London music

London music

When visitors make their way into Peter Doig's House of Music show at the Serpentine, they're confronted with not one but two sound systems. The north gallery sports a vintage Western Electric and Bell Labs system that was used in cinemas in the 1920s and 30s, while Doig's own set of Klangfilm Euronor speakers (which he acquired from Kraftwerk's Florian Schneider) also pump music into the space.

Recorded at one blistering London live show in April 2024, Libertine collaborated with Chilean guitarist Eva Leblanc, reimagining tracks from Libertine's back catalogue including ones from her time singing with 1970s anarcho-punk pioneers Crass. Produced by Crass founder Penny Rimbaud, it treads a path between performance art, experimental music and earth ritual; with her strident operatic tones, Libertine sounds like a soothsayer foretelling an apocalypse.

This is not a good time to be an Andrew Lloyd Webber hater, with the musical theatre legend on track to be almost as popular as he was in the '80s. Jamie Lloyd's Rachel Zegler-starring revival was the year's most talked about show, a first ever UK revival of Cats was announced to much anticipation; over in New York Lloyd's Sunset Boulevard revival took the Tonys by storm and critics were wowed by hipster off-Broadway Cats revival The Jellicle Ball.

For me personally, queer nightlife has allowed me to find friends, family, and role models, people from whom I could learn. These experiences have given me a sense of not being alone and have emboldened me in many aspects of life. These encounters and experiences continue to influence my music. This song is intended as a love letter to visibility and pride. No one can take away the love you feel; it belongs to you.

"Sorry for fog, I feel self-conscious," Maria Manow of Bassvictim giggles in her slightly broken English, swirls of theatrical smoke obscuring her silvery blue hair, dark top, and thigh-high socks. Her bandmate, the producer Ike Clateman, is somewhere else onstage, cloaked in the haze. The galloping bass of the phonk tribute track "Canary Wharf Drift" kicks off, and a blitz of white lights flashes across hundreds of people jumping so hard the floor wobbles.

You can track the passage of time by the seasons, or the rise and fall of the sun, or Capital's summertime/winter balls. Twice every year, Capital FM takes over Wembley Stadium or the O2: once for the Summertime Ball, and another for the Jingle Bell Ball. We've officially reached Jingle Bell season, and earlier today (November 5) the first round of artists for this year's festive party were revealed live on air.

Just round the corner from the crossing sits the studio where the Fab Four recorded not just Abbey Road, but also the likes of Revolver and Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band. Arguably the most famous recording studio in the world, it was here that The Beatles pushed creative boundaries and changed the music world forever. It remains a recording studio to this day - as well as a cultural shrine to the band that made it world famous.

In the words of Mariah Carey: it's tiiiiime. Halloween is dead and gone, and now, it's finally an acceptable time for the Christmas countdown to get underway. Festive illuminations are already being turned on across London, Xmas markets are beginning to open and Yuletide tunes are starting to permeate every shop, cafe and bar. Of course, the city's annual Christmas makeover isn't complete without its trees - and one of its most beloved, the St Pancras Christmas tree, has just been unveiled.

Noughties boybands Busted and McFly have united for a tour that is so huge that, here in the capital, by the time it's through it will have straddle two venues and six nights, over a period of a month and a half. The two groups are facing off as part of the Busted vs McFly Tour, which was announced last autumn.

Missed out in seeing Rachel Zegler doing her for-the-people balcony performance in Evita? No worries, because the star is returning to the West End in 2026, for a very limited run. And she's going to be joined by the triple-threat Tony, Grammy and Emmy Award-winner Ben Platt. The musical superstars are coming to the Big Smoke for a limited run of Jason Robert Brown's The Last Five Years, which tells the story of couple Cathy and Jamie from first meeting to their inevitable breakup

Hynes came back to England to be by the bedside of his mother in hospital, and stayed at home a while after she died in 2023. This tragic disruptionproduced his fifth full-length release, Essex Honey, a clear contender for album of the year. It's a record grounded by grief but fizzing with the memory flashes that came with returning home to the edge of Essex; the record that sounds most like the place he left almost two decades ago.

As chair of the Mercury music prize judging panel from 1992 to 2016 (while living in Scotland), I always thought that its geography problem (Artists outside London underrepresented on Mercury prize shortlist', 16 October) was that the judges primarily lived and worked in London, wherever they were from originally. (The year with the most Scots acts on the shortlist was also the year with the most Scotland-based judges.)

