It would take a lot to make Tate St Ives, with its misguided commitment to celebrating what now looks like a byway of British art, exciting - but they may have cracked it with an exhibition juxtaposing the life and work of Beach Boys genius Brian Wilson with the story of art since the 1960s. The UK's most eclectic live-art festival celebrates its 10th anniversary with a host of new commissions and premieres including Joshua Sofaer's Name in Lights (your chance for celebrity-style fame) and Ballet on the Buses. Various venues in Birmingham (0121-244 8084), until June 22.
The exact 150th anniversary of the great man's birth is marked with weekend-long celebrations in Birmingham and Manchester. Sakari Oramo conducts the CBSO in the three great oratorios, while Mark Elder and the Hall e offer a two-part tribute, featuring the Second Symphony and The Kingdom. The only UK festival with a reputation to rival that of Glastonbury.
This year, the Buckfast-fuelled revels are spread over three days and feature Arctic Monkeys, the Killers, Snow Patrol, Arcade Fire and Amy Winehouse. Balado, Kinross (0870 1690100), July 6 to 8. Rachel Griffiths and Calista Flockhart - in her first television role since Ally McBeal - lead the cast in this ensemble drama about a dysfunctional Californian family.
Sally Field plays the passive- aggressive matriarch, while Wales's own Matthew Rhys also stars, doing his best American accent. This century's Salvador Dal i has created something truly Dal i -esque: the bejewelled skull that is the centrepiece of his new show is the kind of surrealist luxury object Avida Dollars would have loved. Except it outdoes him in expense, of course.
Hirst is also showing a bisected tiger shark. White Cube, London (020-7930 5373), June 3 to July 7. The original let's-do-the-show-right-here Rodgers and Hart 1937 classic about a group of teenagers putting on a homemade musical.
Bulging with hit songs, the show is directed by Martin Connor and mixes youthful effervescence with lyric sophistication. Festival Theatre, Chichester (01243 812917), June 7 to July 7. Famed for its preponderance of bikers throwing bottles of urine at bands that fail to meet their exacting standards, Britain's main metal festival this year features Linkin Park, My Chemical Romance and Marilyn Manson.
Picasso was the greatest printmaker since Rembrandt. This survey of his graphic achievement is complemented by a biographical show at the National Museum of Scotland. Dean Gallery, Edinburgh (0131-624 6200), July 14 to September 23.
Originally opened in 1951 to coincide with the Festival of Britain, the RFH has been renovated by Allies and Morrison. Expect ship-shape d e cor, much-improved acoustics and the smart new Skylon restaurant from Festival of Britain veteran, Terence Conran. Michael's comeback shows last year were minimal by arena standards, but he can still hold a vast audience with his voice alone.
Now, he is the first artist to play the new Wembley. Wembley Stadium, London (0870 380 0148), June 9 and 10. Antony Sher stars in Sartre's play about the great 19th-century romantic actor, Edmund Kean.
Director Adrian Noble has updated the action to the time of the play's composition, the early 1950s, turning it into an existentialist drama. The re-invented Isle of Wight festival seems to be building into a major event. Headliners include the omnipresent Snow Patrol and the reliably fantastic Muse, with the Feeling, Kasabian and cheerily preposterous Aussies Wolfmother bringing up the rear.
Seaclose Park, Isle of Wight (08705 321 321), June 8 to 10. Four-day spectacular of free outdoor events, including aerialists and bungee jumpers, torch-lit acrobatics, music, and a day of contemporary outdoor dance at Canary Wharf. Wren's Royal Naval College, London, and other venues (see June 21 to 24.
Salvador Dal i collaborated with Alfred Hitchcock on Spellbound, and worked on a short animated film with Walt Disney - in other words, he worked alongside the two greatest geniuses of popular cinema, who recognised a fellow spirit. This exhibition, which includes these collaborations along with many others, ought to be a delight. Tate Modern, London (020-7887 8888), June 1 to September 9.
A biopic of Edith Piaf, with a widely acclaimed, big-hearted central performance from Marion Cotillard as the singer. The cream of French character acting is on show, including, inevitably, Gerard Depardieu, putting in a mop-haired, bulbous-nosed appearance as Louis Lepl e e, the club owner who discovered her. An unmissable gathering of the global art world, and a unique chance to catch up with the latest movements, fashions and stars.
