Throwback on the interviews we did with the #ToastToFreedom artists for Amnesty International..
Here is #JaneBirkin :
"People have far more power if only they know it. I have always believed that if millions of people sent letters that chockablock the front doors of some ministers, some presidents, and just by the sheer weight of the letters, of the appeals, then they would have to look."
As part of the festival, the renowned Lahnstein Blues Prize, the “Blues-Louis”, which has been awarded since 1997, will this year be awarded to guitarist, singer and composer Carl Carlton. "For decades he has been the most popular German blues guitarist, both nationally and internationally," the organizers explain.
The laudatory speech will be given by the author, moderator and music journalist Volker Rebell.
Read MoreWord is out, tickets are out: Melanie Wiegmann & Carl Carlton - Glory of Love Tour 2023.
13 cities across Germany, from November to December 2023. Don’t miss your spot.
Jane Birkin graced the front pages of most French newspapers on Monday as France mourned the death of the late British actress and singer who enjoyed icon status in the country that she had called home since the late 1960s. “Our tears can’t change anything,” proclaimed Le Parisien newspaper, which first broke the news of Birkin’s death at the age of 76 on Sunday. Libération ran with the simple headline “Without Jane”, while regional newspaper Le Maine Libre referred to the late actress as “The Eternal English Bride of France”.
Read MoreRest in peace, Jane Birkin. We were so honoured to have you part of Amnesty’s Toast to Freedom.
“France’s favourite “petite Anglaise”, the British-born singer and actor Jane Birkin, has died at her home in Paris aged 76. The French president, Emmanuel Macron, paid tribute to Birkin, saying she “embodied freedom and sang the most beautiful words in our language”.
Read MoreMs. Birkin released “Oh! Pardon tu dormais…,” her first album of her own songs written in English, in 2021. “The results are an emotional tour de force from an artist who has never gotten her musical due outside of France,” the music writer Ben Cardew wrote in a review for Pitchfork. Ms. Birkin also continued to act, including in films by Agnès Varda and plays by Patrice Chéreau. She was also popular in France as an activist for women’s and L.G.B.T.Q. rights as well as for her British accent when speaking French, which the French found endearing. “The most Parisian of the English has left us,” the mayor of Paris wrote.
Read MoreMarianne planned to be known, but a pop princess career was the last thing on her mind. She’d be an artist of some kind—she’d go to Cambridge, or the Royal Academy of Music to continue classical singing. She idolized the young Vanessa Redgrave, who once came to talk to Marianne’s theater group. Perhaps Marianne would also play Rosalind, or Imogen in Cymbeline, or even sing Tosca in Covent Garden. Awake long in the night in her convent room, she bent over her workbook, filling page after page of potential stage names, pen names, fantasy names. In time she would realize her real name was her own.
Read MoreSinger and activist Joan Baez tells CNN's John Vause about her work with the Ukraine Children's Action Project, which helps kids who have been affected by the war.
Read MoreThe recordings of the altogether 15 songs were made in the course of the last three years, when the music world more or less came to a standstill, in Berlin, Ireland and Malta and are stylistically most likely to be placed in the genre term "Americana". [...] With "Glory Of Love" a warm-hearted musical diary has been created, which convinces with its idiosyncratic song selection, unpretentious arrangements and natural charm. Perhaps the most beautiful surprise: Here not only two souls have found each other, but also two wonderfully harmonizing voices.
Read MoreU2 frontman Bono has created a range of limited-edition merchandise to raise money for Ukraine following the Russian invasion. Earlier this year, the singer created an illustration of President Zelenskyy which he painted on a backdrop of yellow and blue, celebrating Ukraine’s flag. It also features the following quote from Zelenskyy: “The choice is between freedom and fear.” The image and quote are now available to purchase across a set of five items with funds going to UNITED24, who will use the money to buy ambulances.
Read MoreWhen Christine and the Queens, the progressive French pop artist who also goes by “Chris,” decided he wanted Madonna to voice the narrator on his ambitious, new three-act pop opera, Paranoïa, Angels, True Love, he had to think fast. Now with the magnum opus finally coming out — the end of his “quest” (a word he uses frequently) — Chris tells Rolling Stone he’s just now learning what Paranoïa, Angels, True Love means to him. He also explains how presenting a large-scale dramatic work has informed his vision of the future.
