Where Were The Outstanding Women Jazz Instrumentalists?
“Were there no female musicians playing instruments or do we just not know about them? The truth is that there were plenty of capable and talented ladies, but social expectations for the household matriarch did not include frequenting dance halls at night and touring around the country for weeks in a bus full of men.”
New Smithsonian Secretary Has Been Champion Of The Humanities
“The funding we allocate to the humanities through our government has never come close to the value the humanities add to individual lives and to the life of our nation. Even in times of austerity, especially in times of austerity, sound investments must be made.”
Fifteen Of The World’s Most Beautiful Concert Halls
“More and more concert halls are being built that stand out by virtue of their eye-catching shapes, colors and materials.”
Remembering Gerard Mortier And His Influence In America
“I can think of no one more important than the crafty, brilliant Belgian impresario in making opera a uniquely telling, relevant, contemporary and meaningfully controversial art form in Europe. But it wasn’t only Europe and it wasn’t only opera in which Mortier’s influence has proven pervasive.”
Television Academy Updates What “Television” Means
Instead of referring to the electronic console as “television,” the group now embraces a more inclusive moniker — television means programming — in a nod toward the rise of disruptive new digital programmers, including Netflix.
Trey McIntyre Project Shutdown – Does It Say Anything About The State Of American Dance?
“To be certain, the company’s January announcement that it was shutting down as a full-time performing troupe drew plenty of congratulations from some circles. But there was also a good deal of consternation about what this would mean for the folks in Boise.”
Study: Reading Literature Can Make You Less Racist
“Narrative fiction offers a rich context in which exposure to out-group culture and (a process of emotional) merging can occur,” the researchers conclude. “Supporting this notion, there is growing evidence that reading a story engages many of the same neural networks involved in empathy.”
A Computer Program That Analyzes Sentences And Identifies Authors
“The basic idea is that every word you say represents a choice. So when you speak, you’re making a million choices that you’re not aware of. The differences aren’t meaningful to the speaker.” But they are meaningful to a program that can catalogue and index all the possible options.
Minnesota Orchestra Board Wants Vänskä Back, But Not as Music Director: Report
“Vänskä might be asked to take a limited role as a principal guest conductor, leading perhaps eight to 10 concerts a season, but without administrative duties, two sources within the orchestra’s board of directors said Monday.” The same sources say that the board voted strongly in support of controversial CEO Michael Henson.
Minnesota Orchestra Fans Press Board Hard for Vänskä’s Rehiring (As Music Director)
“Members of Save Our Symphony Minnesota have made it clear they’re not going away now that the lockout has ended. More importantly, they’ve made it clear to the board that they want Henson gone and Vänskä back … But understand, many of the board members are corporate heavyweights. Most corporate heavyweights don’t react well to ultimatums.”
George Saunders Is First Winner of Folio Prize
For his short story collection Tenth of December, “Saunders, a former Guardian columnist, became the first winner of the £40,000 Folio prize, an award created by people in the books industry who felt frustrated by what they see as the shortcomings of the Man Booker.”
Joe McGinniss, 71, Author of ‘Fatal Vision’ and ‘The Selling of the President’
“More recently, Mr. McGinniss made headlines in 2010 when, for his next book, he moved in next door to Sarah Palin and her family in Wasilla, Alaska.”
Musicals Storm Olivier Award Nominations
Charlie and the Chocolate Factory and Merrily We Roll Along take seven nominations each, while The Book of Mormon, Once and The Scottsboro Boys each get six. Meanwhile, in the best director category, women outnumber men 3-to-1.
‘Inherent Dullness’? Pah! How About ‘Soul-Searing Passion’? A Sports Journalist Goes to the Symphony
“I heard drama; I saw drama, great swaying, soaring playing full of determination and vigour, its pace never letting up. (I’m stunned how still the rest of the audience appeared to manage to sit. My head had gone a bit I think.)” Soccer writer Neil Atkinson visits the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic.
Actress Wendy Hughes, 61
“Her career spanned four decades, from … iconic Australian television series Homicide and Number 96, through to numerous film projects including My Brilliant Career and Careful, He Might Hear You.
Christie’s Postpones Basquiat Auction Following Forgeries Lawsuit
“Christie’s has postponed its online-only sale, ‘Jean-Michel Basquiat: Works from the Collection of Alexis Adler,’ as it faces allegations in a federal lawsuit filed by the late artist’s heirs claiming that works in the collection may be fakes.”
Death of a Creation Myth: Jackson Pollock’s ‘Mural’
“Despite claims made and repeated for decades” – including by Lee Krasner (Pollock’s wife), Peggy Guggenheim (who commissioned the work) and critic Clement Greenberg – “Pollock did not paint the epic canvas in one great, glorious burst of nonstop creative fervor.” Christopher Knight explains how the myth got busted.
