a unique opera for 13 voices set on a beach and watched by... https://www.scmp.com/native/lifestyle/arts-culture/topics/nordic-stage/article/3022100/climate-change-human-exploitation?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/native/lifestyle/arts-culture/topics/nordic-stage/article/3022100/climate-change-human-exploitation?utm_source=rss_feed Fri, 09 Aug 2019 04:09:49 +0000 In December 2012, Finnish composer Sebastian Fagerlund took an interesting creative request. Could he write the music for an opera based on a 1978 film directed by filmmaker Ingmar Bergman? Fagerlund, now 46, had not seen the film – Autumn Sonata – since he was a student. The legendary Bergman remains Sweden’s most well-known director and the request came from the artistic director of the Finnish National Opera and Ballet company, Lilli Paasikivi. “Lilli gave me a copy of the screenplay at a... https://www.scmp.com/native/lifestyle/arts-culture/topics/nordic-stage/article/3021029/when-your-loved-one-hurts-you?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/native/lifestyle/arts-culture/topics/nordic-stage/article/3021029/when-your-loved-one-hurts-you?utm_source=rss_feed Fri, 02 Aug 2019 01:59:21 +0000 The original 1982 book War Horse begins with a formal “Author’s Note”. “In the old school they use now for the village hall hangs a small dusty painting of a horse,” it reads. “… if you were to look closely you can see, written in fading copperplate writing the words ‘Joey. Painted by Captain James Nicholls, autumn 1914.’” War Horse is the story of the horse in that painting, and it was written, the note says, so that neither Joey, nor the war he lived through, will be forgotten. Is the painting... https://www.scmp.com/lifestyle/arts-culture/article/3006164/war-horse-author-michael-morpurgo-inspiration-behind-his?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/lifestyle/arts-culture/article/3006164/war-horse-author-michael-morpurgo-inspiration-behind-his?utm_source=rss_feed Mon, 15 Apr 2019 10:15:04 +0000 He was five years old, crouched in the crook of a beam in an old barn in southern England. And then a man began to sing in the gloom. The boy never forgot it. And it changed his life. “It was 1952, I was five, it was the coronation year, and since the war my parents had been going for the holidays to an institution called Music Camp on a farm in Berkshire [a county in southern England],” recalls David Pountney, one of Britain’s leading opera directors. “It was Florestan’s aria Gott! Welch... https://www.scmp.com/culture/arts-entertainment/article/2136583/when-welsh-national-opera-director-fell-love-music-and?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/culture/arts-entertainment/article/2136583/when-welsh-national-opera-director-fell-love-music-and?utm_source=rss_feed Sun, 11 Mar 2018 07:18:43 +0000 One warm evening in 2015 the entire cast of The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time were gathered for a party at a cottage near Truro in Cornwall, southwest England. They were there as part of the first UK tour of the National Theatre production and were having a rare night off at the digs of one of the cast members, chatting and drinking and eating. Then, in the skies above them, there was a shooting star. “We sat there for 15 or 20 minutes in absolute silence,” remembered Joshua... https://www.scmp.com/culture/arts-entertainment/article/2135261/curious-incident-dog-night-time-lead-actor-talks-about?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/culture/arts-entertainment/article/2135261/curious-incident-dog-night-time-lead-actor-talks-about?utm_source=rss_feed Sat, 03 Mar 2018 01:45:00 +0000 It started with a seven-minute interval act during the Eurovision Song Contest in Dublin in April 1994. A soprano looking like a river fairy opened the performance, joined by a choir dressed in hooded capes, which emerged mystically from a cloud of dry ice. A woman in a short black skirt began to dance with her hands by her sides, performing an Irish step dance with a difference. And a man in a blue satin shirt, flowing like water, also began to step dance, but combined it with tap. Riverdance,... https://www.scmp.com/native/lifestyle/topics/sights-and-sounds/article/2124115/celtic-journey-five-riverdance-spin-offs?