You can always recover by visiting Titian's Assumption altarpiece in the church of the Frari. Biennale Gardens, Arsenale and other venues (details: 0039 041 521 8711), June 10 to November 21. The American tap legend stars in a specially created new show, Live for London.
Glover's exquisite sense of rhythm is underlined by the heavy bass beats of hip-hop - more street than silver screen. Sadler's Wells, London (0837 737 7737), June 13 to 16. For a man steeped in the folklore of the blues, Jack White seems to be taking a curiously Anglophile turn on the duo's new album: for one thing, it's called Icky Thump - a mishearing of an expression used by his Bolton-born wife Karen Elson.
The Aldeburgh Festival has an Italian theme this year; it begins with a new production of Britten's Death in Venice, and makes special features of the music of Monteverdi and Luigi Nono. The visit from Rinaldo Alessandrini's vocal and instrumental ensemble to perform Monteverdi's sublime Sixth Book of Madrigals promises to be the highlight. JRR Tolkien's fable is given a lavish musical treatmen.
Matthew Warchus directs, while AR Rahman, Varttina and Christopher Nightingale supply the music for a show that sounds like a populist alternative to Wagner's Ring cycle. Theatre Royal, London (0870 890 6002), June 19 to March 29, 2008. Writer Debbie Horsfield returns to prime-time with an altogether darker offering than her hairdressers' drama, Cutting It.
True Dare Kiss stars Dervla Kirwan, Lorraine Ashbourne and Esther Hall as sisters for whom the death of their father heralds the unearthing of a terrible secret. If you are not all Shakespeared out by the RSC's Complete Works, the prospect of Pete Postlethwaite as Prospero is pretty magical. Greg Hersov directs Shakespeare's farewell to the theatre.
Royal Exchange, Manchester (0161-833 9833), until July 7. A rare chance to see the greatest - and the only - avant-garde theatre/comedy/visual-art act in the business, as Kim Noble and Stuart Silver bring back their weird 2004 techno-floorshow, which dramatises the breakdown of their relationship. Soho Theatre, London (0870 429 6883), June 21 to 23, July 3 to 7.
Rembrandt's portraits are rightly revered, but his brilliant contemporary, Hals, is undervalued. This is a chance to compare them, along with other masters of the Dutch golden age. The overexposed dandy hits the road again with his 2006 show Shame, a scorn-scorched expos e of red-top culture and his own priapic persona that reminds us that standup is Brand's first and most enduring skill.
As much a social phenomenon as a band, AfroReggae hail from the Rio de Janeiro shanty towns, or favelas. Formed in reaction to what they describe as a "massacre" of innocent favela-dwellers by police, they began to promote musical projects to encourage local youth away from the drug trade. Expect socially concerned lyrics, samba-reggae and furious percussion.
Barbican, London (0207-638 8891), June 28 and 29. Whatever one thinks of the idea of staging Bach's passions, Katie Mitchell's new production of the more massive of them is an intriguing prospect at Glyndebourne. Tenor Mark Padmore sings the role of the Evangelist, and Henry Wadding is Christus, while the other soloists include Sarah Connolly and Christopher Purves; Richard Egarr conducts the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment.
Glyndebourne Opera House, Lewes (01273 813813), in rep from July 1. The first Manchester International Festival kicks off with a circus opera composed by Damon Albarn and directed by Chen Shi-Zheng, featuring Chinese acrobats and martial arts. Palace Theatre, Manchester (0871 230 1888), June 28 to July 7.
When Morris does Mozart, he does it in style. A marathon evening of piano music frames a triptych of new works, all choreographed by Morris at his witty, passionate and surprising best. The wonderful Emanuel Axe plays live; set designs are by Howard Hodgkin.
Barbican, London (0845 120 7550), July 4 to 7. Imported wholesale from Vienna, where it was one of the highlights of the city's Mozart 250th-anniversary celebrations last year, this multicultural extravaganza curated by Peter Sellars includes several UK premieres - John Adams's latest opera, Kaija Saariaho's oratorio based on Simone Weil and a film opera from Indonesia. Barbican, London (020-7638 8891), July 4 to August 12.
The pretentious upgrade-style title for this sequel is a bit of a turnoff, but Die Hard has a place in our hearts. Here, Bruce Willis takes on an internet-based terrorist organisation, and doing so carrying assault weaponry while stripped to the waist. Let's hope he has been putting in the ab crunches.