It’s Official: Amtrak Is Now Accepting Applications for Writer’s Residencies
“On Monday the company announced that up to 24 writers, chosen from a pool of applicants, will be given a round-trip ticket on a long-distance train, including a private sleeper-car room with a bed, a desk, and electrical outlets. The trains promise the romance. The writers will have to do the rest.”
$100K Nemmers Composition Prize Goes to Esa-Pekka Salonen
In addition to the cash award, the prize, given by Northwestern University’s Bienen School of Music, will do four residencies at the school over the next two years and have a work performed by the Chicago Symphony.
Korean Food Porn Is a Big Online Hit
“Every night at 10, thousands of Koreans tune in to watch Choi Ji-hwan eating on streaming video. The chubby-cheeked 24-year-old offers up a cooking lesson and then, in his main online act, devours a dish like kimchi pork stew in a wild, comic performance meant to make clear how much he enjoys a good meal.” (includes video)
See the Languages English Has Pillaged for Vocabulary In One Cool Graphic
Philip Durkin of the Oxford English Dictionary gives us a cunning interactive timeline.
CNN Discovers That Ballet Can Be Manly
“Tutus have been replaced with bare chests and tights, pointe shoes have been tossed aside for slippers, and delicate décolletages have been swapped for beefed-up biceps. Once the traditional arena of lithe ladies, ballet is seeing an increasing number of all-male shows – in one of the biggest shake-ups in the history of the profession.” (includes video)
Why Most Actors Are Crazy
Or, as The Atlantic‘s headline-writer so dispassionately puts it, “How Actors Create Emotions: A Problematic Psychology.”
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Drunk Disrupts Dude at Disney
Gustavo Dudamel had to stop the Los Angeles Philharmonic’s performance of John Corigliano’s First Symphony on Friday night when an inebriated latecomer decided – very loudly and a bit violently – that he shouldn’t have to wait for a break in the music to enter the auditorium.
Smithsonian Chooses A New Director
“He brings a record of noteworthy fundraising, having brought in more than $5 billion during his time at Cornell and $1 billion in a previous presidency at the University of Iowa.”
French Photographer JR Decides To Try His Hand At Ballet
“While JR has been hard at work creating the piece” – an eight-minute theatrical dance for New York City Ballet – “he’s also been relentlessly documenting its evolution via Instagram.” Of course.
Record Just Broken: The Longest-Running Theatre Production In History
“So exactly how long-running is the Charlottetown Festival production that plays at Confederation Centre in the greater scheme of things? Well, this season, Anne of Green Gables – which features music by Norman Campbell and words by Campbell, Don Harron, Elaine Campbell and Mavor Moore – by will be performed for a 50th consecutive summer in Charlottetown.”
Body Work: Grueling Training, Schedules Take Toll On Dancers
“Four out of five will suffer a severe injury during the course of their dancing career — and two out of those four will never fully recover. Injuries, more often than not, are the result of fatigue and repeated strain on muscles and joints, rather than unpredictable accidents.”
Weighing Over A Deal For Detroit Institute of Arts
“Formally severing Detroit’s ownership of the DIA would be at once revolutionary and conservative. It would represent a landmark in the the history of the museum, forever liberating it from the vagaries of city finances and politics at the root of many of the DIA’s struggles through the decades. Moreover, no city has ever ceded ownership of an art collection of such stature or financial value — estimates range in the billions.”
Glenn Beck, Culture Producer?
“Beck has three major motion pictures in development, and they will have a decidedly different outlook from the doom-and-gloom scenarios his Fox News viewers became accustomed to.”
“Smart Thinking” Books – Self-Help For Smart People?
“It has been called intelligent self-help, but since most potential readers would not appreciate the implied association with the dumber varieties, “smart thinking” has a certain advantage.”
Is The London Review Of Books The World’s Best Literary Magazine?
“This is, in many respects, a key part of the LRB’s ethos: it provides a space in which intelligent people can think differently; in which discomfiting thoughts can be voiced and provoking arguments can be aired with enough room to breathe.”
Bloomberg News Quits Arts Coverage
“It is especially inexplicable that Bloomberg News would ignore arts and design when award-winning and insightful architecture and design in its own facilities and terminals has abetted the company’s success. Contemporary art is widely found in the Bloomberg workplace.”
Devastating: The World Heritage Sites That Will Be Lost To Climate Change
“A new study released last week emphasizes the severity of this impact on culture: a whole fifth of the 720 listed UNESCO World Heritage Sites could be lost.”
The Uphill Battle To Build A Performing Arts Center At The World Trade Center
“To succeed, it will need to assemble a high-octane board, win over a thusfar noncommittal mayor and explain why the project is vital to New York at a time when a handful of similar theater spaces have opened in recent years, cultural leaders and arts-management experts said.”