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/native/lifestyle/topics/sights-and-sounds/article/2124115/celtic-journey-five-riverdance-spin-offs?utm_source=rss_feed Thu, 14 Dec 2017 01:30:15 +0000 When I first contacted the Berliner Philharmoniker to speak to one of the musicians in their string quartet, the first email I received asked: “Which quartet are you talking about?” The Berlin Quartett, Das Philharmonia Quartett Berlin, I answered, which is playing in Hong Kong on November 19. “I had to ask, as we have eight different quartets in the orchestra,” replied the head of public relations, Elisabeth Hilsdorf. She added that there were 34 chamber music groups “which is a big number”,... https://www.scmp.com/native/lifestyle/topics/sights-and-sounds/article/2117797/berlin-philharmonics-philharmonia-quartett?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/native/lifestyle/topics/sights-and-sounds/article/2117797/berlin-philharmonics-philharmonia-quartett?utm_source=rss_feed Thu, 02 Nov 2017 01:33:11 +0000 Just why is New York the epicentre of jazz? Jazz critic Ted Gioiapondered this question in the Manhattan Institute’s City Journal last year. It hadn’t always been like that: at the beginning of the 20th century every jazz player had to be in New Orleans; by the 1920s – the “Jazz Age” – the best players were in Chicago, which offered better economic opportunities for black musicians. And then by 1930, despite some of the top jazz musicians’ initial resistance and New York audiences’ initial... https://www.scmp.com/native/lifestyle/topics/sights-and-sounds/article/2116208/four-great-new-york-jazz-concerts-hong?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/native/lifestyle/topics/sights-and-sounds/article/2116208/four-great-new-york-jazz-concerts-hong?utm_source=rss_feed Mon, 23 Oct 2017 01:47:15 +0000 When Nederlands Dans Theater presents Safe As Houses during their Asian tour this autumn, they will be following on a well-lit path of using the ancient Chinese shamanic text, the I Ching – (also known as the Yijing or in English the Book of Changes – to create an extraordinary modern dance piece. The I Ching is said to have begun more than 3,000 years ago, on a cloudy mountaintop in Shensi province where a famous oracle spoke to people seeking an answer to their questions. It works on a system... https://www.scmp.com/native/lifestyle/topics/sights-and-sounds/article/2112331/nederlands-dans-theater-takes-dance?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/native/lifestyle/topics/sights-and-sounds/article/2112331/nederlands-dans-theater-takes-dance?utm_source=rss_feed Thu, 12 Oct 2017 01:47:29 +0000 You can make a puppet out of a sock, or a cut piece of paper, or a mug, or you can use a delicate, complicated piece of machinery that will look and move like anything you want – a car, a warhorse, a cartoon character. But how do you make that inanimate object come alive and – if you do it really well – how can you make it move people to tears? I asked the question of British puppeteer Molly Freeman, who is part of a team of three – from Smoking Apples and Dogfish companies – coming to Hong... https://www.scmp.com/native/lifestyle/topics/sights-and-sounds/article/2113306/how-bring-puppet-life-cell-puppeteers?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/native/lifestyle/topics/sights-and-sounds/article/2113306/how-bring-puppet-life-cell-puppeteers?utm_source=rss_feed Mon, 02 Oct 2017 01:34:22 +0000 As both the all-female Salut Salon from Germany and the all-male Vienna-based Janoska Ensemble make their debuts in Hong Kong next month, it’s a perfect time for looking at top classically trained music quartets where the music crosses over, does somersaults in the air and puts the “improv” into improvisation, the vaudeville into Vaughan Williams. Here are five of the best comedy quartets on the circuit right now – and, interestingly, each is either four women or four men. There are few mixed... https://www.scmp.com/native/lifestyle/topics/sights-and-sounds/article/2111778/mozart-madness-five-great-videos-comedy?