Latest news with #LastDinnerParty
Telegraph
04-07-2025
- Entertainment
- Telegraph
Nile Rodgers: Music saved my life ... and David Bowie's too
Nile Rodgers has said music saved his and David Bowie 's lives. The Chic star, 72, made the comments while guest curating a display for the new David Bowie Centre, which features personal correspondence between the two musicians. Speaking about their friendship, Rodgers said: 'My creative life with Bowie provided the greatest success of his incredible career, but our friendship was just as rewarding. Our bond was built on a love of the music that had both made and saved our lives.' The centre, put together by the V&A Museum, will feature a bespoke Peter Hall suit worn by Bowie during the Serious Moonlight tour and chosen for display by Rodgers. It will also showcase photographs of Bowie, Rodgers and the guitarist Stevie Ray Vaughan recording Bowie's hit song Let's Dance in New York. Rodgers produced Let's Dance and the 1983 album of the same name, as well as the 1993 album Black Tie White Noise, with personal correspondence on display relating to the latter. Costumes worn during Bowie's Ziggy Stardust period, and those worn by other musicians including Sir Elton John and PJ Harvey, will also be on display. The centre will open within the museum's new East Storehouse in the Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park, in Stratford, east London, on Sept 13. The Last Dinner Party, the Brit Award-winning indie rock band, have also curated part of the exhibition, describing Bowie as a 'constant source of inspiration to us'. Their items include Bowie's elaborate handwritten lyrics for his song Win, and notes and set lists for his 1976 Isolar tour. The band said: 'David Bowie continues to inspire generations of artists like us to stand up for ourselves. 'It was such a thrill to explore Bowie's archive and see first hand the process that went into his world-building and how he created a sense of community and belonging for those that felt like outcasts or alienated – something that's really important to us in our work too.' Access to the David Bowie Centre will be free, with tickets released nearer its opening. The David Bowie archive, which boasts more than 90,000 items, was acquired by the V&A with the help of the David Bowie Estate, the Blavatnik Family Foundation and Warner Music Group. The centre will be spread across three zones which will include curated displays, audio visual installations and quieter study areas, allowing visitors to view the Bowie archive on their own, from musical instruments to stage models. Small displays will tell the stories behind the singer's albums and also look at his multidimensional creative approach, including unrealised projects, collaborations and influences. The East Storehouse opened at the end of May, and features the Order An Object initiative, where visitors can pre-book to see an item from its entire collection. The V&A will also open the V&A East Museum, in an area named East Bank, in spring 2026.
The Guardian
04-07-2025
- Entertainment
- The Guardian
V&A announces details for David Bowie Centre
From the Thierry Mugler suit he got married in to his costumes from the Ziggy Stardust and Aladdin Sane era, David Bowie's most iconic looks will be available for fans to see up close as the V&A museum opens its David Bowie Centre on 13 September. Part of the V&A's wider archival project, the V&A East Storehouse, the Bowie archive comprises more than 90,000 items – which won't all be on display at once. Instead, in details revealed today, visitors will be able to order up items to look at closely, while V&A archivists and star curators will make selections to go on display in a series of rotating showcases. Tickets will be free. Nile Rodgers, the Chic bandleader and guitarist who worked with Bowie on the hit album Let's Dance, has curated one of these areas, with items including correspondence between the two, studio images taken by Peter Gabriel during the making of Bowie's Rodgers-assisted 1993 album Black Tie White Noise, and a bespoke suit designed by Peter Hall for the Serious Moonlight tour. 'My creative life with David Bowie provided the greatest success of his incredible career, but our friendship was just as rewarding,' Rodgers said, announcing the partnership. 'Our bond was built on a love of the music that had both made and saved our lives.' Also playing guest curators are the members of chart-topping alt-pop band the Last Dinner Party, whose selections include handwritten lyrics for the Young Americans album, studio photos by Mick Rock and – rather nerdishly – the manual for Bowie's EMS synth, heard on the so-called Berlin trilogy of albums. 'David Bowie continues to inspire generations of artists like us to stand up for ourselves,' the band said in a joint statement. 'When we first started developing ideas for TLDP, we took a similar approach to Bowie developing his Station to Station album – we had a notebook and would write words we wanted to associate with the band. It was such a thrill to explore Bowie's archive, and see first-hand the process that went into his world-building and how he created a sense of community and belonging for those that felt like outcasts or alienated – something that's really important to us in our work too.' Rodgers and the band's choices will be included in an area featuring items that are rotated every six months or so, with fresh guest curators each time. There will also be eight other sections showcasing around 200 Bowie items curated by the V&A team in collaboration with young people from the neighbouring London boroughs of Hackney, Newham, Tower Hamlets and Waltham Forest, with each area refreshed every