Rock And Pop, by Andy Gill
introduction of the compact disc almost three decades earlier. It will be as the major music-delivery system, with Gnarls Barkley's "Crazy" release here in March. Other hotly tipped American bands include The Hold Steady; the enigmatic Oregonian indie-rockers The Shins, whose second album arrives shortly; and the prolific Bright Eyes, whose Cassadaga should appear in April - as does Neon Bible, Arcade Fire's follow-up to the acclaimed The new year's early hip-hop action, meanwhile, is concentrated on the " conscious" front, with new albums imminent from Common, Talib Kweli and Def Jux supremo El-P, the genre's most innovative producer.

The early months d'un certain age Rickie Lee Jones, Mavis Staples and Lucinda Williams, while Yoko Ono offers us Yes, I'm a Witch, a collection of her songs reworked from her original tapes by the likes of Cat Power, Peaches and The Flaming Lips. And in March, expect the first new Iggy The Stooges album in more than The closest British equivalent is probably Brett Anderson - well, he's an ex-junkie with flamboyant tendencies and agreeably tart opinions. His eternally awaited solo debut is out in March.

The Kaiser Chiefs tackle that second album hurdle in February, and a month later Joss Stone should wrest the top R B diva throne from Beyonc e with her third set. The most intriguing British prospect of early 2007, however, has to be the Roxy Music On the world-music front, the Malian desert-blues nomads Tinariwen should in February. And if Sufjan Stevens doesn't issue another instalment of his enthralling 50 States project, this listener at least will be deeply saddened.

It needn't be as extensive as Illinoise - an EP about Rhode Island Books, by Boyd Tonkin, Literary Editor Jim Crace has a truly uncanny gift for creating a new, intensely imagined world with every novel he writes: in The Pesthouse (Picador, out in March), Daniel Kehlmann's debut Measuring the World (Quercus, April) pairs the investigate, with wit and sweep, the different roads to wisdom. And to follow up her Ukrainian tractors, in Two Caravans (Fig Tree, March) Marina Cape). In 1962, a newly married couple look forward to their first night together on the Dorset coast - but this is McEwan-land, where chaos reliably can rejoice that The Post-Birthday World (Harper Collins, May), a Sliding Doors-style joint tale of alternative loves and lives, will garner the attention she always deserves.

Finally, one of the great originals of British fiction, the fearless Rupert Thomson invokes the figure of Myra Hindley in Death of a Murderer (Bloomsbury, April) as a policeman's vigil In non-fiction, Linda Colley's innovatory account of one Jamaican-born woman's progress across the 18th-century world, The Ordeal of Elizabeth Marsh (HarperPress, May), yokes two ruling themes in current history - slave systems, and the roots of globalisation - to a riveting personal tale. Coral: a Pessimist in Paradise (Little, Brown, March) is a stylish Literary biography has fallen from grace of late, so Hermione Lee's richly in time to prove the merits, and restore the fortunes, of a besieged form (Chatto Windus, February). You can read a score of books about China's and writers: Mark Leonard's What Does China Think?

(Fourth Estate, May) Debut poetry collections rarely make a splash, but this one will: the Have Coming to Dover! (Faber, February) sparkle with verbal vigour. Or why Life (Oxford, February), a concise analysis of what it's all about from Classical And Opera, by Edward Seckerson In London in July, the lavishly refurbished Royal Festival Hall finally re-opens with more legroom and (hopefully) better acoustics.

Under the artistic direction of Jude Kelly, it promises to be much more than just a home for the Philharmonia and London Philharmonic. The opening festivities will revolve around a full staging of Carmen Jones. More appetising, to my mind, will be the London Philharmonic's concert performances of Stephen London Symphony Orchestra in some style.

The LSO's new principal conductor, Valery Gergiev, officially takes up his appointment then. Over at English National Opera, a lot is riding on the promise of Deborah Then, in June, there's Kismet - Broadway's kitschy take on Arabian Nights to Alfred Drake/ Howard Keel role. The potential for disaster is almost as And plan a weekend in Manchester in June, when the Hall e orchestra will Television, by Brian Viner possession of a good chunk of primetime, must be in want of a Jane Austen adaptation.

