It was difficult to resist the world of Whaka-Aria Mai: Opera in Te Reo.

Few of the 1000-plus who packed the house for the final show of Paul Kelly's main-centre tour would have been familiar with his latest album, Spring and Fall.

Prepare to do some serious thinking during Jane Campion's series, writes Nick Grant.

First steps to autonomy are chaotic, reports Sarah Lang.

Choreographers Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui and Damien Jalet take the biblical story of the Tower of Babel with its smiting of the human race into painful divisions of nationality and language.

TV blogger Paul Casserly looks at the 'good gets' of recent current affairs, from Coro Street's Ken to one of the architects of the Iraq war.

Neil Young refused to play a greatest hits set, but his concert was crazy and confounding, exciting and exhausting, writes Russell Baillie.

There were a few bumps leading up to Auckland Arts Festival's first-centenary tribute to Benjamin Britten.

With the 60s generation of rock fans now at Gold Card age, this concert perhaps flagged what we might expect in the future: Steve Miller with his excellent band - which included the great Spector-era soul singer Sonny Charles - started just after 7pm.

There is a middle ground in current affairs on television. It's called Native Affairs and it runs for an hour from 8.30 on Monday nights on Maori TV.

It may have been a little early for English high tea, but the cabaret-style seating in the concert chamber aimed to recreate the spirit of an 18th century German coffee-house.

The festival offering from playwright Mitch Tawhi Thomas is a taut study of family dysfunction that finds plenty of life and laughter in the explosive quarrelling of estranged brothers.

The New Normal caused controversy before it even aired. Sarah Lang finds out why

Album No4 is a huge change for Aussie indie band, hears Paula Yeoman.

To some, Ferdinand Ries is best known as a minor planet spinning around the sun that was Beethoven.