Steve Reich echoes across a Peckham car park. A Clube da Esquina legend plays King’s Cross. Peckham’s DIY headquarters reopens with a day-to-night fundraiser. And Hackney Wick’s new theatre lets you in before it’s finished.
A hand-checked shortlist of the week in London culture · new every Thursday
Revised Friday, with a wider net than usual — six of this week’s venues have never appeared in these pages before. The weekend belongs to the south-east: Reich on a Peckham rooftop, SET’s reopening fundraiser down the road, open studios across Brockley, and a £7 six-band all-dayer at the community-owned Ivy House. Sunday belongs to Toninho Horta at Kings Place. Midweek, Dalston and Hackney Wick take over: the Butcher–Edwards–Sanders residency at OTO, scratch nights inside the Yard’s unfinished new theatre, and Rocola opening on Mare Street. Art is still on a deadline: Manders likely goes tomorrow, and two more shows close Sunday.
Service notes, so you don’t plan around ghosts: Lambeth Country Show is cancelled this year; GDIF has moved to late August; Arcola’s Diana drag show is sold out all week (returns only). Free counters: Everyman’s canal-side cinema runs nightly at Granary Square all summer — and if Wimbledon calls, queue early for a £33 grounds pass, then hit the 3pm resale kiosk for show-court returns at £15–20.
Reich has called the Colin Currie Group the best he’s ever heard at playing his music. On Saturday they play it on the roof of a Peckham multi-storey as part of Bold Tendencies’ Euphoria season: interlocking percussion against a slow sunset over the skyline. Heavily subsidised tickets make this absurd value; exact start time is on DICE, so check when booking.
Minimalism works outdoors. This is the proof.
The most decorated living cinematographer — 1917, Blade Runner 2049, No Country for Old Men — on light, composition and a lifetime of image-making, on stage with the actor George MacKay. He talks about craft the way other people talk about plot.
Peckham’s artist-run studio network reopens after a forced closure with a day-to-night fundraiser: a market of ceramics, zines and records, workshops and performances through the afternoon, DJs until 3am. They’re £23,000 short of safeguarding the programme, so turning up is materially useful. Make a south-east day of it: Brockley’s open studios are twenty minutes away, and the Ivy House — London’s first community-owned pub — runs a £7 six-band all-dayer from 5pm.
Toninho Horta wrote some of the harmony that makes Brazilian music feel bottomless: a core member of Clube da Esquina, the Minas Gerais collective around Milton Nascimento whose 1972 double album remains a landmark. A rare London date, structured as two full sets in Hall One’s generous acoustic. Under-30s pay a tenner, which is a scandal in your favour.
If you missed Thursday’s opening night, the Nobel laureate’s season of his ten favourite train films runs all month — and he’s back in person on Tuesday, hosting Kawalerowicz’s Night Train, the jazz-scored Polish sleeper-car noir, with an introduction from Prof Philip Horne. Same building, same week: a Marilyn Monroe strand with daily introductions, and Wednesday’s UK premiere of the 4K restoration of Bahram Beyzai’s Bashu, the Little Stranger — an Iranian masterpiece that spent years under censorship.
The Crudo team’s new 24-seater is named after the Spanish for jukebox, and programmed like one: an open kitchen with a rotating cast of guest chefs, plus wine tastings and music nights. The launch residency is Dublin-born Nico Reynolds cooking what he calls “New Caribbean”: Jamaican heritage by way of South America. Ten bar seats, a handful of tables.
Manders makes clay-and-bronze figures that look abandoned mid-thought, installed here above a Roman temple. Listings say Saturday is the last day; the venue’s site was unreachable when we checked, so treat Saturday as the deadline.
Jenna Bliss, Buck Ellison and Jasmine Gregory dissect the myths of the post-2008 money world. Ellison’s forensic photographs of the American elite are the draw. Sharp, cold, worth the walk down the Mall.
The once-a-year open house where working researchers demo their actual experiments — space fossils to music on the Moon. No booking. Gone after Sunday.