Henry 'Ike' Clateman is most at home behind the decks, detonating 808s and cheap-synthed dubstep in London basement clubs. Here, he's steeping a piano in delay and letting tiny shoals of melody do their thing. Vocalist Maria Manow should be on stage, striking vape-flavored fervor into the hearts of sweaty moshpits. Now she's letting amorphous, doe-eyed cello melodies float away like abandoned balloons at a birthday party.

This November, English National Opera brings a defining work of modern American music drama to the London Coliseum. Jake Heggie's Dead Man Walking, first performed in 2000, has already entered the repertory as a contemporary classic, a rarity in the world of opera where even success often means a brief blaze before oblivion. Yet Heggie's opera endures: a work of moral courage and emotional immediacy that continues to challenge audiences wherever it is performed.

Cut the lights, turn the bass up, we gon' hit some notes,

The heiress was the younger daughter of the 8th Marquess of Londonderry. In 1963, her first husband famously named Annabel's nightclub in London after her. A major figure in the swinging London of the Sixties, Lady Annabel was known for hosting annual parties for the great and the good in Mayfair Clubs and her home at Ormeley Lodge. She is survived by her children, including the former Conservative MP Zac Goldsmith and the journalist Jemima Goldsmith.

So far, four Nutcrackers have been announced for London's Christmas 2025 season, starting in November and stretching beyond Christmas Day to the very end of the year. What follows is a guide to those four shows, all splendid in their own way, in chronological order. All are centred on a Christmas Eve party at Clara's home, and the magic that happens as the clock strikes midnight, leading to a series of famous divertissements in Act II;

I was 10 years old when I started spending my pocket money on Gramophone magazine this is an extraordinary honour.

Four years ago the musical theatre titan was at low ebb: declaring he'd rather go to prison than allow his extremely mid new musical Cinderella to open with social distancing was not be any stretch of the imagination his finest hour. There has been no new musical since then, although him and Tim Rice have written the songs for this year's Birmingham Rep Christmas production, and a full scale new one called The Illusionist is now in the works.

On Sunday, Smith invited Depp (who sued The Sun, the British tabloid, after it referred to him as "wife-beater" but lost the case) to perform "People Have The Power" (the irony!) at her show. As she began her encore, Smith introduced her entire band to the audience, adding: "And Johnny? And Johnny Depp? The original Johnny." So, not only did Depp get an opportunity to play with the legendary singer,

Resale tickets have just gone live meaning that you may still have a chance to see Thom Yorke, Jonny Greenwood, Philip Selway, Ed O'Brien and Colin Greenwood in Greenwich in November. The resale process for Radiohead's O2 gigs isn't as complicated as the general sale was. However, it is still a bit trickier than normal resale. Tickets will only be available on official resale sites, and they'll only be available at face value.

A 40th anniversary concert of Les Misérables will be returning to the Royal Albert Hall next year, the same venue as their original 10th anniversary concert. It'll also mark the show's first return to the Royal Albert Hall since that original concert concept was created. What is now known as the "Arena Concert Spectacular" was developed from the Staged Concert, which played for over 200 performances in the West End and the 25th Anniversary performance at The O2.

Pop soul titans Simply Red are in London this week as part of the group's 40th anniversary tour. Mick Hucknall will be rolling out hits like 'Stars', 'If You Don't Know Me By Now' and 'Holding Back the Years' over three shows in the capital. Hucknall might be the only member of Simply Red who's actually made it through all 40 years, but there's still much to celebrate.

I've spent my life determined to be one of a kind perhaps because I'm a twin. During our birth, my younger-by-two-minutes brother's umbilical cord wrapped around my neck. It cut off my air supply, which left me deaf, while his hearing was unimpaired. That's sibling rivalry for you. I use hearing aids and am a strong lip reader, as well as being fluent in British Sign Language. When I take my aids out to sleep,

There's a general consensus, amongst the generations that are old enough to remember going out in the pre-social media age at least, that nightlife in London is not what it once was. The statistics certainly don't paint a particularly positive picture. In the Mayor of London's 2019 Cultural Infrastructure Plan it was reported that in the last decade, 35% of grassroots venues and 61% of LGBTQ+ venues in London closed.

Many years ago, I was rehearsing with a band in a rehearsal room in New York. From the next-door studio came the sound of a series of some of the biggest disco hits known to man. Within a few minutes we were happily chatting to the members of the legendary KC and The Sunshine Band. If you're not old enough to remember them, KC and The Sunshine Band were huge in the 1970s selling over 100 million records worldwide.