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Howard Davis
Scoop Arts Editor
Educated at Cambridge and UCLA; worked on several major Hollywood feature films and as a Kundalini Yoga instructor in Los Angeles; currently enjoying life in Wellington.
Howard Davis - Latest News [Page 8]
(Almost) A Family Affair - The Kuijken String Quartet
Monday, 17 July 2017, 9:05 am | Howard Davis
Chamber Music New Zealand has scored another coup with the Kuijken String Quartet's current tour of New Zealand. As the co-founder of both La Petite Bande in 1972 and the Kuijken String Quartet in 1986, Sigiswald Kuijken is internationally recognized ... More >>
Christopher Marlowe & 'The Tragedy of Dr. Faustus'
Monday, 26 June 2017, 11:04 am | Howard Davis
Director Devon Nuku has taken a risk by setting his abridged production of Christopher Marlowe’s The Tragedy of Doctor Faustus in the 1920s, and casting a woman as the learned academic who makes a pact with the devil to gain twenty-four years of granted wishes. More >>
A Gothic Melodrama - ’My Cousin Rachel’
Friday, 23 June 2017, 9:52 am | Howard Davis
A remake of the 1952 psychological melodrama (first adapted from Daphne du Maurier's 1951 novel by Nunnally Johnson and starring Olivia de Havilland and Richard Burton), this new version of My Cousin Rachel was written by director Roger Michell. Beautifully ... More >>
Howard Davis Review: True Versatility - Dianne Reeves
Monday, 12 June 2017, 9:23 am | Howard Davis
Dianne Reeves was born in 1956 in Detroit, but grew up in Denver among a naturally talented musical family ... More >>
Howard Davis Review: True Versatility - Dianne Reeves
Monday, 12 June 2017, 9:20 am | Howard Davis
Dianne Reeves was born in 1956 in Detroit, but grew up in Denver among a naturally talented musical family ... More >>
Buddy Rich Redivivus - Dave Weckl & Rodger Fox
Friday, 9 June 2017, 9:46 am | Howard Davis
The Wellington Jazz Festival continues to attract jazz luminaries from around the globe. In the past two years we have been privileged to hear Chick Corea, Gary Burton, and Wayne Shorter's quartet. Somewhat misleadingly, Thursday night's headliners were ... More >>
Shape & Texture - Bill Frisell at Wellington Jazz Festival
Thursday, 8 June 2017, 9:39 am | Howard Davis
The Wellington Jazz Festival continues to attract jazz luminaries from around the globe. In the past two years we have been privileged to hear Chick Corea, Gary Burton, and Wayne Shorter's quartet. This year, we're privileged to hear three more stellar ... More >>
Four Old Bach Favourites - Howard Davis Review
Wednesday, 31 May 2017, 11:06 am | Howard Davis
As part of Chamber Music New Zealand’s Kaleidoscopes Season, Masaaki Suzuki and the prestigious Juilliard415 ensemble performed superbly-executed renditions of four perennial crowd-pleasers - Bach's Orchestral Suite No 1 in C Major , the Concerto ... More >>
Kathryn Stott & the New Zealand String Quartet
Tuesday, 9 May 2017, 10:49 am | Howard Davis
Known mainly for her interpretations of the French piano repertoire, pianist Kathryn Stott treated her audience to a virtuoso performance tinted with evanescent colours and a shimmering, elusive luminosity at Wellington's Michael Fowler Centre. Accompanied ... More >>
Howard Davis Review: Olivier Assayas' 'Personal Shopper'
Monday, 24 April 2017, 5:18 pm | Howard Davis
Olivier Assayas’ Personal Shopper is stylish, mysterious, and very strange indeed. It manages to be both ghost story and suspense thriller, yet also a portrait of numbed loneliness and ennui , held together by an peculiarly inexpressive performance from ... More >>
Never Too Old to Rock & Roll - Jethro Tull
Friday, 21 April 2017, 11:26 am | Howard Davis
As Greil Marcus recently observed in an NYRB review of Robbie Robertson's autobiographical Testimony , in rock and roll there is always an origin story. In the case of Jethro Tull founder Ian Anderson, he claims to have been influenced by his father's big ... More >>
Review: The Contemporary Relevance of Denial
Tuesday, 18 April 2017, 10:16 am | Howard Davis
Directed by Mick Jackson, from a screenplay by David Hare, based on Deborah Lipstadt's History on Trial: My Day in Court with a Holocaust Denier , Denial has all the hallmarks of a riveting courtroom drama. More >>
Colin McCahon's 'On Going Out with the Tide' - Howard Davis
Monday, 10 April 2017, 11:43 am | Howard Davis
Now that the egregious excrescence of Cindy Sherman's cos-play has finally gone the way of all flesh, Wellington's City Gallery has mounted a extensive retrospective of Colin McCahon's work from the 1960s and 1970s. Curated by Wystan Curnow and Robert ... More >>
Rodger Fox Gets Out the Funk - Howard Davis
Thursday, 6 April 2017, 4:38 pm | Howard Davis
By now a living New Zealand legend, band leader and trombonist Rodger Fox has performed with some of the biggest names in the jazz business, including Louie Bellson, Bill Reichenbach, Chuck Findley, Randy Crawford, Bobby Shew, Lanny Morgan, Bruce Paulson, ... More >>
Unpresidented?
Monday, 27 March 2017, 1:20 pm | Howard Davis
The ascendancy of Donald Trump is not a new phenomenon. Populist demagogues have made sporadic and minatory appearances throughout history. The following is a highly random assortment of observations that demonstrate his appeal is by no means unprecedented. ... More >>
Review: The Baroque Fusion of L'arpeggiata
Monday, 20 March 2017, 1:26 pm | Howard Davis
Named after a toccata by German composer Girolamo Kapsberger, L'Arpeggiata produces its unmistakable sonority mainly from the resonance of plucked strings, creating a tightly-woven acoustic texture that is both idiosyncratic and immediately identifiable. ... More >>
Review: Dick Frizzell at the Solander Gallery
Thursday, 16 February 2017, 12:34 pm | Howard Davis
One of the most influential and celebrated contemporary Pop artists working in New Zealand, Dick Frizzell is mostly known for his appropriation of kitsch Kiwiana icons, which he often incorporates into cartoon-like paintings and lithographs. Not content ... More >>
Get It on, Bang a Gong, Pt II
Monday, 13 February 2017, 9:13 am | Howard Davis
Particle physics have identified the cosmos as we perceive it in terms of time and space, rhythmic patterns of light and sound or oscillating waves that vibrate at certain frequencies which Eastern mystics called the dance of Shiva. More >>
Get It on, Bang a Gong, Pt I
Friday, 10 February 2017, 11:34 am | Howard Davis
Several readers have recently inquired about the significance of the image that accompanies my by-line. While the man-bun is long gone, I still incorporate the sound of the gong in my Kundalini Yoga classes. More >>
Review: Te Rakau's 'The Undertow'
Thursday, 19 January 2017, 2:08 pm | Howard Davis
Written by Helen Pearse-Otene and produced by Jim Moriarty's Te Rakau Theatre, 'The Undertow' presents four dramatic episodes depicting the lives and loves of ordinary people from Wellington as they endure a series of historical hardships. Pivotal moments ... More >>