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/native/lifestyle/topics/sights-and-sounds/article/2111778/mozart-madness-five-great-videos-comedy?utm_source=rss_feed Fri, 22 Sep 2017 01:45:45 +0000 On the day I interviewed conductor, record label director and music entrepreneur Harry Christophers, I tuned in to BBC Radio 3 twice. Once in the morning, for about 15 minutes as I did my morning exercises, and then again for about half an hour on the drive to Wells Cathedral in southwest England, where the choir he founded, The Sixteen, was to give their annual Choral Pilgrimage concert. On both occasions, the presenter played choral music sung by The Sixteen. This choir, which is sometimes... https://www.scmp.com/native/lifestyle/topics/sights-and-sounds/article/2110939/classical-music-impresario-harry?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/native/lifestyle/topics/sights-and-sounds/article/2110939/classical-music-impresario-harry?utm_source=rss_feed Thu, 14 Sep 2017 01:30:45 +0000 This month, Russian pianist Konstantin Lifschitz will be doing something he has never done before – in fact, something which has rarely ever been done. He will be playing all 32 of Beethoven’s piano sonatas in the order they were written, over eight concerts. And he will be doing this in the Grand Hall of the Lee Shau Kee Lecture Centre at the University of Hong Kong (“what a wonderful concert hall that is”) from September 15. “I had this dream to do it, and then they invited me and my first... https://www.scmp.com/culture/arts-entertainment/article/2110679/russian-pianist-play-all-32-beethovens-piano-sonatas?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/culture/arts-entertainment/article/2110679/russian-pianist-play-all-32-beethovens-piano-sonatas?utm_source=rss_feed Tue, 12 Sep 2017 09:00:45 +0000 It is unusual in Hong Kong to have the chance to hear exactly the same piece of music, played by two of the world’s greatest performers, within two weeks of each other. But at the end of September and the beginning of October, two winners of top prizes at recent Frédéric Chopin international piano competitions will perform the 25-minute Chopin Sonata No.2 in B-flat minor Opus 35. And those members of the audience who are lucky enough to hear them both will be able to be their own “competition... https://www.scmp.com/native/lifestyle/topics/sights-and-sounds/article/2109064/musical-extravaganza-pianists-daniil?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/native/lifestyle/topics/sights-and-sounds/article/2109064/musical-extravaganza-pianists-daniil?utm_source=rss_feed Mon, 04 Sep 2017 01:30:45 +0000 The first time I ever saw flamenco I was 23, in Madrid on one of my first business trips, and my Spanish colleagues had suggested we meet for a late night drink in a popular flamenco bar. I was early, and none of my colleagues had turned up. The bar had a very “local” feeling to it, with sawdust on the floor, rough walls and no pretensions – and not even any advertising of the flamenco. It was small; I couldn’t see how there’d be space for a performance. My friends still had not appeared. I had... https://www.scmp.com/native/lifestyle/topics/sights-and-sounds/article/2107826/lets-dance-flamenco-one-valuable-lesson?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/native/lifestyle/topics/sights-and-sounds/article/2107826/lets-dance-flamenco-one-valuable-lesson?utm_source=rss_feed Thu, 24 Aug 2017 02:15:45 +0000 Just before the second act in The Play that Goes Wrong there’s a scene where the cast of hapless actors and crew are stressing because the stage isn’t ready. Then the curtain closes and a minute later opens again on all the cast in (momentarily) perfect organisation. Most things that go wrong in this farce of a play within a play are, of course, deliberate. But one evening when the production was on its UK tour the “crew member” whose role was to sit on the chaise longue while everyone else was... https://www.scmp.com/culture/arts-entertainment/article/2107760/play-goes-wrong-soon-hit-stage-hong-kong-tour-de-farce?