What Robert Glasper’s Monthlong Residency At The Blue Note Means For Jazz
Some candor, some mistakes, some crossover. "As he’s helped to wash away artificial divides between jazz and other contemporary black music, Mr. Glasper has spoken with a casual candor not typical of jazz musicians. 'If you ever heard Miles Davis talk, I’m no different than Miles,' Mr. Glasper said, sipping a cocktail in his Blue Note dressing room earlier this month. 'His freedom in talking about where he is in the music and what he’s trying to do.'" … Read More
The Sculptor Who Tried To Be An Accountant (It Didn’t Take)
John McKenna might not have made it in accountancy, but as a sculptor, he knows that the money he makes as an artist is always in flux. "It’s a precarious existence. Some years are lean and some hectic, but it’s always hard to save – the profits from the good years go on servicing the debts and repairs from the bad." … Read More
Wait, Is *That* Song In ‘A Star Is Born’ Supposed To Be Good – Or Terrible?
The journalist, before interviewing the song's writer: "If the song is so paper-thin, why can’t I stop singing it under my breath? And why has the internet been moved to slap 'Why Did You Do That?' on top of videos of dancing robots and gyrating Pokemon? Is the song, with its xylophone intro and unpretentious pop charm, actually a stealth treasure?" … Read More
Starring Steven Yeun
Yeun, who played Glenn on The Walking Dead and is starring in a new Korean film called Burning (based on a short story by Haruki Murakami), says that he hopes and believes there truly will be a sea change for Asian American actors. "We live in this era that, while Joy Luck Club came out that one time, we got so many things coming up now. We got talent now. We got people everywhere. Is it still going to take some time? Yeah." … Read More
The Saskatoon Symphony Is Moving Offices After The Executive Director Was Stabbed
Saskatoon is cold, and the office was near a bus stop, before a man entered the office and stabbed the executive director in the eye with the blunt end of a fork. "As an arts organization, we’re really open to the public and we want people to be able to interact with us in all ways. ... We want people to come in and warm up if they’re standing out in the cold when it’s -40 C and -50, and with our windows, you can see the bus coming so it is kind of the perfect warm-up spot." Not anymore. … Read More
Is Paris Overtaking London In The Art Fair Scene?
Brexit, and all of the uncertainty surrounding it, might be giving Paris an edge. "President Emmanuel Macron of France seems to scent an opening. The president was scheduled to give a cocktail reception at the Élysée Palace on Friday 'in honor of artists and creation' on the occasion of FIAC 2018 including fair exhibitors. No French president has hosted such an event since 1985." … Read More
Viola Davis On ‘Smothering’ Herself In Hollywood, And Breaking Free
She's ready for films to change, a lot. "Davis says she wants to play the sort of roles Jane Fonda and Meryl Streep have had. 'I would love to have a black female Klute, or Kramer, or Unmarried Woman, or Annie Hall. But who’s gonna write it, who’s gonna produce it, who’s gonna see it, again and again and again?'" … Read More
A Prized 12,000-Year-Old Fossil Skull Has Been Recovered From The Burned-Out National Museum In Brazil
Well, some of the skull, anyway. "On Friday the museum's director announced that 80% of Luzia's skull fragments had been identified. ... The museum staff said they were confident they could recover the rest of Luzia's skull and attempt reassembly." … Read More
Stanley Kubrick’s Childhood Friend – And Favorite Movie Composer – Never Got Paid For Their First Film
Kubrick never paid Gerald Fried (or apparently many others) for their first film. "He thought the very fact that my doing the music to his early movies got me into the profession was enough payment. We had an agreement – not in writing – [that] we would work for nothing but, as soon as the movie got sold, he would pay us. Well, he didn’t." … Read More
When You Get A Romanov To Critique Amazon’s ‘The Romanoffs’
The Grand Duchess Maria of Russia, great-great-granddaughter of Czar Nicholas II (she lives in Spain) isn't impressed, or so said her people. "The chancellery would not have issued the release at all if The Romanoffs were simply dull, the release went on. 'Dullness may be disagreeable, but it seldom causes offense or insult. ... Alas, to the series creator’s great discredit, The Romanoffs manages to do both.'" … Read More
What’s It Like To Be A Ukranian Ballerina In Putin’s Russia? [VIDEO]
