‘Knowing another world, how other people work and having a completely different role is healthy.’ Daniel Harding rehearses at Musikverein music hall in Vienna in May 2021. Photograph: Joe Klamar/AFP/Getty Images   He has performed with some of the top orchestras in the world, but claims that his new side job as an airline pilot has […]

David Longdon, the leader and multi-instrumentalist for Big Big Train, a British prog rock band, has died at the age of 56. Longdon died at a Nottingham hospital on November 20th as a result of an accident, according to the group. There were no more details provided. "It is unspeakably cruel that a quirk of […]

After their Guardian photoshoot, Let's Eat Grandma appear at a café, dressed as a couple of pop stars. They are both tall – around 5ft 9in – and dressed in luxurious jewel tones with impeccable eyeliner, but the similarity stops there. Jenny Hollingworth has the thick red curls of a young Kate Bush, while Rosa […]

It's a Friday night at Black Heart, a rock and metal pub nestled away on a Camden side street in north London. The walls and ceiling are painted black, the beer taps are adorned with antlers, and Metallica's Enter Sandman is screaming from the speakers. As soon as the chorus begins, the whole pub bursts […]

In the opening act of the Royal Opera's new staging of Verdi's Rigoletto, Titian's alluring Venus of Urbino dominates the sumptuous court of the greedy Duke of Mantua. Later, it is replaced by the same artist's Rape of Europa. We know that the 16th-century duke was a renowned collector – and that when Mantua was […]