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/culture/arts-entertainment/article/2107760/play-goes-wrong-soon-hit-stage-hong-kong-tour-de-farce?utm_source=rss_feed Wed, 23 Aug 2017 09:01:03 +0000 It’s 1947 and a 24-year-old Austrian Jewish scientist (still reeling from meeting Jean-Paul Sartre a few months before, and with the manuscript written for his own first existential philosophy book as a result) meets a young British woman on her first European adventure , at a card game in Lausanne, Switzerland. It is, apparently, love at first sight. It’s not recorded who won the game, but two years later the philosopher André Gorz and his “supreme, beautiful, witty” wife Dorine were married,... https://www.scmp.com/native/lifestyle/topics/sights-and-sounds/article/2106665/human-stories-puppetry-series-hong-kong?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/native/lifestyle/topics/sights-and-sounds/article/2106665/human-stories-puppetry-series-hong-kong?utm_source=rss_feed Mon, 14 Aug 2017 02:00:00 +0000 In 1872, an American railroad millionaire had a bet with his friends. When horses trotted and galloped, were all their hooves ever in the air at the same time, or did one foot always stay on the ground? They spent some time watching their own thoroughbred horses, but somehow it was all too quick to work out. So Leland Stanford, who would later with his wife Jane found Stanford University, decided to see if photography could solve the question. He brought in English-born photographer Eadweard... https://www.scmp.com/native/lifestyle/topics/sights-and-sounds/article/2105039/spellbinding-hong-kong-visual-feast?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/native/lifestyle/topics/sights-and-sounds/article/2105039/spellbinding-hong-kong-visual-feast?utm_source=rss_feed Thu, 03 Aug 2017 01:45:30 +0000 Music and dance are intertwined but, at times, they make an unlikely combination. Take for instance The Pink Floyd: Their Mortal Remains exhibition at the Victoria & Albert Museum in London. It is a sensation of the summer. It comes complete with 1960s telephone boxes, a Bridget Riley-style walkway with swirling psychedelic, optical illusion black and white stripes, and a magical headset that tunes into different sounds and tunes as you walk around the galleries. One of the surprises is the... https://www.scmp.com/native/lifestyle/topics/sights-and-sounds/article/2103266/pink-floyd-kanye-west-rock-music-inspires?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/native/lifestyle/topics/sights-and-sounds/article/2103266/pink-floyd-kanye-west-rock-music-inspires?utm_source=rss_feed Mon, 24 Jul 2017 01:00:15 +0000 Together with guns, tanks, trained personnel and military strategy, every army around the world has another, not so secret weapon – music. It probably started thousands of years ago with drums, branching out to brass instruments, fifes and in some cases bagpipes, giving a rhythm to armies on the move, and either giving a blast of courage to soldiers going to battle, or helping them fill the long periods of waiting and downtime. Today, there is still the need for music, but the types of music... https://www.scmp.com/native/lifestyle/topics/sights-and-sounds/article/2100580/perfect-harmony-military-bands-are-poised?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/native/lifestyle/topics/sights-and-sounds/article/2100580/perfect-harmony-military-bands-are-poised?utm_source=rss_feed Mon, 03 Jul 2017 01:30:45 +0000 William Shakespeare’s play Macbeth has been performed in translation many thousands of times around the world. But the story – of family ties, murder, duty, courage, corruption, betrayal, leadership and the supernatural – has found a particular resonance on this continent in the past 70 or so years, and some of Asia’s most serious directors have created their own adaptations. Each includes a bloody weapon, a wife who in her guilt tries ineffectually to clean the blood off her hands, and a... https://www.scmp.com/native/lifestyle/topics/sights-and-sounds/article/2099270/dagger-which-i-see-me-four-asian?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/native/lifestyle/topics/sights-and-sounds/article/2099270/dagger-which-i-see-me-four-asian?utm_source=rss_feed Thu, 22 Jun 2017 01:15:45 +0000 When British pianist Stephen Hough was 11 years old he had a terrible, recurring fear of being mugged. And then at 12 he was indeed mugged and everything changed. From being a relatively happy child, he became an introverted young teenager whose talent was obscured for a while from everyone including himself. “I had a patchy year when a lot of time was spent at home watching six hours a day of television,” Hough recalls. “I went into myself.” “Looking back it wasn’t so dramatic: two or three... https://www.scmp.com/culture/music/article/2079913/ahead-hong-kong-concert-pianist-stephen-hough-talks-about-music-saved?