A grim, semi-stylised war film from French director Bruno Dumont, in which a group of guys find themselves called up to fight a war in an unspecified European country that stands loosely for Belgium. Should be thought-provoking fare. Royal Academy, London (020-7300 8000), July 7 to September 30.
Set those amps to 11 for the long-awaited return of the legendary metal combo, reassembled to help heal the earth" as part of Al Gore's climate-change concert. Wembley Stadium, London, July 7. Broadcast on BBC1.
Dominic Dromgoole directs Shakespeare's most enchanting comedy. It is the Globe's first crack at the play, and it will be intriguing to see how its poignant lyricism fares in this bustling milieu open to the skies. Shakespeare's Globe, London (020-7401 9919), July 11 to October 7.
This show of structural engineer Cecil Balmond's "new aesthetic forensic", investigating eye-boggling new forms of pattern, ornament and geometry, promises engineering as both challenging art and rigorous science - all in a superb seaside Copenhagen gallery. Louisiana Museum of Contemporary Art, Humlebaek, Denmark (0045 4919 0719), June 15 to October 21. Heiner Goebbels's music-theatre piece brings together the London Sinfonietta and the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment, and uses a text by Gertrude Stein spoken by the female members of both ensembles.
Essman is the co-star of Larry David's TV impro-comedy Curb Your Enthusiasm - she plays Susie Green, a role for which she has been called "the most foul-mouthed woman in sitcom history". She is also an acclaimed New York standup, making her UK debut at the Newbury Festival this July. Ballet galas tend to follow a predictable, glitzy format, but Ballet Boyz Michael Nunn and Billy Trevitt promise to break the mould.
To celebrate RFH's new dance-friendly stage, they are curating an evening of film and live performance to embrace the full gamut of British ballet in the 21st century, from classical to contemporary styles, the Royal to Rambert. If it has a fraction of the genius routinely shown on the small screen, it will still be one of the films of the year. A regular fixture at Rivermead, Reading for the past 17 years, this year Womad is moving west to Wiltshire, to a new site that can cater for 20,000.
The lineup promises to be as varied as ever, and artists so far confirmed include Peter Gabriel (the man who launched the festival), as well as Senegalese veteran Baaba Maal, Cesaria Evora from the Cape Verde islands, bluesman Taj Mahal and dozens more. Charlton Park, Malmesbury, Wiltshire ( July 27 to 29. Ian Rickson directs an early, little-known Pinter play about the madness, paranoia, lust and suspicion that pervade a state-run home for social dissidents.
This is Pinter at his most wildly comic and politically prescient. With his latest album From the Plantation to the Penitentiary, Wynton Marsalis took the next big step on his mission to make the world aware of why jazz happened, and who really made it. This gig furthers that cause, establishing the links between contemporary manifestations of the music and the African dances performed in the 19th century in New Orleans' Congo Square.
Flying high from last year's award-winning London season, the Bolshoi return with a powerful programme. Highlights include a new production of Corsaire, based on research into the original staging; a new ballet by Christopher Wheeldon; a return of the deliciously revived Bright Stream; and Carlos Acosta making his guest debut as Spartacus. Coliseum, London (0870 145 0200), July 30 to August 18.
Fifty years since its premiere at Cannes, Ingmar Berman's dark, existentialist fantasy returns to the cinema screen in a new, digitally enhanced print. The design of this year's Serpentine pavilion (under wraps) is by Olafur Eliasson, whose 2003 installation The Weather Project mesmerised crowds at Tate Modern, Kjetil Thorsen of Snohetta architects (Bibliotheca Alexandrina, Egypt) and Arup's Advanced Geometry Unit. Now here's a show with a twist - Dexter (Michael C Hall of Six Feet Under fame) is a crime-scene blood-spatter expert by day and a vigilante serial killer by night.
Despite being a sociopath with a hobby involving abduction, power tools and a lot of gaffer tape, Dexter the man is loveable, funny and engaging. A major event for all fans of the veteran folk-rockers, including appearances by Richard Thompson and his band, and a reunion of the Fairports' legendary 1969 lineup. Also appearing: Seth Lakeman, Jools Holland, Show of Hands, and of course the current Fairport roster Cropredy, near Banbury, August 9 to 11.
Details: Chosen by Michael Billington, Peter Bradshaw, Andrew Clements, Robin Denselow, John Fordham, Lyn Gardner, Jonathan Glancey, Michael Hann, Jonathan Jones, Brian Logan, Judith Mackrell, Gareth McLean and Alexis Petridis
News RSS