few years. These will include a look at Bowie's unrealised projects, such as film tie-ins with the Diamond Dogs and Young Americans albums, and even a mooted adaptation of George Orwell's 1984. Other areas will spotlight iconic moments such as his 1987 Glass Spider tour, his collaborations with bassist Gail Ann Dorsey and the creation of the Ziggy Stardust persona. There will also be an interactive installation tracing Bowie's impact on pop cultural figures from Issey Miyake to Lady Gaga, and a film compiling live performances across his career. What will really provoke Bowie fans' fascination, though, is seeing objects up close, 'including costumes, musical instruments, models, props and scenery' according to the V&A. Visitors will be able to book to see five items each visit, with two weeks' notice, using the V&A's 'order an object' service. Bookings will begin in September. More than 70,000 of the archive items are photographic prints, negatives and transparencies, and these, along with other paper-based items – 'notebooks, diaries, lyrics, scripts, correspondence, project files, writings, unrealised projects, cover artwork, designs, concept drawings, fanmail and art' – will also be available to view by special appointment. The V&A first acquired Bowie's archive in 2023, with director Tristram Hunt promising the David Bowie Centre would be a 'new sourcebook for the Bowies of tomorrow'. He and his team will hope the centre will be a major tourist draw to its new V&A East Storehouse, which opened in May in the Olympic Park, Stratford. Like the David Bowie Centre within it, the building showcases items from the V&A's collection, and allows visitors to book to see other items close up. 'We wanted it to feel like an immersive cabinet of curiosities,' the building's architect Liz Diller told the Guardian. 'So you land right in the middle, at the very heart of the building, flipping the usual progression from public to private.' The Guardian's architecture critic Oliver Wainwright said the buildings gives 'a thrilling window into the sprawling stacks of our national museum of everything', while art critic Jonathan Jones said in a five star review: 'This is what the museum of the future looks like – an old idea that's now been turned inside out, upside down, disgorging its secrets, good and bad, in an avalanche of beautiful questions, created with curiosity, generous imagination and love.' Another V&A outpost in the Olympic Park, the more traditional gallery space of V&A East Museum, will open in spring 2026.
Perth Now
03-07-2025
- Entertainment
- Perth Now
'Thank you for the miraculous work...' Pink Floyd's David Gilmour pays tribute to Nordoff and Robbins charity as he accepts O2 Silver Clef Award
Pink Floyd legend David Gilmour received the prestigious O2 Silver Clef Award for his contribution to music in London on Wednesday night (03.07.25). The 79-year-old rock icon accepted the accolade at the O2 Silver Clef Awards ceremony from Radiohead's Jonny Greenwood and during his speech, Gilmour praised 'the wonderful Nordoff and Robbins music therapy charity" that the awards support every year. He added: "My relationship with them goes back 50 years – thank you to them for this award and for the miraculous work they do, and have done since then.' The star-studded ceremony, hosted by Edith Bowman and held at JW Marriott Grosvenor House hotel, brought together artists, industry leaders and celebrity supporters for an unforgettable evening of celebration, fundraising and reflection on the transformative power of music. Other winners on the night included Sophie Ellis-Bextor who was crowned Best Female, receiving her statuette from songwriter Cathy Dennis, Mika, who picked up the Global Impact Award for his multilingual stardom and advocacy and The Last Dinner Party, who won the Best New Music prize. Rick Astley, The Corrs, IDLES, Soul II Soul, Noah Kahan, AURORA, Tony Christie and Chase and Status also took home top honours. The 49th annual O2 Silver Clef Awards, raised £715,000 and counting for Nordoff and Robbins, the UK's largest music therapy charity. Before the ceremony started, Sandra Schembri, CEO of Nordoff and Robbins, admitted she was looking forward to meeting one of her heroes in Wish You Were Here singer Gilmour. Speaking exclusively to BANG Showbiz, Sandra said: "So as a prog rock child, the fact that David Gilmore is in the room, I'm going to try and be very professional, but I doubt I'll be able to!" Sandra also teased that there are already big plans happening to mark the event's 50th anniversary in 2026. She said: "So next year is our 50th, we've been planning already. It's going to be very big, and we are hoping to have all our recipients in the room, so watch the space!" Emphasising the important work Nordoff and Robbins does with adults and children with various needs, Sandra added: "Music therapy, done by music therapists, it's music in the hands of an expert, and what it is is when words fail, music speaks. "Music therapists helps them access that. We work with children, special education needs, we work with people with dementia, we've had children speak for the first time in some of our therapy sessions, and we've had people with dementia who've been closed off for many, many, many years actually find themselves and recognise their family again for the first time in years in a session, so t's very powerful. "We find the musicians that connect with us, they see what else music can do. That what they that they feel, and they see their audience, that connection, that really exists. When they see that connection being used in this extra way, it's an instant connection with the event, so for them, it gets in their hearts."
