From Twinkle Twinkle to Space Odyssey and beyond, humans have always turned to music to help deal with the profoundly confronting enormity of the cosmos. Is that a match made in the heavens?
David Bowie posing for the Aladdin Sane tour, 1973. Photograph by Masayoshi Sukita.
Image courtesy of ACMI.
David Bowie has long confounded us with enigmatic acts of gender transgression, with gestures and personas drawn from Hollywood stars, literature and avant-garde art. That flame still burns brightly.
Brian Wilson’s music – the subject of Love & Mercy – is like a lesson we relearn each time we listen.
Francois Duhamel/image.net
Much like the music of the man it’s based on, Love & Mercy is beautiful, complex, somewhat melancholy, and thought-provoking. It also teaches us some things about creative genius, innovation, and art.
Our lives are often shaped and made meaningful by the stars and celebrities who enter them.
EPA/Stephanie Pilick
When Bowie sang of aliens, cross-dressed, or emptied himself of colour and light, he demonstrated the power that music, fashion and performance can have in creating a landscape of endless possibility.
Tim McCallum’s performance on The Voice wowed viewers, and offers an opportunity advance social understandings of disability.
Channel 9
Back in 2012, Amanda Palmer was the first person to break US$1,000,000 in crowdfunding on Kickstarter. In doing so, and since, she’s answered the question: what is the internet for?
At its best, opera can, indeed, be a powerful form of allegorical theatre.
EPA/Gian Ehrenzeller (Image from Verdi's I due Foscari)
A gang-rape scene in a new London staging of Rossini’s Guillaume Tell was greeted with audience booing, and has sparked ongoing controversy. Are opera directors at risk of miscomprehending the medium?
Fifty years ago, in the first half of 1965, the British invasion was officially under way – at least, in music. It seemed like all the biggest hits on the American pop charts came from British bands. Ever…
Angus Young is still touring the “Australian Sound” with AC/DC.
EPA/Sara Johannessen
Blood + Thunder offers an entertaining insight into the development of the “Australian Sound” – but why do the producers fail to acknowledge the influence on the blues on that sound?
When the President of the United States burst into song on the weekend, music amplified the emotional force of his words.
EPA/Richard Ellis
Only a hard heart could fail to respond on some emotional level when Barack Obama, eulogising at one of the most emotionally and racially charged funerals in US history, started singing Amazing Grace.
The unauthorised use of Neil Young’s Rockin’ in the Free World at Donald Trump’s presidential campaign launch raises several questions – and gives us something beautiful to ponder.
Antony and the Johnsons fit perfectly within the world of Dark Mofo.
Images courtesy of Dark Mofo
Transgender artist Antony Hegarty has successfully used her notoriety to publicly address issues close to her, including transgender politics, ecological consciousness and indigenous spirituality.
Global recording companies are casting their eye to the continent as music’s digital revolution continues.
Reuters/Siphiwe Sibeko
Not all children move through the same range of processes when they compose music – but those processes, in themselves, nurture important human qualities.