Svetlana Zakharova has devoted her life to ballet since she was a child, and as an adult, she's been one of the Russian president's favorite dancers. She's also been a member of the culture ministry in Russia, and she's one of Vladimir Putin's favorite dancers. When asked about Putin, she says, "The most important thing for me is that everyone, not only the Russian president, but all the world leaders talk to each other and avoid war. ... But I'm not the person to answer this question. I live in my own closed world." … Read More
The Music That Has Launched A Thousand, Or More Like A Hundred Thousand, Memes
How does the station Bravo keep people addicted to its reality TV shows? A composer says that he and others make the station sound like candy: "midcentury spy film vibraphones. Tchaikovskian pizzicato — that is, finger-plucked — violin strings. The melodious wooden tock-tock-tock of a struck marimba. Egg shakers. Cymbals which, when struck in succession, vibrate with an ephemeral sound halfway between a wish and a sparkle." … Read More
The Myth Of Artist Agnes Martin, Recluse, Dissolves Into The Reality Of Agnes Martin, Connected And Committed To Her Community
She lived in community wherever she was, but truly found a home in Taos. "As a poor, queer female artist who suffered from schizophrenia, Martin existed on the margins of society for most of her life. After spending the 1950s living in poverty, she achieved critical success in the 1960s and commercial success thereafter. In the 1990s she had made millions off her art and was eager to repay the kindness her community had showed her during her own years of struggle." … Read More
Evelyn Anthony, Writer Of Spy Stories, Has Died At 92
She entered a field dominated by men like John Le Carré and Ian Fleming, and found fertile ground in the rivalries among Britain's intelligence services. Getting to know actual WWII spies changed her writing, her life, and the genre. … Read More
Telling The Story Of A Kingdom Through Textiles
In the Kuba Kingdom of the 17th and 18th centuries, before European colonialism, "royal ceremonies and parties sometimes had the feel of a runway showdown, with elites competing to see whose patterns were most unique and impressive. ... Designs needed to scream and to be heard from a distance. They were engineered to capture the eye and not allow it to rest. " … Read More
Premium Classifieds
Master’s in Arts Management in NYC – for Active Performing Artists
The New School's MA in Arts Management & Entrepreneurship is designed for active performing artists seeking the business skills, strategies & inspiration to drive new careers in arts … [Read More]
Assistant Arts Professor of Dance History
New York University/ Tisch School of the Arts Department of Dance seeks to fill a full-time Assistant Arts Professor position in Dance History to begin in Fall 2019. This is a multiyear, non-tenure … [Read More]
Spoleto Festival USA – Director of Finance / Chief Financial Officer
Spoleto Festival USA, internationally recognized as America’s premier performing arts festival, seeks a Director of Finance to oversee an approximately $8 million operating budget, $16 million … [Read More]
Director of Development
Music of the Baroque, one of Chicago's most respected chorus and orchestras, seeks a Director of Development to help deliver its ambitious plans up to and beyond its 50th anniversary in the 2020-21 … [Read More]
President & CEO, Tennessee Performing Arts Center
The board of Tennessee Performing Arts Center Management Corporation seeks a visionary and entrepreneurial President & CEO to guide the board in making the most important strategic decisions about … [Read More]
Director of Development, The Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center
The Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center seeks an exceptional Director of Development, a key executive position, to join the organization at an exciting time of institutional accomplishment and … [Read More]
Getty Leadership Institute – Executive Education for Museum Leaders
The Getty Leadership Institute is now accepting applications for 2019 programs. GLI is celebrating 40 years of empowering museum leaders to advance their institutions and the field. GLI … [Read More]
A Second-Generation Playwright Who Took Her Mother’s Advice
Or rather, she took her mother's story and melded it into a new play. Playwright Jaclyn Backhaus on why her new play includes pirates: "It’s a pirate attitude that got my mom to where she is. ... t’s a pirate attitude that lot of people with dreams face when they’re trying to attain them." … [Read More]
What Life’s Like For A Multitasking Creator
