Manchester International Festival

  • There was a point where I was attending film preview screenings on the regular. On one occasion, Sony brought out the big guns and took our phones off us until after the screening had finished, lest we use them for nefarious reasons. Last night wasn’t quite that extreme, but we were asked to put our

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  • There’s something exceptionally special about stepping into the artist’s studio. In 2023, the exhibition, ‘From Moss Side to Marseille: The Art of Michael Brown and Eric Cantona’ launched at the National Football Museum. Whilst paying a visit, I was enthralled to discover that artist Michael Browne was in residence throughout, creating a new piece as

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  • Thank goodness I’m getting older. The days, weeks and months fly. And so do the years. Most of the time this freaks me out and delivers me into my latest existential crisis. But sometimes it works to my advantage and it feels like no time at all since the last Manchester International Festival, whereas it

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  • Only a few days earlier, I’d enjoyed the wonder that was the Damon Albarn gig, as part of the very special Manchester International Festival. Friday it was back to GMEX (am I being tedious refusing to get upto date with this? Such a mouthful) and the space had been transformed into a very different place.

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  • A few firsts for a Monday night. First day of leaving the house in 2 weeks after not quite managing to avoid COVID’s touch. First time at a live music gig since Supergrass, February 2020, because, you know… First time that Damon Albarn has played a gig in two years and he looked as insanely

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  • There are many times I’ve been to the theatre (literally and conceptually – not all plays take place on the stage), when I’ve thought ‘what a brilliant production, what a great story, what an excellent ‘play’ this is.’ And then there are times when I’ve left the idea that I’m at a play far behind

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  • Manchester International Festival is your opportunity to see something different. Something new, something especially commissioned, someone new, someone big… The Nico Project is the perfect case study of all of the above. The late Nico, real name Christa Paffgenmade, entered the musical zeitgeist in 1967 with The Velvet Underground, and the ‘show’ is inspired by

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