Frank Almond Tells The Story Of His Stolen Stradivarius
In 2014, in a parking lot following a solo recital, the Milwaukee Symphony’s concertmaster got zaped with a Taser and had his violin ripped from his hands. (The culprit, it turned out, was an individual named Universal Knowledge Allah.) In an appearance at The Moth, Almond recounts the entire tale, from the mugging to the police response(s) to the recovery. (audio) – The Moth
Modern Library To Release New Low-Cost Series Of Classics By Women Authors
“The Modern Library will launch a new trade paperback series, Modern Library Torchbearers, this May. The series, the publisher said, will ‘honor a more inclusive vision of classic books’ by ‘recognizing women who wrote on their own terms, with boldness, creativity, and a spirit of resistance.’ The books, all previously published, will be repackaged, and each will be introduced by a contemporary woman writer.” – Publishers Weekly
Academy Decides Not To Bar Streaming Movies From Oscars
The board of governors of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences “left intact Rule Two, the one that established that a film” — including one produced by Netflix or Amazon — “can be eligible for Oscars if it has a minimum 7-day theatrical run in a L.A. County commercial theater.” (Sorry, Mr. Spielberg.) – Deadline
Here’s The Problem With The Backlash Against The Millions Pledged For Notre-Dame
Kathy LeMay: “The problem with [the complaints] is this: they do not help fundraisers unlock donor giving. … Imagine if after giving to help a family in need, articles were written about you asking why you aren’t helping families around the world?” – Inside Philanthropy
Notre-Dame’s Organ Is Almost Completely Undamaged By Fire
“Pascal Quoirin, a specialist who restored the Notre Dame organ in 2017, … said ‘after two hours spent examining the instrumental part, I did not notice any damage that could have been caused by the fire.'” (Apparently, there is only dust that needs to be cleaned out.) – Yahoo! (AP)
Henry Wollman Bloch, Art Philanthropist And Co-Founder Of H&R Block, Dead At 96
The primary beneficiary of Bloch’s largesse has been Kansas City’s Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art: he spent three years as its board chairman, he and his wife are the name donors on the museum’s 2007 expansion and its 2015-17 renovation, and at the same time the couple gave a collection of 29 major Impressionist paintings to NAMA. – ARTnews
In Case Of Counterfeit Rodins, French Court Sentences Businessman And Art Dealer
Last week a court of appeals in Paris handed septuagenarian U.S. businessman Gary Snell a suspended prison sentence of one year and Parisian art dealer Robert Crouzet a four-month suspended prison sentence as part of an 18-year legal battle over counterfeited Auguste Rodin sculptures. – Artsy
In China, Two Historical Soap Operas Go Viral, And The Communist Party Promptly Cancels Them
The Story of Yanxi Palace and Ruyi’s Royal Love in the Palace smashed viewing records for the streaming services that showed them. Then the journal Theory Weekly (a title only a Communist bureaucrat could love) published an article condemning the series as “incompatible with the core values of socialism” and “[a] negative influence on society.” State media condemnation went on from there, and the series disappeared. Why? – The New Yorker
More Than 7000 TV Writers Have Fired Their Agents, Says Union
The writers’ union’s memo also claimed, “Most of the writers who haven’t yet signed termination letters are retirees or no longer actively working.” – New York Magazine
Suzanne Farrell Back At City Ballet – What It Means
Alastair Macaulay: “What makes Ms. Farrell so important? Her place in Balanchine history is central: She inspired him to make some of his most radically modernist works; opened up fresh torrents of Romanticism in him; showed how old roles could be transformed. She combined grandeur, musicality, wit, fervor and acumen to phenomenal degrees.” – The New York Times
Report: By Next Year More Canadians Will Be Streaming Than Paying For Cable TV
It’s an amazingly fast shift in how people are watching. The amount they watch hasn’t gone done, just how they access it. And, perhaps a shift in what they watch too. – CBC
Study: People Don’t Empathize Because It’s Too Much Work
“There is a common assumption that people stifle feelings of empathy because they could be depressing or costly. But we found that people primarily just don’t want to make the mental effort to feel empathy toward others, even when it involves feeling positive emotions.” – Pacific Standard
Serious Shade: The Stupid Classics Book Club
It’s easy to dive into a classic book and after awhile get the feeling you’re reading something dull. Something… well, dumb. That may, of course be more about you and where you’re coming from than it is about the classic… – The Paris Review
Just How Enlightened Was The Age Of Enlightenment?
