Tag archives for Victoria Kingham
Behind the Scenes at the Jazz Festival
VICTORIA KINGHAM talks to the organisers behind this year’s event Last year, the first year of Hastings’ newest jazz venture, the Festival was very much a home-grown enterprise. Not at…
Fetish & Fantasy – Grace Lau
VICTORIA KINGHAM Since the early 1980s, Grace Lau’s photographic journey through sexuality, gender identity and sado-masochistic subculture has explored a world largely hidden from mainstream view. Fetish Stories brings together…
HIP BOOK REVIEW: Escape From Germany – Another Side
You Can Go Now…But Leave the ButterBy Barbara SchultzThe Book Press, £ BY VICTORIA KINGHAM A few weeks ago we previewed Barbara Schultz’s memoir of her mother, who escaped from…
What’s in the Air? A new graphic novel rises
VICTORIA KINGHAM Artist Jude Montague, ever interested in the history of radio and TV, has produced a lively and sometimes extraordinary graphic novel, detailing the beginnings of radio in Manchester.…
Madagascar to Ethiopia – Hanitra and Haymanot
JUDE MONTAGUE AND VICTORIA KINGHAM Two extraordinary female African musicians, Hanitra Ranaivo from Madagascar and Haymanot Tesfa from Ethiopia, visit Hastings this summer. Hanitra Ranaivo and Jean-Marc Bontemps at the…
John Donaldson New CD Release
VICTORIA KINGHAM Due to be released in August is an album written entirely by pianist John Donaldson, founder of Jazz Hastings. We Were Together, I Forget the Rest, dedicated to…
Love Supreme – Musica Feminina
Rawicz and Spalding – Amazons at the Festival VICTORIA KINGHAM The Love Supreme jazz festival takes place this weekend at Glynde Place, near Lewes. Tickets are still selling but it…
Wertico One-off at Jazz Hastings
VICTORIA KINGHAM Soft-spoken and unassuming, Paul Wertico becomes, behind his kit, a force to reckon with. You can hear why he remained for many years the lynchpin of the Pat…
Matt Ridley’s Antidote at Jazz Hastings
VICTORIA KINGHAM Watching this highly co-ordinated jazz performance, it’s difficult to imagine that the musicians don’t spend all their time together writing, playing, and living the tunes. But the members…
Cosmopolitan Jazz at The Stade
VICTORIA KINGHAM Rob Luft and Elina Duni have been making music together for about nine years, resulting in a near-perfect harmonic rapport. Their choice of numbers is truly universal –…
Open Doors: Fine Music for Free
VICTORIA KINGHAM Hastings Philharmonic Orchestra and Choir, under the redoubtable leadership of Marcio Da Silva, have deservedly secured funds to enable them to perform no less than seven free concerts…
Ripping Yarns
VICTORIA KINGHAM French’s bar in Robertson Street is all exposed brick, chandeliers and cocktails, offering an intimate atmosphere. A couple of weeks ago that atmosphere was augmented by a literary…
Conflict and Contemplation: A Manufactured Thrill and Quiet Promise
VICTORIA KINGHAM The name of Henry Normal is well-known to audiences that frequent literature festivals, Radio 4, and late-night TV comedy. Normal is also responsible for a raft of quality…
Jazz: Luft and Duni Reach for the Moon
VICTORIA KINGHAM Guitarist Rob Luft has been a regular visitor to Jazz Hastings, having appeared here with his own band and with other musicians celebrated for their originality: Byron Wallen,…
Father, Forgive Us
VICTORIA KINGHAM It’s always a joy to remember that the first person recorded as having written music down systematically, was a woman. Hildegard of Bingen was a highly-regarded, highly devout…
Small, but Perfectly Formed
VICTORIA KINGHAM Graced as we are with so many small exhibition spaces in addition to the established Hastings Contemporary and De La Warr Pavilion, it’s easy to miss some of…
Six Characters in Search of a Meaning
VICTORIA KINGHAM On 13 April, there was a rehearsed reading of Lindsay Jayne’s play A spectacular Interview in Studio 27, the White Rock Theatre’s fringe venue. This was quite a feat…
Stables Doors Open for Hot Tap
VICTORIA KINGHAM Dean Stalham’s Hot Tap Theatre year at St Andrews Mews is now complete, and, having had a number of great theatre nights, he is moving on to a…
All us Women 2026
VICTORIA KINGHAM Tucked away in the Rooftop Gallery of De La Warr Pavilion is a small but intriguing exhibition underlining societally-nurtured patterns of violence, emotional imbalance and trauma against women.…
Musical Conversations on the Edge of Modernity
VICTORIA KINGHAM Sonatas for violin and piano were never my thing, really. But I dare say I have watched and listened to more of these in the past four years…
