Royal Festival Hall, London

Aimee Mann may have risen to prominence thanks to her music’s key role in Paul Thomas Anderson’s 1999 masterpiece Magnolia, but the darkness of some of that film perhaps added an extra layer of melancholy to the work of an artist whose catalogue is usually a few shades lighter. 

Sir David Attenborough is to take on Keith Lemon and Sherlock for a TV Bafta.

OperaUpClose veer towards greatest-hits territory while a lupine concert holds toddlers transfixed

Has the V&A built a shrine to the great objects of British design, or curated a glorified jumble sale? Stephen Bayley wonders what to make of its new show

Bruckner’s unfinished final symphony - the 9th - poses many questions, none more perplexing than what might have been in terms of its absent finale.

Compared to the Gale Force 10 blizzard that is blasted into the auditorium at the end of Slava's Snowshow, the tornado at the start of The Wizard of Oz is for wimps and friends of Dorothy.

On the various levels of the Royal Festival Hall, the Southbank's Vintage festival is in full swing – quite literally on the mezzanine dancefloor, where period-clad couples whirl to a marvellous 1940s-style dance band.

Every time Keith Jarrett visits the Royal Festival Hall, something special happens.

When Ray Davies saunters on in a dapper silver-grey suit to welcome Madness to Meltdown, the band's fans cheer in delight. They understand The Kinks' influence on these subsequent specialists in North London working-class bittersweet vignettes. Saxophonist and non-singer Lee Thompson later jokingly checks if Davies has left the building, before a chucking-out-time pub version of "Where Have All the Good Times Gone". The real tribute comes as Madness stake their place in its tradition, with songs that are worldly-wise, sometimes weary and always for the underdog, played with rare confidence tonight.

Playing on the third night of this year's Meltdown, curated by Ray Davies, the alternative rock trio from Hoboken, New Jersey, more than match the high standards set on the two previous evenings by cult acts The Legendary Pink Dots, The Crazy World of Arthur Brown and The Fugs.

Ready Steady Go! may be the most fondly remembered 1960s pop TV show. It lasted barely three years, fading out, at the end of 1966, before it could outstay its welcome – like the sharp singles it helped to promote. Ray Davies and the producer Vicki Wickham's one-night-only revival for Meltdown can't resurrect the social club the studio became for the Beatles, Stones and Kinks, or the young dancing Mods who were almost trampled by careening cameras. The minimal set – a couple of period photo-decorated signs – is a letdown. But somehow, the spirit of pop at its most warmly creative catches light again.

Liszt and Wagner, Boulez and Barenboim – iconic names, analogous kinships.