Alicia Jo Rabins, on pulling together discussions among writer/musicians about serving two different disciplines: "It’s not that unusual to work in multiple disciplines, but sometimes I feel a bit lonely about it. For so many of us, there’s no single word to describe our practice, no easy answer to the question 'what do you do?'" … [Read More]
The Instagram Account That Started As A Lark And Became An Art Exhibit
Guadalupe Rosales started with some 1990s photos of friends, photos called "star shots" from mall photography studios. From there, her work became an Instagram archive to catalogue the history of Mexican Americans in Los Angeles. "'I’ve gotten so many emails, people thanking me, saying, ‘I’m so glad that there is something out there that is representing a part of our culture,' Rosales says of her Instagram accounts. 'It’s nice to hear that. It validates that there was something missing — part of history.'" … [Read More]
The True Power Of Katniss Everdeen Goes Way Beyond The ‘Hunger Games’ Rebellion Sign
The author of Belles echoes the author of An Ember in the Ashes in her appreciation for the protagonist of Suzanne Collins' Hunger Games series (and they say we need a little more Katniss right now): "I needed to read girls like her; girls who weren’t so nice; girls so angry that their rage could topple anything in their path; girls that could face the dark; girls who could never be contained." … [Read More]
The Cover Song Makes A Comeback
The status of the cover song has shape-shifted throughout pop-music history. Well into the 1950s, it barely even needed a name: It was just the routine way of doing business. During the rock era, covers became suspect as inauthentic, the stuff of the hack bar band, unless an artist “made the song their own.” With the rise of hip-hop, covers were displaced by sampling and remixes, but then samples themselves became more concealed and layered, for reasons of both art and copyright. In the 2000s and earlier this decade, the practice migrated to YouTube, where concert clips or home videos of one-off covers, rearrangements, and parodies might show off the skills and wit of amateurs and pros alike but still seldom troubled the charts—unless they also made it to soundtracks or TV ads, where … [Read More]
Why We Needed A New History Of The United States
Jill Lepore has surmised, is that too much historical writing—and perhaps too much nonfiction in general—proceeds without many of the qualities that readers recognize as essential to experience: “humor, and art, and passion, and love, and tenderness, and sex… and fear, and terror, and the sublime, and cruelty.” Things that she calls “organic to the period, and yet lost to us.” Lepore’s training as a historian, she’s said, tried to teach her that these things did not contain worthy explanations. In graduate school her interest in them “looked like a liability, and I took note.” … [Read More]
How Music Competitions Are Reinventing Themselves
Competitions, like the rest of the business, are redefining themselves. Rather than trying to produce the superstars of tomorrow, they’re increasingly focusing on the present: an end in themselves. Indeed, the line between the competition and other classical music organizations is increasingly blurred. … [Read More]
Even As Its Economy Was Melting Down, Greece Still Invested In The Arts. Why?
The principal belief is that supporting the arts and culture is not a luxury but an investment in human progress. It is the necessary scaffolding for building and sustaining civil society. It is the cornerstone for human growth and development. … [Read More]
We’re All About Feelings Now – How Literature Evolved Beyond Narratives
Western literature’s gradual progression from narratives that relate actions and events to stories that portray minds in all their meandering, many-layered, self-contradictory complexities. I’d often wondered, when reading older texts: Weren’t people back then interested in what characters thought and felt? … [Read More]
Report: Broadway Theatre Audience Is Getting Younger
The 21st publication is just out and reports the lowest age attendance since 2000, a significant bit of hope for Broadway’s long-term health. During the 2017–2018 season, the average age of Broadway theater-goers was 40.6, the lowest since 2000. For a second year in a row, there was a record total number of kids and teens under 18 attending a Broadway show. At 2.1 million, it represents the highest total ever (it was 1.65 million the season prior). Additionally, since the 2010-2011 season, Hispanic/Latino attendance has grown by 61%, or 430,000 admissions (from 710,000 to 1.14 million). … [Read More]