Read MoreRosanne Cash and her husband and producer, John Leventhal, have revealed the launch of their new label RumbleStrip Records. The label will manage archives, forthcoming projects, and reissues, including the first vinyl pressing of Rosanne’s 1993 album, The Wheel, which has been remastered as an expanded edition to commemorate its 30th anniversary. Produced by Leventhal, The Wheel was a landmark album for Cash, marking a new shift in her sound after she moved to New York City.
Read MoreNashville Opera has joined forces with Lexicon Classics to release the first-ever recording of Carly Simon‘s sole opera, “Romulus Hunt.” Nashville Opera will present the recording as a birthday gift to its creator, who will celebrate her 80th birthday on Sunday, June 25, 2023. The work was originally commissioned by the Metropolitan Opera Guild and the Kennedy Center in 1993 and is a semi-autobiographical work by renowned pop singer Carly Simon.
Read MoreAngélique Kidjo’s show at Strathmore offered a bolt of energy from the stage. The set began with percussionist Magatte Sow playing multiple African drums in a several-minute solo session. The other musicians came onto the stage, followed by Kidjo, who entered the stage with high energy. There was no need for Kidjo and her musicians to ramp up as they came in hot. It was up to the rest of us to catch up and hang on.
Read MoreDespite their incessant performance of the hokey cokey with the fashionable side of music, one thing that cannot be denied is Steely Dan‘s impressive command of their instruments. The duo of Donald Fagen and Walter Becker may be constantly fighting a ebb and flow of appreciation from the musical world, with the band arguably one of the most polarising groups in the history of rock and roll, but they know what they’re doing in the studio.
Read MoreThunberg has given speeches, petitioned the Swedish Parliament, protested and more all to raise awareness toward what she believes will be the hazardous effects of climate change on the next generation. Her final strike at the school happened last week, given that Thunberg is graduating. She wasn’t alone on her final day though, legendary artist Patti Smith decided to join her ranks. Smith has long extended her support to climate change activists. “I think the climate movement is the most important thing on the planet right now,” Smith previously told The Guardian.
Read MoreFresh from winning the prestigious Polar Music Prize, the Benin-born singer tells The Africa Report what motivates her to cross cultural divides in her art and advocacy. Angélique’s life, music and art are about as heterodox as it gets. More than three decades as a star songwriter, musician and singer has garnered her the honorific ‘Mama Africa’ across the continent, as well as an attic full of prizes, five Grammys, the Commandeur de l’Ordre des Arts et des Lettres in France, and top musical awards in more than 20 countries.
Read MoreFor us, this book is a gonzo helping of music criticism dessert, a hot fudge sundae with extra sauce. […] “Quantum Criminals” is like a secret handshake between two covers. The best part is that it illuminates details the rest of us may have glossed over for years.
Read MoreSince 1959, Joan Baez has been electrifying eager crowds with her elegance and ferocity. Baez was central to both the folk revival and the civil-rights movement of the nineteen-sixties; her protest songs, delivered in a vivid, warbly soprano, felt both defiant and gently maternal. Now eighty-two, and with twenty-five studio albums behind her, Baez has mostly retired from music, though she is still making poignant and unpredictable art.
Read MoreLike Ephron, Simon looked to her fame-laced life when composing her tales of domestic ennui. When Ephron’s roman à clef, Heartburn, was adapted into a film by Mike Nichols, Simon was tapped to write the film’s theme song, “Coming Around Again”. Both projects – the film and the music – are artifacts of the 1980s. Heartburn and “Coming Around Again” are products of a decade that wrestled with rapidly changing gender roles as well as a generation of Baby Boomers who came of age during the counterculture of the 1960s only to become more conservative and embrace the capitalist, consumerist culture of the ‘Me Decade’ of the 1980s. Simon’s song and album is the standard-bearer of 1980s mainstream, upper-class liberal pop.
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