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/culture/music/article/2079913/ahead-hong-kong-concert-pianist-stephen-hough-talks-about-music-saved?utm_source=rss_feed Wed, 22 Mar 2017 09:01:38 +0000 The first preview performance of the latest revival of the 1996 play The Beauty Queen of Leenane was almost impossible for the cast. “It was just extraordinary,” recalls Aaron Monaghan, 36, who plays Ray, one of the four characters, and arguably the funniest. “It was playing in Galway [in the west of Ireland], where the play was set, and you couldn’t control them. They laughed at every line and when the big laughs happened it just went on and on – it was like a tsunami. They took the play over... https://www.scmp.com/culture/arts-entertainment/article/2072585/will-hong-kong-audiences-get-dark-irish-humour-beauty?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/culture/arts-entertainment/article/2072585/will-hong-kong-audiences-get-dark-irish-humour-beauty?utm_source=rss_feed Tue, 21 Feb 2017 09:02:34 +0000 There is a warning in the Hong Kong Arts Festival brochure, on the page advertising its headline opera for this year. “This production contains onstage smoking and scenes of an adult nature,” it cautions. And it is right on both counts. The National Theatre Brno’s vivid version of Czech composer Leos Janacek’s The Makropulos Case is certainly not the only opera with a post-coital cigarette moment. Richard Strauss’ Der Rosenkavalier sometimes has one, depending on the director, and Georges... https://www.scmp.com/culture/arts-entertainment/article/2070674/smoking-nudity-immortality-janacek-opera-makropulos-case?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/culture/arts-entertainment/article/2070674/smoking-nudity-immortality-janacek-opera-makropulos-case?utm_source=rss_feed Tue, 14 Feb 2017 09:02:46 +0000 After the first performance of Leos Janacek’s Glagolitic Mass, in December 1927 in the stadium concert hall in Brno a reviewer wrote that this was “a marvellous religious work of an old composer”. Janacek was furious. “I am not old. And I am certainly not religious,” he retorted. He was 73 and had less than eight months to live when he wrote this mass, dying in August 1928 of pneumonia after a summer excursion to the Czech hills. In the last decade of his life Janacek, in a fervour of unrequited... https://www.scmp.com/culture/arts-entertainment/article/2068448/great-power-life-40-minutes-janaceks-glagolitic-mass-hong?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/culture/arts-entertainment/article/2068448/great-power-life-40-minutes-janaceks-glagolitic-mass-hong?utm_source=rss_feed Tue, 07 Feb 2017 09:00:45 +0000 Before the cameras even rolled on the dark TNT crime drama Good Behavior, everyone, from director to cast, to crew to producers, knew exactly what each scene would look like. So a scene where lead actor Michelle Dockery (Lady Mary in Downton Abbey) is sitting framed perfectly in the mirror of a grimy room; or another of her in a diner, lit like an Edward Hopper painting full of symmetry and sadness – all were meticulously pre-planned and then communicated visually to the entire team. “The way... https://www.scmp.com/culture/film-tv/article/2045119/actress-michelle-dockery-relished-challenge-new-series-good-behavior?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/culture/film-tv/article/2045119/actress-michelle-dockery-relished-challenge-new-series-good-behavior?utm_source=rss_feed Fri, 11 Nov 2016 08:00:15 +0000 When American pianist Murray Perahia was four years old, he went to kindergarten in the Bronx, New York. But there was a problem. He couldn’t speak a word of English and the only language he could speak, was ancient. “I’d only ever spoken Spanish – the Spanish of the Jews,” says Perahia. The language, still spoken by the descendants of the Jews who had been banished from Spain in the 1490s, is the Spanish of Cervantes, a very old language. “In a way it’s responsible for my music because my... https://www.scmp.com/culture/music/article/2024557/how-pianist-murray-perahia-seeks-out-message-music-he-plays?