Ten years on from 9/11 and the polyphony of reactions will not, and should not, be stilled. Creative artists have had to tread carefully in what they amass, and how they present it.
No real surprises on John Hiatt's 20th album, except that he can still find ways to put together a fresh, punchy set of songs using much the same ingredients as he's been using for the past 40 years. The songs, as ever, are rooted in rock, blues, country, Southern soul and old-fashioned R&B, though producer Kevin Shirley (Aerosmith, Iron Maiden, Joe Bonamassa etc) has brought focus and weight to the sound.
No real surprises on John Hiatt's 20th album, except that he can still find ways to put together a fresh, punchy set of songs using much the same ingredients as he's been using for the past 40 years. The songs, as ever, are rooted in rock, blues, country, Southern soul and old-fashioned R&B, though producer Kevin Shirley (Aerosmith, Iron Maiden, Joe Bonamassa etc) has brought focus and weight to the sound.
With theartsdesk readers still reeling from the demise of Italianate sleuthing series Zen, now comes news of the axing of glossy MI5 drama Spooks. The BBC has announced that the show's 10th series, starting next month, will be its last, though it seems the decision to pull the plug was taken by production company Kudos rather than by the Corporation.
Strange portents – the weather is always dry and baking hot this time of year in Fes. This time it was like winter, with lashing rain and thunder for the first few days of the Fes Festival. But then things are strange in general here; events are moving fast throughout the Maghreb. The first day I was there saw a demonstration of thousands in Rabat, and a smaller one in Fes. By the last day a new constitution had been posted online, with the King renouncing some of his powers. The energy in the city seems slightly giddy with expectation and a certain optimism.
Sometimes you can leave a concert feeling slightly shortchanged: a perceived weakness in the programming; an unprepared, lacklustre conductor; a phoned-in performance. No danger of any of the above at the marathon session three of Reverberations, a weekend of concerts at LSO St Luke's and the Barbican devoted to the music and influence of the contemporary US composer Steve Reich. Actually, by the end of the evening, some people may have been ruing just how many artists have fallen under Reich's influence. We filed into the Barbican at 6pm on Saturday.
When cultural talk drifts toward Mr Big, thoughts tend to turn to Sex and the City's Chris Noth, whose New York is world enough and time away from the doomed metropolis populated by the "big fellah" played by Finbar Lynch in Richard Bean's play of the same name. This big guy is, in fact, slight but menacing: the type of man not unacquainted with the very methods of violence which Harold Pinter, among others, dramatised so well. And when Lynch's Costello remarks, "Unlike you, I am not mentally ill," one sits up and takes notice. The issue here has less to do with what Costello is not and everything to do with what and who he is.
It must have been with a leaden heart that the BBC Proms planning team realised that 2010's Last Night would fall plumb on 9/11. How to reconcile all the traditional Brit triumphalism and singing of Jerusalem with the rather more contemporary need to reconcile all, whether out of Jerusalem or not? They did, and full marks for a delicate balancing-act of culture politics and a moving occasion last night (admitted by one who had spent a lifetime avoiding the Last Night of the Proms).