Ben Cowles speaks with IAN ‘TREE’ ROBINSON and ANDY DAVIES, two of the string pullers behind the Manchester Punk Festival, ahead of its 10th year show later this month
McFarlane salutes Vaughan
MARK TURNER is thrilled by the the British singer’s tribute to the late great Sarah Vaughan
zara
PAUL FOLEY is disappointed by a production that encourages the audience to laugh at rather than with the characters
Odysseus’s homecoming myth is treated as a factual story, with strong resonances for our contemporary world. This is an implicit anti-war film that has an urgent relevance, writes JOHN GREEN
The Star's critics ANDY HEDGECOCK, MARTIN HALL, MICHAL BONCZA, ANGUS REID reviews Holy Cow, One to One: John and Yoko, King of Kings, Panda Bear in Africa
PATRICK JONES recommends a vital anthology from Afghan and Iranian poets where the political and personal fuse into witness-bearing and manifesto-making
WILL STONE is impressed by Hania Rani who is already making a name for herself in the male-dominated world of modern classical music
MIK SABIERS enjoys the theatrical feminist six piece who have a lot of fun that the audience feeds off as the set rolls on
Zara Macfarlane
Sweet Whispers
(Eternal Source Of Light)
GIL SCOTT HERON once poked fun at po-faced purists with his release But Is That Jazz? Heron was one of that generation who changed popular understanding of jazz just as had Davis and Coltrane, Gillespie and Parker before them. In the late ’60s and ’70s Jazz bled into other forms of popular music and while arguably it’s more broadly appreciated today, in a variety of forms, there are still those who mournfully proclaim “jazz is dead.”
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MARK TURNER gets over his discomfort that US cultural imperialism means we know more about US subcultures than our own
It was the workers' own healthcare model in his home town of Tredegar that inspired the socialist's greatest work — the NHS — and it is in his home town that once a year we celebrate him and his ideals, writes MARK TURNER