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/culture/music/article/2024557/how-pianist-murray-perahia-seeks-out-message-music-he-plays?utm_source=rss_feed Tue, 04 Oct 2016 08:31:48 +0000 Akram Khan is a busy man. In the four months leading up to his performance in Hong Kong in November, he had only one time slot available for this interview. And during our 20-minute talk, Khan managed to drive to work, park his car, walk into the English National Ballet in central London, where he is choreographing Giselle, and order breakfast from the canteen. After some 27 years in show business – including 16 years of choreography, numerous awards for dance and services to the arts, and... https://www.scmp.com/culture/arts-entertainment/article/2018560/akram-khan-mines-indian-spiritual-soap-hong-kong-bound?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/culture/arts-entertainment/article/2018560/akram-khan-mines-indian-spiritual-soap-hong-kong-bound?utm_source=rss_feed Tue, 13 Sep 2016 21:48:37 +0000 When Robert and David Goodale were invited to transform a one-hour one-man comedy show Robert had performed 20 years before at the Edinburgh Festival into a full-length play, their first reaction was: no way. After all, David was “61-and-a-bit” (it was five years ago: he is now 66-and-three-quarters) and his younger brother was 57, and the show featured PG Wodehouse’s narrator Bertie Wooster, whom neither of them were quite of an age to play any more. But the producer, Mark Goucher, was... https://www.scmp.com/culture/arts-entertainment/article/2014891/west-end-favourite-perfect-nonsense-heads-hong-kong?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/culture/arts-entertainment/article/2014891/west-end-favourite-perfect-nonsense-heads-hong-kong?utm_source=rss_feed Wed, 07 Sep 2016 04:46:59 +0000 When Cuban international ballet star Carlos Acosta discusses dance with his four-year-old daughter Aila, she has things she wants to share. “She says, ‘You sit down, Daddy,’” Acosta recounts. “She says, ‘Let me show you how to do it.’” The young daughter of the man who has been called “the greatest dancer of his generation” is already keen on dance, and has said quite emphatically that she wants to be a dancer. “But when I see her try to do the splits, I don’t know. I’m not sure that she can... https://www.scmp.com/culture/arts-entertainment/article/1978039/ballet-star-carlos-acosta-says-hong-kong-stop-farewell?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/culture/arts-entertainment/article/1978039/ballet-star-carlos-acosta-says-hong-kong-stop-farewell?utm_source=rss_feed Tue, 21 Jun 2016 04:30:15 +0000 Last year, Musical America, the United States’ oldest classical music magazine, voted “the fiery 50-year-old” Gianandrea Noseda conductor of the year. Last month, the Washington-based National Symphony Orchestra named the Milan-born Noseda its next music director; he will take over in the 2017-18 season. It is good timing for Hong Kong. Even before those announcements, Noseda was already booked to appear at the Hong Kong Arts Festival for two concerts next month, conducting the orchestra and... https://www.scmp.com/lifestyle/music/article/1915916/hong-kong-enjoy-verdi-prokofiev-and-shostakovich-programmes-under?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/lifestyle/music/article/1915916/hong-kong-enjoy-verdi-prokofiev-and-shostakovich-programmes-under?utm_source=rss_feed Tue, 23 Feb 2016 21:00:58 +0000 “VIVA VERDI!” proclaimed the slogans, daubed on walls, or shouted out at meetings and demonstrations during the turbulent years in the middle of the 19th century in Italy. And while anyone arrested could claim that they were simply declaring their love of opera, in truth they were passing on a dangerous (and for a long time illegal) message that it was time for unification and independence. Because as well as spelling out the surname of one of the most popular composers the world had ever seen,... https://www.scmp.com/lifestyle/arts-entertainment/article/1913449/verdis-classic-opera-simon-boccanegra-making-its-hong?