Today’s Stories
How Walt Disney Concert Hall Changed Both Its Orchestra And Its Neighborhood
Justin Davidson: “In 2003, [Frank] Gehry gave the Los Angeles Philharmonic its new home and showed that, every once in a while, a work of architecture can transform all it touches — in this case, the orchestra, the audience, music itself, the neighborhood, and the city beyond.” – Los Angeles Times
The Amazing Hidden City Beneath Paris
This invisible city follows different laws of planning to its surface counterpart. Its tunnelled streets often kink and wriggle, or run to dead ends. Some of them curl back on themselves like whips. At junctions, three or four tunnel-streets might spray out. There are slender highways running almost the length of the tiled map, from southwest to northeast. There are inexplicably broken grids of streets, or hubs where the spokes of different tunnels meet. Coming off some of the tunnels are chambers, irregular in their outlines and with dozens of small connecting rooms. – The New Yorker
Michigan Lawmakers Say There’s A Crisis With The State’s School Libraries
“Michigan ranks 47th in the nation for its ratio of students to certified librarians — it’s also in the bottom five in literacy. The two statistics have legislators like State Rep. Darrin Camilleri questioning why more isn’t being done to increase the presence of librarians in schools.” So he and colleagues have introduced three different bills to address the problem. – WXYZ (Detroit)
Is Koons’ “Rabbit” Worth $91 Million? Value Isn’t Measured In Cash
Andrea Scott: “It became an icon of eighties excess (and, thus, of white, male privilege): fuck like bunnies, make more money, the one with the most toys wins. It was an instant classic worthy of the oxymoron, as weightless as Andy Warhol’s shiny silver clouds of inflated Mylar and as radical as Constantin Brancusi’s polished-bronze ‘Bird in Space’.” – The New Yorker
Reviving Twyla Tharp’s ‘Deuce Coupe’, The First Ballet-Modern Dance Fusion
Gia Kourlas got Tharp and Sara Rudner, who danced in the work’s 1979 premiere, together with Misty Copeland and Isabella Boylston, who are performing in ABT’s upcoming revival. “It was lively … but certain points became clear: How important is it to work with the artist who actually created a ballet? Very. And how scary is it to step into the roles of two of the finest dancers of their generation, classical or otherwise? Ditto.” – The New York Times
We Applaud The Philanthropist Who Says He’ll Pay Student Loans. But This Is A Policy Failure
Students are saddled with crippling debt. And generations will be encumbered by it. The generous philanthropist who says he’ll pay the Morehouse College graduating class’s student debt has done a great thing. But it points to a glaring failure of public policy. – The New York Times
33 Lessons From 33 Pros On How To Succeed As A Dancer
“Dance Magazine spoke to 33 people from all corners of the industry” — among them Paloma Herrera, Judith Jamison, Liz Lerman, David Dorfman, Meredith Monk, Donald Byrd, and Trey McIntyre — “to get their advice on the lessons that could help us all, no matter where we are in our careers.” – Dance Magazine
The Mozart Problem: Revolution In Tight Form
Stephen Brown: “This is the problem that Mozart poses for our contemporary ears. His music is so balanced, clear, rational in its order, especially in comparison to the music that has come after, that it is easy – for performers as well as listeners – to miss the drama.” – Times Literary Supplement
On The Tour Van With Shakespeare And Company
That would be the New England theatre troupe, not the Paris bookstore. “Every year since 1982, Shakespeare & Company has sent young performers on the road from early winter through late spring, for four months of Dunkin’ Donuts breakfasts, motel showers, flubbed lines, forgotten props, missed turnoffs, standing ovations and the chance to live with Shakespeare’s words a lot like the traveling players of 400 years ago would have.” Reporter Alexis Soloski spent a few days with them. – The New York Times
We’ve Already Got Broadway Shows Performed Live On TV. Soon We’ll Have Musicals Produced Directly For TV
Netflix has already done small-screen versions of Springsteen on Broadway and American Son, and they’re now working on feature versions of Broadway’s (recent) The Boys in the Band and (current) The Prom. Fox is working on its own jukebox musicals. Where will the genre go from there? – Dance Magazine
Hollywood Has Spent Lots Of Money Setting Up Production Facilities In Georgia. With Controversy Over Abortion Laws, Will The Studios Back Away?