By the end of 2007, however, we might feel a little Janed out, with ITV and the BBC between them bringing us Sense and Sensibility, Mansfield Park, Persuasion and Northanger Abbey. Mansfield Park is the one I'm looking forward to most, for as Fanny Price, Austen's genteelly impoverished heroine, it stars none other than the former Mrs Chris Evans, Billie Piper. Which is not the most obvious piece of casting, but then Piper has proved herself more than capable of successful time-travelling, so we will see.

As for her successor in the Tardis, I can't wait to see how the the BBC as Poliakoff 2007, but what we do know is that it stars Michael Gambon and Maggie Smith, and while I don't subscribe to the widely held conviction that Stephen Poliakoff is some sort of screenwriting genius, Catherine Tate, whose sketch show was one of the treats of 2006, stars in Saunders, has co-written, with child psychologist Dr Tania Byron, a BBC comedy series called The Life and Times of Vivienne Vyle. It features Saunders as the host of "Britain's most-loved, talked-about live therapy show", and sounds as though it might owe a little to Frasier. But then, don't we all?

Visual Arts, by Tom Lubbock have panoramic social observation, daft and savage jokes, surreal imagery, After that, 2007 will be mainly a year for senior contemporaries. Five major retrospectives of the living punctuate the calendar. Gilbert and George finally get a big career show on home ground, at Tate Modern (15 February to always star themselves, as a pair of quasi-extraterrestrials visiting the Soon afterwards, Antony Gormley materialises at the Hayward Gallery (20 May to 20 August).

His sculpture, often starring his own body, has lately been showing grandly messianic tendencies, but his early pieces, culminating in the mass assembly Fields, achieve truly startling variations on the human In summer, Richard Long arrives at the Scottish National Gallery of Modern indoor space of the gallery and the great outdoors. His carefully planned and sturdily paced excursions leave traces in the landscape, while bringing souvenirs (stone circles, mud drawings) back. In the autumn, the veteran September to- 9 December); he's famous for his upside-down imagery, and strangely delicate through his wildness.

The French-American sculptor Louise Bourgeois, mistress of every sculptural medium, gets a long-awaited retro at But neither Old Masters nor old moderns get much of a showing, so make a Film, by Roger Clarke Judi Dench has never done quite enough evil in my view. In one of her most thrilling performances yet, she elevates Notes on a Scandal from being a indeed. The merciless way her hungry bluestocking casts her net around Cate acting as good as anything Dame Judi has done in her entire career.

Other enticing British film projects are Shane Meadows' This is England, and The Restraint of Beasts, the new Pawel Pawlikowski film, currently shooting. Bill Condon's Dreamgirls with Jamie Foxx and Beyonc e Knowles, loosely based on the career of Diana Ross and the Supremes, has generated Oscar buzz and been praised to the skies by industry magazine Variety. I'm no fan of musicals but this sounds way above the genre's usual standards.

Is it too burn rubber, or that 28 Weeks Later will match the gloomy retro pleasures of Guest's For Your Consideration will be at all funny. I've already seen David Lynch's Inland Empire, which screened at Venice in 2006; it's one of his I love Matt Damon's boysy, bouncing-off-the-walls Bourne Identity movies, so Ultimatum, scheduled for August. A Simpsons feature film from Matt Groening?

Doh - who could resist it? And Universal's I Now Pronounce You Chuck and Chinese cinema continues to be the one to watch. In The Painted Veil with Naomi Watts, Hollywood is even trying to copy it.

Zhang Yimou's March release Curse of the Golden Flower is very high on my must-see list, as is Finally, Ang Lee's Se Jie (Lust), set in Shanghai during the Second World Comedy, by Julian Hall favourites. I am particularly looking forward to seeing An Audience with Arthur Smith, where the circuit veteran and "grumpy old man" will I'd also recommend Sean Hughes, who takes to the road after an eight-year break from live work. Hughes warmed up with a couple of dates at the Soho Theatre last year and was looking ready to hit top form.

It is to be hoped that the same goes for Ricky Gervais, who officially starts his Fame tour on Nichol, winner of the 2006 Eddie comedy award. The intimate venues the style. Of other Fringe favourites, I'll particularly enjoy the chance to see again the likeable Eddie nominee Russell Howard, recently seen alongside the live awards were ushered), and the ubiquitous Josie Long.

Although she's been winning talent awards for the past eight years, the cherubic Long has come to the fore since winning the newcomer Eddie in 2006. She is on the Meanwhile, the controversial black comedian Reginald D Hunter had both an excellent Edinburgh and a recent celebrated three-week London run. He will February and June.

