When Douglas Wright sets his stage with a big grey wall, it's a wall with an enigmatic, palpable life of its own.

You hear of performers playing their audiences, but Bobby McFerrin really did use his Auckland audience as a musical instrument last night.

Russell Baillie reviews the first night of Australian singer-songwriter Paul Kelly's Auckland Arts Festival season.

Graham Reid is left wanting more from San Francisco's Jason Robert Quever.

Lest I be labelled a seal-clubber and eater of endangered species, I say at the start that no sensible person could disagree with any assertion in this film.

With the three members of REM now all into their fifties, it would be nice to report that they've fixed whatever stopped their Noughties albums being as vital as the ones which got them there.

Langley's rootsy folk-cum-alt.country EP Lost Companions of 2007, recorded in Wellington, announced a mature lyricist and a singer with a delivery like the best Americana artists with a little Dylanesque drawl.

Bradley Cooper and Robert De Niro face off in this drug-fuelled thriller, and it's hard to work out who comes out on top in the story, or in the acting contest.

This remix album is a collaboration between Jamie Smith of hushed electronic rockers The xx and Gil Scott-Heron, the 1970s street poet and revolutionary rapper.

Rajendra Prasanna comes from generations of Indian master musicians. On Tuesday, thanks to him and his three colleagues, a rapt audience fell under the spell of a music in which time itself seemed almost to stand still.

As she grows older and hones in on the big issues of life, Joanna Trollope just gets better.

Charlotte Randall is an award-winning New Zealand author whose novels reflect someone utterly in love with the potential of language.

Scarlett Thomas has penned a chatty, delightful easy read about friendship, love, and making those hard, life-defining choices.

The 42 Indian musicians of The Manganiyar Seduction work their wiles in the glare of red and light-bulbs, piled up in a grid inspired by Amsterdam's red-light district.

Some marvellous images are being created at the Basement this Fringe, writes Janet McAllister

Martha Wainwright describes her look as "ageless" - she is poised on the stage dressed like a school-girl with hair all wispy like her grandmother's.

Maguy Marin's landmark work, celebrating 30 feted years of continuous performance, begins with the sculptured forms of its ten dancers, posed in dusty alabaster-like desertion.

This 35-year-old son of famed British folk-rockers Richard and Linda follows his own path.