“Georgia’s recent passage of a highly restrictive abortion law has turned its once cozy relationship with Tinsel Town into a fraught one, and put Hollywood’s liberal politics on a collision course with its own economic interests in the state. … But the industry’s response to the law has been far from unified. There have been pledges to boycott Georgia and promises to stay. Most strikingly, there has been near total silence from top studio brass.” – The New York Times
PBS NewsHour Gets $1.7 Million Grant To Beef Up Arts Coverage
The gift from the Knight Foundation will be used to expand NewsHour‘s Canvas program online and over the air. – ARTnews
Conductor Alan Gilbert On The New York Philharmonic And The Hamburg Elbphilharmonie
“The 2019-20 season will be Alan Gilbert’s first with the NDR Elbphilharmonie Orchester in Hamburg. On paper, a German radio orchestra, with the system’s long tradition of advocacy for new repertoire, would seem to be an excellent fit for Gilbert. Over two conversations, one in a Hamburg café, the other on the phone, we talked about how taste is made, gender quotas for orchestras, self-doubt, and parenthood.” – Van
London’s Philharmonia Orchestra Names Successor To Esa-Pekka Salonen
Santtu-Matias Rouvali, 33, begins his 10-weeks-a-year, five-year contract term at the start of the 2021-22 season. He is also chief conductor of the Gothenburg Symphony (which is the official national orchestra of Sweden), where he just extended his term for four years), and the Tampere Philharmonic in Finland’s second city, where “the Rouvali effect” has seen extra concerts scheduled to meet audience demand. – The Times (UK)
Cabaret Star Baby Jane Dexter Dead At 72
“[She] first gained acclaim in the 1970s, when she appeared in New York nightclubs as a bluesy singer with a powerful voice and presence. She dropped out of show business for a decade before returning to the stage in the 1990s, using elements from her personal life — her size, her experience of sexual assault and depression — to heighten the emotional intensity of her performances, which were often so intimate that they seemed to be exercises in group therapy.” – The Washington Post
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No One Can See Or Touch These Objects But Ordained Ethiopian Priests. The British Museum *Might* Take Them Out Of Storage And Loan Them To Ethiopia
The objects are called tabots, they’re plaques meant to respresent the Ark of the Covenant, and their presence is what makes an Ethiopian church a sacred space. The British Museum has 11 of them, most of them looted by soldiers after the 1868 Battle of Maqdala; since no layperson may see them (including museum curators), they’re kept in a locked basement. The government of Ethiopia has requested their return; a spokesperson says “the suggestion of a long-term loan of the tabots may be discussed.” – The Art Newspaper
For The First Time, The Met Museum Will Put Sculpture In The Sculpture Niches In Its Façade
Kenyan-American artist Wangechi Mutu is casting works to be displayed in the empty niches this fall, while Cree Canadian artist Kent Monkman is creating large-scale site-specific paintings for the museum’s Great Hall. (Meanwhile, the museum’s board presented the first balanced budget in three years.) – The Art Newspaper
Political Protest Becomes Conceptual Art: Kazakhstan Police Arrest Man For Silently Holding Up A Blank Poster
The “culprit” was Aslan Sagutdinov, a blogger in the city of Uralsk. In a video taken of his arrest, he said, “I want to show that the idiocy in our country has gotten so strong that the police will detain me now even though there are no inscriptions, no slogans, without my chanting or saying anything.” (The writer of this report compares Sagutdinov’s action to John Cage’s 4’33”.) – Hyperallergic
Actor Geoffrey Rush Wins Largest Defamation Payout Ever Awarded In Australia
A federal court in Sydney ordered that Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp. must pay the Oscar winner A$1.98 million (US$1.36 million) compensation for economic loss on top of the A$850,000 (US$584,000) in punitive damages awarded in April for a Sydney Daily Telegraph story accusing Rush of “inappropriate behaviour” towards the actress playing Cordelia to his King Lear at the Sydney Theatre Co. in 2015. (Rush had earlier offered to settle for A$50,000; News Corp. rejected the offer.) – Reuters
Finale Of Hilary Mantel’s Cromwell Trilogy Has Official Publishing Date
Yes, that billboard in London was a piece of viral marketing. One day after it set social media atwitter (ahem), HarperCollins revealed that it will release The Mirror and the Light in March of 2020. (Henry Holt will be the US publisher; in the UK, the book will appear under the Fourth Estate imprint.) – The Bookseller (UK)
Study: Women Perform Better On Tests In Warmer Rooms
The results suggest that “ordinary variations in room temperature can affect cognitive performance significantly, and differently for men and women,” write co-authors Tom Chang of the University of Southern California and Agne Kajackaite of the Berlin Social Science Center. – Pacific Standard
Butterflies, Roasted Pigs And Radios: Christopher Rountree And The Music Of Anything
And he’s having a moment now, with the LA Philharmonic’s FLUXUS Festival. – San Francisco Classical Voice