CURATION
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from this page:
by Matrix
Network Node
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Name:
Andrew Dickson
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City/Place:
London
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Country:
United Kingdom
Life & Work
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Bio:
I’m a freelance author, journalist and critic, specialising in the arts, books, photography and music, and I recently published a book on global Shakespeare.
I contribute essays, reporting and criticism to The Guardian, The New York Times, The New Yorker online, The Wall Street Journal, The New Statesman, Prospect magazine, The Evening Standard (London), ES Magazine and BBC Culture, as well as a number of other outlets. I cover a wide range of cultural topics and forms, from book and photography reviews to in-depth profile interviews and long reads.
One of my specialist interests is Shakespeare. My most recent book, Worlds Elsewhere: Journeys Around Shakespeare’s Globe, came out in October 2015 in the UK and April 2016 in the US. I’m also the author of The Globe Guide to Shakespeare (formerly the Rough Guide), a handbook for students and theatregoers, published in an updated edition by Profile Books in 2016.
I also make regular appearances on TV and radio. I've written and presented documentaries for BBC Radio 4, BBC Radio 3 and the World Service, and have contributed to the BBC's legendary From Our Own Correspondent strand. I also appear as an arts critic and commentator on shows including The Big Questions (BBC 1) and Front Row (BBC Radio 4).
Where people are kind enough to have me, I also moonlight as an academic. I studied at Cambridge University, graduating with a double first-class degree in English, and later returned to take an MPhil in Renaissance literature with distinction.
I’ve presented research at international conferences in Paris and Delhi, and taught at institutions including SOAS, King’s College London and Queen Mary, University of London.
In 2014, I was a visiting fellow at the Department for English and Comparative Literary Studies at the University of Warwick. I’m currently an honorary fellow in the English department of Birkbeck, University of London.
I've given talks at venues including the British Library and the Tretyakov Gallery, Moscow, and I also travel frequently on educational projects with the British Council, most recently participating in a writing residency on the Trans-Siberian Railway.
Before going freelance, I worked on the arts desk at The Guardian from 2005 to 2014, the last three years as theatre editor, commissioning theatre and dance coverage both in print and on the web. Prior to that, I was online arts editor, with a brief that also covered art, classical music, photography and architecture.
I grew up in Yorkshire, and I’ve lived happily near Hackney Downs in east London since 2007, alongside my running kit, tottering piles of not-quite-read books, an Olympus OM1 camera, and a racing-green Brompton bicycle. I also spend as much time as I can in New York.
Contact Information
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Email:
[email protected]
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Contact by Webpage:
http://www.andrewjdickson.com/contact
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Management/Booking:
I’m represented by Sarah Chalfant at the Wylie Agency, both in the UK and US. She’s on +44 [0]20 7908 5900 and schalfant[at]wylieagency[dot]com.
For publicity enquiries in connection with Worlds Elsewhere, please contact:
In the UK: Aidan O’Neill at Vintage Books / AONeill[at]penguinrandomhouse[dot]co[dot]uk / +44 [0]20 7840 8616
In the US: Carolyn O’Keefe at Henry Holt / carolyn[dot]okeefe[at]hholt[dot]com / +1 646 307-524
For publicity enquiries in connection with The Globe Guide to Shakespeare, please contact:
Drew Jerrison at Profile Books / drew[dot]jerrison[at]profilebooks[dot]com / +44 [0]20 7841 3382
Clips (more may be added)
We use the mathematics of the small world phenomenon to transform the creative universe into a creative village wherein all are connected by short pathways to all... (Wolfram explains how above)
This Integrated Global Creative Economy uncoils from a sprawling Indigenous, African, Sephardic and then Ashkenazic, Arabic, European, Asian cultural matrix...
Great culture is great power.
"Thanks, this is a brilliant idea!!"
—Alicia Svigals (NEW YORK CITY): Apotheosis of klezmer violinists
"Dear Sparrow: I am thrilled to receive your email! Thank you for including me in this wonderful matrix."
—Susan Rogers (BOSTON): Director of the Berklee Music Perception and Cognition Laboratory ... Former personal recording engineer for Prince; "Purple Rain", "Sign o' the Times", "Around the World in a Day"
"Dear Sparrow, Many thanks for this – I am touched!"
—Julian Lloyd Webber (LONDON): Premier cellist in UK; brother of Andrew (Evita, Jesus Christ Superstar, Cats, Phantom of the Opera...)
"This is super impressive work ! Congratulations ! Thanks for including me :)))"
—Clarice Assad (RIO DE JANEIRO/CHICAGO): Pianist and composer with works performed by Yo Yo Ma and orchestras around the world
"We appreciate you including Kamasi in the matrix, Sparrow."
—Banch Abegaze (LOS ANGELES): manager, Kamasi Washington
"Thanks! It looks great!....I didn't write 'Cantaloupe Island' though...Herbie Hancock did! Great Page though, well done! best, Randy"
Our Matrix was conceived under a Spiritus Mundi ranging from the quilombos and senzalas of Cachoeira and Santo Amaro to Havana and the provinces of Cuba to the wards of New Orleans to the South Side of Chicago to the sidewalks of Harlem to the townships of South Africa to the villages of Ireland to the Roma camps of France and Belgium to the Vienna of Beethoven to the shtetls of Eastern Europe...*
Sodré
*...in conversation with Raymundo Sodré, who summed up the irony in this sequence by opining for the ages: "Where there's misery, there's music!" Hence A Massa, anthem for the trod-upon folk of Brazil, which blasted from every radio between the Amazon and Brazil's industrial south until...