“It has been said, indeed, that the eighteenth century was less the Age of Reason than the Age of Feelings—because so many Enlightenment thinkers took pride in recognizing the importance of the sentiments, as their intellectual predecessors often had not. (In Hume’s famous line: “Reason is and ought only to be the slave of the Passions.”) The aim of building a rational society meant contending with the ways in which human beings are not creatures of sweet reason. And that meant, in turn, having some way of deciding what rationality demanded.” New York Review of Books
Katy Waldman Was Reviewing A Novel. Then She Found Herself In It. And On It Goes From There.
Well, she’s pretty sure she found herself — more specifically, an essay she wrote about herself and her twin sister — but the novel’s author differs. And the author of another book claims she found more of it in Waldman’s essay than Waldman credited her for. (Waldman differs, as does her editor, who was her twin sister.) Waldman digs into all this here, in a very meta essay. – The New Yorker
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Essential Reading: Forty Years Ago George Trow Wrote That TV Had Killed Intellectual Life. Now To Social Media…
Trow argued that the rise of television decimated the elite American intellectual community to which he had belonged as the far descendant of printing magnates, a Harvard graduate, and a magazine writer. It cut out what he posed as society’s heart: the reading, debating, literary demographic that consumed his work. – The Nation
‘Fancy Free’ Doesn’t Seem So Delightful After #MeToo — Should It Be Retired?
In 2019, the Bernstein-Robbins ballet about three sailors on shore leave looks rather like “a case study in rape culture,” writes Lea Marshall, who took a group of undergraduate dance student to see it. Most of the audience loved it; the students were aghast. Marshall explains why. – Dance Magazine
Everybody’s Talking About Influencers. They’ve Been Around A Long Time
Influence was worrisome long before it was digital. The word “influence” appears in a quarter of William Shakespeare’s plays, in which the condition of being influenced is rarely happy or dignified. Almost without exception, Shakespeare gives influence a darkly astrological cast. – The New Yorker
A Very Bad Idea: Broadcasting ‘Saturday Night Live’ Direct From New Orleans Mardi Gras
Yes, they tried it once, back in 1977. And not on Saturday night at 11:30, but on Sunday evening at 8:30. “Vulture recently spoke to many of those involved, including Lorne Michaels, Randy Newman, Anne Beatts, and Paul Shaffer,” about this utterly doomed endeavor. – Vulture
Robert Caro On The Revealing Powers Of Biography
“When people say that power corrupts… I don’t happen to believe that. Power reveals. When you’re on your way up, you have to conceal what you intend to do. Once you get power, then you see it, what he really wanted to do.” – The Guardian
Transporting The Instruments For A Touring Orchestra Is An Even Bigger Production Than You Think
A reporter talks with a logistics expert at DHL who’s worked with touring orchestras for 15 years about everything it takes to pull a successful tour off. – WQXR (New York City)
Truth Versus Lies: Suppressing The Lies From Being Heard Doesn’t Work
In On Liberty (1859), John Stuart Mill offers the most compelling defence of freedom of speech, conscience and autonomy ever written. Mill argues that the only reason to restrict speech is to prevent harm to others, such as with hate speech and incitement to violence. Otherwise, all speech must be protected. Even if we know a view is false, Mill says, it is wrong to suppress it. We avoid prejudice and dogmatism, and achieve understanding, through freely discussing and defending what we believe against contrary claims. – Aeon
Bringing The Music Back To Ancient Greek Drama
“Greek tragedy survives today as words on a page, but ancient performances were distinguished as much for music and dance as for speeches and dialogue. … The musical dimension of ancient tragedy was long given up for lost, but a [recent] performance of Euripides’s Herakles at Barnard College showed how much is being recovered, thanks to recent archeological finds and painstaking research.” – The New York Review of Books
Why Even Great Social-Media Marketing By Dance Companies Doesn’t Lead Straight To Ticket Sales
“There is no clear correlation between a company’s social media campaigns and how many seats they fill in the theater. That doesn’t mean social media isn’t, of course, vital. … ‘Campaigns without social media are far worse off.'” Here’s why. – Dance Magazine
Can We Just Lose The Whole Non-Profits-Should-Run-Like-Businesses Nonsense For Good?
The donors, usually businesspeople, who keep saying that are “thinking of giving as analogous to investing when it isn’t, which leads to related mistakes like utilizing the wrong metrics [to grade success].” And (mis-)using those metrics has created a big slice of the public that dimply doesn’t trust nonprofits to spend their money properly. – Fast Company