LONDON, March 4 (Reuters) – Central Asia and the Caucasus
get a rare moment in the artistic limelight this week as
Sotheby’s stages a London exhibition of works from the 1960s to
the present day, hoping to generate interest in artists from an
often overlooked region.

Lying either side of the Caspian Sea with China to the east,
Russia to the north and Iran to the south, countries like
Azerbaijan, Uzbekistan and Georgia have plenty in common, not
least subservience to Moscow during the Soviet era.

LONDON (Reuters) – The Rolling Stones picked up two prizes at the NME Music Awards in London on Wednesday, and guitarist Ronnie Wood said the band hoped to play at Britain’s Glastonbury music festival in June.

The Stones won for best live act and best film, and Wood was on hand to accept a pair of irreverent “middle finger” statuettes.

LONDON (Reuters) – The Rolling Stones picked up two prizes at the NME Music Awards in London on Wednesday one for best live act and the other for best film, and veteran guitarist Ronnie Wood was on hand to accept a pair of irreverent “middle finger” statuettes.

The veteran British rock group — comprising Wood, Mick Jagger, Keith Richards and Charlie Watts — is one of four acts to be nominated four times for the annual awards, organised by NME music magazine.

LONDON (Reuters) – David Bowie’s first album of new music in a decade sees the influential musician back to his best, British critics said in reviews rushed out on Tuesday, two weeks before its release.

“The Next Day”, which hits stores in Britain on March 11 and a day later in the United States, could even be the “greatest comeback in rock’n'roll history”, according to The Independent’s Andy Gill.

LONDON (Reuters) – The music business broke a 12-year losing streak in 2012, posting a small but symbolic 0.3 percent rise in trade revenues to $16.5 billion, figures from the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry (IFPI) showed on Tuesday.

The slight increase will come as a relief to record label bosses who have watched the value of sales plummet from a peak of $28.6 billion in 1999, as illegal downloads and a reluctance to embrace the digital age hit revenues hard.

LONDON (Reuters) – “Sensible” and “sober” are words not normally associated with rock and roll, but they summed up how music critics viewed Wednesday night’s BRIT Awards ceremony at the London O2 Arena.

Viewing figures for commercial broadcaster ITV1, which aired British pop’s biggest night live, were the highest for a decade, so organizers, advertisers and the acts who performed were unlikely to care too much about what experts thought.

LONDON (Reuters) – Scottish singer Emeli Sande is favourite to win the coveted British album of the year honour later on Wednesday when the BRIT Awards are handed out in London.

Sande, whose profile received a major boost when she took part in the opening and closing ceremonies at the London Olympics last year, has been nominated for three prizes on British pop’s biggest night.

LONDON (Reuters) – Scottish singer Emeli Sande is favorite to win the coveted British album of the year honor later on Wednesday when the BRIT Awards are handed out in London.

Sande, whose profile received a major boost when she took part in the opening and closing ceremonies at the London Olympics last year, has been nominated for three prizes on British pop’s biggest night.

LONDON (Reuters) – For Roy Lichtenstein, it was better that the public was over-familiar with his work than not familiar at all, a point never lost on the American artist best known for his giant cartoon strip adaptations.

A major retrospective of the artist at London’s Tate Modern puts famous images like “Whaam!” and “Drowning Girl” center stage, but also seeks to explain how Lichtenstein got there and where he went next.

BERLIN, Feb 17 (Reuters) – Romania claimed another major
scalp on the European film festival circuit this weekend when
“Child’s Pose” won the Golden Bear in Berlin, underlining the
country’s emergence as a powerhouse of hard-hitting cinema in
the post-Communist era.

The film, directed by Calin Peter Netzer, tells the story of
Cornelia, an obsessive mother who uses every trick in the book
to prevent her son from going to jail after he kills a boy in a
car accident.