A Triumph for Music and Humanity
VICTORIA KINGHAM Matthew AndrewsRyan Zhu, 2026 winner Hastings International Piano competition had sponsorship to offer free places in the early stages for everyone who wanted to wander in off the…
Alexander Wolfe, Life, and the Universe
VICTORIA KINGHAM Wolfe has that gift of good songwriters: an ability to make lyrics sound like conversation, and vice-versa. I’m not sure that it’s a technique you can learn, but…
Music of the Sphere(s)
VICTORIA KINGHAM Robert Mitchell inhabits a musical sphere which John Fordham, writing in The Guardian 14 years ago, called ‘private’. His albums from 2008 onwards corroborate this view in several…
In service of all the dead: World AIDS day
VICTORIA KINGHAM Erica Smith, founder of Hastings Creatives, is herself a maker. The evening of 1 December (particularly stormy) was an opportunity to display her recently-finished quilt and hear the…
Betty Parsons: Abstract Expression, Spiritual Intervention
VICTORIA KINGHAM The 1913 Armory Show in New York was an exhibition which brought to America, for the first time, the Modern Art that we now see as seminal: Matisse’s…
The Mozart of Basin Street, Cable Street, and Rotherhithe
VICTORIA KINGHAM Sometimes it’s difficult to know where to even begin talking about music which is so good that it takes your breath away quite literally, and unexpectedly. Photo: Peter…
HIP BOOK REVIEW: How the Vote was Won
Mary Raleigh Richardson: The suffragette arsonist who slashed the Rokeby VenusBy Helena Wojtczak, Hastings Press, 2025, pb £, hb £25REVIEW BY VICTORIA KINGHAM The vagaries of the Art world are…
Fun in the Post-Apocalyptic Slime
VICTORIA KINGHAM Along with T. S. Eliot’s The Waste Land, W. B. Yeats’ Second Coming must be one of the most-quoted poems of the past hundred years. Things Fall Apart…
The Complete Lewis Floyd Henry
VICTORIA KINGHAM Walking along a rather quiet stretch of St Leonards seafront the other day in the warm greyness of late September, you may have been surprised to hear a…
Lammermoor, the Inside Story
VICTORIA KINGHAM Lucia di Lammermoor, one of Donizetti’s most famous operas, is ultimately based on a ‘true’ story. Written in 1835, the libretto was inspired by Sir Walter Scott’s historical…
Hats Off to the Hot Tap
VICTORIA KINGHAM It has to be said that in the three months since we last reported on Dean Stalham’s new little theatre Top Hat (oops, sorry, Hot Tap) it has…
Full Circle in the South Downs
VICTORIA KINGHAM Ethereal, careful, and restrained, the saxophone sound of Josephine Davies is once again available to select audiences. Her latest venture is as a member of The Full Circle…
Salsa Night at Jazz Hastings
VICTORIA KINGHAM Salsadelic at EHSAA So, forget serious listening and the appreciation of musical innovation, forget that you think Jazz is only for geeks with beards. This Salsa night was…
Marine Lifein Hastings Contemporary
VICTORIA KINGHAM Odd how music that was cult-radical in the 1960s and 70s has become today’s café muzak; the institutionalisation of the ex-radical. So, sitting in Hastings Contemporary’s new café,…
Modernist Music at Christ Church
VICTORIA KINGHAM Marcio Da Silva seems to have boundless ambition for his choir and orchestra – so much so that for this particular concert he strayed a long way from…
The Notes are Just the Beginning
VICTORIA KINGHAM It’s undoubtedly a privilege to watch skilled professors of music talking with gifted young performers about their interpretations of pianistic works of great genius. The weekend event organised…
Blink and You’ll Miss This: Rahman/Sutherland at Silchester Road
Victoria Kingham Sometimes the most extraordinary musicians come down here and for whatever reason, the occasion is under-publicised. This is the case with an imminent concert by multi-award-winning, British jazz…
Fading Beauty: The Art of Anne Lydiat
VICTORIA KINGHAM This article was originally intended to be the second item in an occasional series about Hastings photographers. However, from Anne Lydiat’s work and writing, it is quite clear…
HIP BOOK REVIEW Strangers and Intimates: The Rise & Fall of Private Life
By Tiffany JenkinsPublished May 2025 by Pan Macmillan, hardcover, price £15REVIEW BY VICTORIA KINGHAM In 1948, when George Orwell published 1984, he imagined the Thought Police. That is, he imagined…
Musicof the Future, Music of the Past
VICTORIA KINGHAM One of the basic principles I have found invaluable is that comparison of one type of music with another, as a value judgement, has got to be invalid.…