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/lifestyle/arts-entertainment/article/1913449/verdis-classic-opera-simon-boccanegra-making-its-hong?utm_source=rss_feed Tue, 16 Feb 2016 20:00:52 +0000 Soon after Charlotte Brontë saw her first book, Jane Eyre, published to great acclaim in 1847, she wrote to a friend about something that was troubling her. She had not, she confessed, served the character of Bertha, the mad woman in the attic, very well. She had made her a monster, instead of a real person with real concerns and feelings. “It made me certain that I wanted to make up for that,” says Sally Cookson, whose thrilling new version of Jane Eyre for the Bristol Old Vic theatre in the UK... https://www.scmp.com/lifestyle/arts-entertainment/article/1909751/hong-kong-bound-production-jane-eyre-finds-right-voices?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/lifestyle/arts-entertainment/article/1909751/hong-kong-bound-production-jane-eyre-finds-right-voices?utm_source=rss_feed Mon, 08 Feb 2016 04:01:55 +0000 Hal is young and lost but he has to grow up fast. His father has snatched the crown of England, and since he is the heir apparent, Hal is due to inherit a troubled kingdom. His best mate is an old alcoholic called Falstaff, who leads him into all sorts of trouble, but even he has some wisdom from which Hal can learn. The question is: will the young Prince learn about the really important things of life in time to lead his motley troops against the powerful French army? The three Shakespeare... https://www.scmp.com/lifestyle/arts-entertainment/article/1903917/heros-journey-shakespeare-charts-history-plays-coming?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/lifestyle/arts-entertainment/article/1903917/heros-journey-shakespeare-charts-history-plays-coming?utm_source=rss_feed Sun, 24 Jan 2016 22:00:30 +0000 In the first weekend of December, one of the most ridiculous looking theatres in the world will rise sedately above the Central Harbourfront. It will be in the shape of an upside-down inflated purple cow, with its comical purple ears waving in the wind beside the Hong Kong Observation Wheel. And if the experience at its home town of Edinburgh in Scotland or its adopted second home at Southbank in London is anything to go by, all around it there will be people. People of all ages and several... https://www.scmp.com/lifestyle/arts-entertainment/article/1882601/udderbelly-brings-taste-edinburgh-fringe-hong-kong?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/lifestyle/arts-entertainment/article/1882601/udderbelly-brings-taste-edinburgh-fringe-hong-kong?utm_source=rss_feed Wed, 25 Nov 2015 22:00:30 +0000 More than half the audience was asleep and at least one was snoring during the world premiere of Max Richter's latest composition at the Wellcome Library in London. And the 49-year-old British composer couldn't have been more pleased. The piece, titled Sleep, lasts eight hours, and it is designed to do exactly that: encourage people to fall asleep. And stay asleep. Richter had the idea one morning. "You could say I woke up with it," he tells the South China Morning Post in a recent interview... https://www.scmp.com/lifestyle/arts-entertainment/article/1878496/max-richters-eight-hour-lullaby-sends-half-audience?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/lifestyle/arts-entertainment/article/1878496/max-richters-eight-hour-lullaby-sends-half-audience?utm_source=rss_feed Sat, 14 Nov 2015 16:26:35 +0000 When you have to drill into the foundations of an ancient city and change the course of a sacred spring to build the spa and pool of a five-star hotel, it helps if you own the local water company. It probably does not help if on the way down you come across the largest hoard of silver Roman coins found in Britain. In 2002 the Malaysian family-run conglomerate YTL (named after self-made billionaire founder Yeoh Tiong Lay and now managed by his seven children, their spouses and, increasingly, some... https://www.scmp.com/lifestyle/travel-leisure/article/1875959/bath-hotel-struck-treasure-during-excavation-work-opens-its?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/lifestyle/travel-leisure/article/1875959/bath-hotel-struck-treasure-during-excavation-work-opens-its?utm_source=rss_feed Thu, 05 Nov 2015 22:00:41 +0000