And hence a platform whereupon all creators tend to accessible proximity to all other creators, irrespective of degree of fame, location, or the censor.
Matrix Ground Zero is the Recôncavo, bewitching and bewitched, contouring the resplendent Bay of All Saints (end of clip below, before credits), absolute center of terrestrial gravity for the disembarkation of enslaved human beings (and for the sublimity these people created), the bay presided over by Brazil's ineffable Black Rome (where Bule Bule is seated below, around the corner from where we built this matrix as an extension of our record shop).
Assis Valente's (of Santo Amaro, Bahia) "Brasil Pandeiro" filmed by Betão Aguiar
Betão Aguiar
("Black Rome" is an appellation per Caetano, via Mãe Aninha of Ilê Axé Opô Afonjá.)
Replete with Brazilian greatness, but we listened to Miles Davis and Jimmy Cliff in there too; visitors are David Dye & Kim Junod for NPR/WXPN
I opened the shop in Salvador, Bahia in 2005 in order to create an outlet to the wider world for magnificent Brazilian musicians.
Kareem Abdul-Jabbar found us (he's a huge jazz fan), David Byrne, Oscar Castro-Neves... Spike Lee walked past the place while I was sitting on the stoop across the street drinking beer and listening to samba from the speaker in the window...
But we weren't exactly easy for the world-at-large to get to. So in order to extend the place's ethos I transformed the site associated with it into a network wherein Brazilian musicians I knew would recommend other Brazilian musicians, who would recommend others...
And as I anticipated, the chalky hand of God-as-mathematician intervened: In human society — per the small-world phenomenon — most of the billions of us on earth are within some 6 or fewer degrees of each other. Likewise, within a network of interlinked artists as I've described above, most of these artists will in the same manner be at most a handful of steps away from each other.
So then, all that's necessary to put the Brazilians within possible purview of the wide wide world is to include them among a wide wide range of artists around that world.
If, for example, Quincy Jones is inside the matrix, then anybody on his page — whether they be accessing from a campus in L.A., a pub in Dublin, a shebeen in Cape Town, a tent in Mongolia — will be close, transitable steps away from Raymundo Sodré, even if they know nothing of Brazil and are unaware that Sodré sings/dances upon this planet. Sodré, having been knocked from the perch of fame and ground into anonymity by Brazil's dictatorship, has now the alternative of access to the world-at-large via recourse to the vast potential of network theory.
...to the degree that other artists et al — writers, researchers, filmmakers, painters, choreographers...everywhere — do also. Artificial intelligence not required. Real intelligence, yes.
The deep roots of this project are in Manhattan, where Allen Klein (managed the Beatles and The Rolling Stones) called me about royalties for the estate of Sam Cooke... where Jerry Ragovoy (co-wrote Time is On My Side, sung by the Stones; Piece of My Heart, Janis Joplin of course; and Pata Pata, sung by the great Miriam Makeba) called me looking for unpaid royalties... where I did contract and licensing for Carlinhos Brown's participation on Bahia Black with Wayne Shorter and Herbie Hancock...
...where I rescued unpaid royalties for Aretha Franklin (from Atlantic Records), Barbra Streisand (from CBS Records), Led Zeppelin, Mongo Santamaria, Gilberto Gil, Astrud Gilberto, Airto Moreira, Jim Hall, Wah Wah Watson (Melvin Ragin), Ray Barretto, Philip Glass, Clement "Sir Coxsone" Dodd for his interest in Bob Marley compositions, Cat Stevens/Yusuf Islam and others...
...where I worked with Earl "Speedo" Carroll of the Cadillacs (who went from doo-wopping as a kid on Harlem streetcorners to top of the charts to working as a janitor at P.S. 87 in Manhattan without ever losing what it was that made him special in the first place), and with Jake and Zeke Carey of The Flamingos (I Only Have Eyes for You)... stuff like that.
Yeah this is Bob's first record contract, made with Clement "Sir Coxsone" Dodd of Studio One and co-signed by his aunt because he was under 21. I took it to Black Rock to argue with CBS' lawyers about the royalties they didn't want to pay (they paid).
Matrix founding creators are behind "one of 10 of the best (radios) around the world", per The Guardian.
Salvador is our base. If you plan to visit Bahia, there are some things you should probably know and you should first visit:
www.salvadorbahiabrazil.comAcross the creative universe... For another list, reload page.
This list is random, and incomplete. Reload the page for another list.
Wolfram MathWorld
Ex Terra Brasilis
Alicia Svigals
Susan Rogers
Julian Lloyd Webber
Clarice Assad
Kamasi Washington
Randy Brecker
Roberto Mendes
Luciano Calazans
Gustavo Caribé
J Velloso
Lázaro Ramos
Fernando Guerreiro
Maria Marighella
Russell Okung
Bule Bule
Caetano Veloso
RÁDIO MATRIX