The Guardian
27-06-2025
- Entertainment
- The Guardian
BC Camplight: A Sober Conversation review – an eccentric rock opera confronting childhood abuse
'Some people face the music,' Brian Christinzio sings on The Tent. 'Some people face the floor.' On this outlandish seventh album, the Manchester-based US singer-songwriter makes a bold bid for the former. That song alone excavates childhood memories, with Christinzio crunching leaves and finding caterpillars, cutely illustrated by twinkling piano, only for abrupt tonal shifts (siren-like drones, distorted vocals, heavenly choirs) to crash in like intrusive thoughts. It's a queasy, visceral introduction to a record which confronts the summer he was abused, as a child, by an adult camp counsellor. A Sober Conversation is an eccentric rock opera about repression, depression and anger told with the meta-theatrical, tragicomic style that has won Christinzio a cult following. The title track veers into showtune territory, shimmying in double time as he employs a kooky variety of voices to tease a 'big secret', but also has a gorgeous, melancholy vocal melody that Sufjan Stevens would be proud of. Single Two Legged Dog, a glam piano-pop duet with the Last Dinner Party's Abigail Morris, sticks a middle finger up to pity and culminates in a howling crescendo. Best (or most galling) of all is Where You Taking My Baby?, a chilling, jaunty confrontation of his abuser with sparse, lovely guitar underpinning the song's gut-churning question. Christinzio's inventive, infuriating writing often packs three extra songs into every single track – but this time for good reason. When the chatter falls away on instrumental closer Leaving Camp Four Oaks, he achieves a hard-won, sun-lit sense of peace.
The Guardian
27-06-2025
- Entertainment
- The Guardian
BC Camplight: A Sober Conversation review – an eccentric rock opera confronting childhood abuse
'Some people face the music,' Brian Christinzio sings on The Tent. 'Some people face the floor.' On this outlandish seventh album, the Manchester-based US singer-songwriter makes a bold bid for the former. That song alone excavates childhood memories, with Christinzio crunching leaves and finding caterpillars, cutely illustrated by twinkling piano, only for abrupt tonal shifts (siren-like drones, distorted vocals, heavenly choirs) to crash in like intrusive thoughts. It's a queasy, visceral introduction to a record which confronts the summer he was abused, as a child, by an adult camp counsellor. A Sober Conversation is an eccentric rock opera about repression, depression and anger told with the meta-theatrical, tragicomic style that has won Christinzio a cult following. The title track veers into showtune territory, shimmying in double time as he employs a kooky variety of voices to tease a 'big secret', but also has a gorgeous, melancholy vocal melody that Sufjan Stevens would be proud of. Single Two Legged Dog, a glam piano-pop duet with the Last Dinner Party's Abigail Morris, sticks a middle finger up to pity and culminates in a howling crescendo. Best (or most galling) of all is Where You Taking My Baby?, a chilling, jaunty confrontation of his abuser with sparse, lovely guitar underpinning the song's gut-churning question. Christinzio's inventive, infuriating writing often packs three extra songs into every single track – but this time for good reason. When the chatter falls away on instrumental closer Leaving Camp Four Oaks, he achieves a hard-won, sun-lit sense of peace.