Whether the title of his show, Pride, Prejudice and Niggas, will cause as much consternation as it did in London remains to be seen. Either way, Hunter will remain uncompromising as well as entertaining. Dance, by Zoe Anderson This should be a busy dance year, with new productions from British companies, plus plenty of glamorous visitors.

American Ballet Theatre, the first of the big visiting companies, makes its first UK visit in more than 15 years (Sadler's Wells, 14 to 18 February). I've heard very good reports of ABT dancers, and the repertory is enticing. This short season packs in ballets by Balanchine, Jerome Robbins, Twyla Tharp and Mark Morris, plus classical party pieces.

The summer brings more American stars. I'm keen to see the British debut of celebrated tap dancer Savion Glover (Sadler's Wells, 13 to 16 June), while the much-loved Mark Morris Dance Group returns with Mozart Dances (Barbican, Hodgkin and, among the musicians, Jane Glover and Emanuel Ax. The Bolshoi Ballet, which had a hit season here in 2006, returns for three a new production of Le Corsaire, a new work by Christopher Wheeldon, Massine's rare ballet Les Pr e sages and The Bright Stream, a delightful romp by company director Alexei Ratmansky.

Among the dancers, look out for the Opera House, 16 to 20 January). Later on, in spring, there's a new work by Alastair Marriott, which shares a bill with the company's first-ever established names Marianela Nunez and Sarah Lamb, and rising stars such as Steven McRae. In what could be her last season, Darcey Bussell has been of the Earth, which shares a bill with Ninette de Valois's Checkmate and I wish I had more choices outside London.

In the regions, dance-goers will see a lot of story ballets with safely familiar names, though modern Theatre, by Paul Taylor What I am most looking forward to seeing in 2007 is how Dominic Cooke, the new artistic director, sets about shaking up the Royal Court and restoring national theatre of new writing in the past few years. He has yet to hopes of Cooke who, equally talented at nurturing emergent writers and at casting fresh light on the established (Arthur Miller, Shakespeare) seems Pericles were the revelatory highlight of the RSC Complete Works Season, in Stratford, so far. In March, the season climaxes with Ian McKellen playing King Lear for Trevor Nunn.

Great actor, great director - and I anticipate who rarely involves his brain in his gut reactions. One of the best Tobacco Factory, and I am delighted that it has survived a funding crisis to present what I expect will be typically lucid, intimate and thematically The Man of Mode, starring Tom Hardy, an actor who oozes sex and cockiness; Ibsen's John Gabriel Borkman at the Donmar, a production that reunites the theatrical reworking by Rufus Norris and Tanya Ronder of Vernon God Little, the aftermath of a Columbine-style killing. In Market Boy and Cabaret, viewpoints.

Transferring this tricky first-person text to the stage will present him with an exhilarating challenge.
Radio, by Robert Hanks Like some exotic lichen that thrives only in the purest air, Radio 3 functions as an indicator species, signalling changes in the BBC ecosystem. So, February's revamp of its schedules has an importance out of all proportion to its audience.

The big shift is in the evenings, when the concert, recorded the previous day or week. That makes room for a peak-time repeat of the perennially informative and engaging Composer of the Week. And, more significantly, the radio talk, the single voice trying to engage your attention on a subject you never thought could interest you, makes a comeback in a nightly series of 15-minute talks, The Essay, beginning with a week of talks about the poet W H Auden (whose centenary is, for me, the The big, splashy event in classical music is the Tchaikovsky Experience, a successor to Radio 3's complete Beethoven and Bach events - enticingly, Tchaikovsky is being spiked with the complete Stravinsky.

Outside the classical field, there are plenty of festivals around, including blanket coverage of Glastonbury's return. A discovery for me last year, courtesy of Radio 2, was the South by Southwest festival in Austin, Texas, which celebrates the folkie/indie end of rock; it's back in March, spread across Radio 2 and, for the digitally inclined, 6 Music. Saturday-night show on Radio 2; and Bob Dylan's theatrical, eclectic Theme Time Radio Hour, on Friday nights, 6 Music.

The big talk event of the year is, as always, the Reith Lectures, on Radio 4 in April and May, though they almost always disappoint. After Daniel Barenboim's pleasant mush last year, the development economist Professor title, "Bursting at the Seams".