The five most powerful women in US music
Source: Slipped Disc | Published on 2013-12-10
Magical Thinking And The DIA
Source: Real Clear Arts | Published on 2013-12-11
Jim Hall, 1930-2013
Source: RiffTides | Published on 2013-12-10
Archives for December 10, 2013
Kennedy Center Names Deborah Rutter As Its New President, To Succeed Michael Kaiser
“Rutter, 57, will succeed Michael M. Kaiser, who has led the Kennedy Center since 2001. As president, she will serve as both artistic and administrative director of the Kennedy Center’s theater, dance, chamber music, jazz programming and education initiatives, while overseeing the National Symphony Orchestra and the Washington National Opera.”
Forbes Ranks Hollywood’s Most Overpaid Actors
“Looking at pay, movie budgets and expenses, we calculated a return on investment number for each star and then averaged those numbers to get an overall return.”
Artists Alarmed At What’s Become Of Art Schools Are Starting Their Own
“Artists may be among the greatest individualists in any society but some contemporary practitioners, anxious about the future of the culture, are piloting projects that aim to educate and sustain their younger peers.”
500 Writers From 100 Countries Protest Mass Surveillance
“The global initiative, called ‘writers against surveillance’ is calling on all states and corporations across the globe to respect the rights of people to determine the extent to which their personal data may be collected, stored and processed. The group are also calling on the UN to create an International Bill of Digital Rights.”
The Practical Absurdity Of Selling Detroit’s DIA Art
“Michiganders might remember that in the 1920s and ’30s, the cash-hungry Soviet government sold off Russia’s art treasures, dispersing them to other countries. Today, that episode is viewed as a national tragedy.”
Who Was The Greatest Person In History? (A Statistical Answer)
“In 2011, Jean-Baptiste Michel and multiple co-authors published an article in Science, helpfully if not colorfully titled “Quantitative Analysis of Culture Using Millions of Digitized Books,” which announced that more than five million books had been digitized, thus giving us a new tool by which to identify cultural trends and to quantify changes over time.”
How America Lost Its Real Rural Music
“It’s not discussed enough… someone should write a book on it – how we really lost how we make and listen to music with the onslaught of mass media. It’s changed so much – in 1933 there were 20,000 jukeboxes in America. By 1939 there were 400,000 jukeboxes! That immediately eliminates so many live musicians.”
Radio’s Christmas Music Bonanza
“The fact that Christmas music on the radio performs best the night before Christmas shouldn’t surprise you, but after digging into the data for the top holiday-format stations in each of those markets last year, a few interesting trends emerged.”
LA Scala Names New Director To Succeed Barenboim
“La Scala said in an email Tuesday that Riccardo Chailly, a 60-year-old Milan-born conductor, will be La Scala’s principal conductor from 2015 before becoming musical director in 2017.”
The Kinda Creepy Mistakes People Are Finding In Google Book Scans
“Scavengers obsessively comb through page after page of Google Books, hoping to stumble upon some glitch that hasn’t yet been unearthed. This phenomenon is most thoroughly documented on a Tumblr called The Art of Google Books, which collects two types of images: analog stains that are emblems of a paper book’s history and digital glitches that result from the scanning.”
The Kennedy Center Honors’ Emotional Night
“This year, the Kennedy Center honored actress Shirley MacLaine, opera singer Martina Arroyo, musician Carlos Santana — who beamed while sitting next to first lady Michelle Obama — and two piano men: Herbie Hancock and Billy Joel. If the honorees had performed together, it would have been a dream collaboration — but as is the 36-year custom, they sat, smiled and watched others pay tribute to lives lived on stages and screens.”
How Museums Name Their Shows
“Like naming a baby, getting the title right can do much to determine how others perceive and remember an exhibition. And how many people will attend.”
Museums As Community Centers? C’Mon. They Shouldn’t Be Daycares
“I like an ace café and the lattes on sale as much as the next girl. But there is a seemingly relentless drive to make them more like a nursery and less like a palace of knowledge.”
Minnesota Orchestra Musicians Will Play On, Lockout Be Damned
“Musicians of the Minnesota Orchestra sounded a note of resolve Monday to continue performing concerts if they remained locked out in their long and bitter confrontation with the Minnesota Orchestral Association.” And they’re raising money to do it – from community members and musicians in other orchestras.
What’s The Secret To Running An English Regional Theatre?
“Running one of Britain’s regional playhouses, a theatre director once told me, was a combination of ‘comedy on stage, tragedy off’. … So how do you construct a regional programme that will work?”
Johan Kobborg To Run Romania’s New National Ballet
The Danish dancer and choreographer – and the soon-to-be Mr. Alina Cojocaru – will move to his fiancée’s homeland next month ro run the new company, based at the national opera house in Bucharest.
What Happens When Ballet Dancers Date
“In this week’s episode of AOL’s City.Ballet web series, those questions are finally answered, and it’s just as gossipy as you might hope.”
The Roots Of Urban Planning In The Gardens At Versailles
An new exhibition at Louis XIV’s château posits that His Majesty’s landscape architect, André Le Nôtre, first put into practice ideas about layout that would influence urban planners for the next several centuries.
Cleveland Int’l Piano Competition Increases Top Prize By 50%
“Thanks to a gift from Mal and Barbara Mixon, the contest’s first prize now entails an award of $75,000, up from the previous $50,000. This makes Cleveland’s top prize one of the largest of its kind in the world.”
What The Ancient Greek Tragedians Knew About Today’s Politics
In an Out Loud podcast, classicist and critic Daniel Mendelsohn talks with Sasha Weiss about how issues ranging from the arguments over where to bury Tamerlan Tsarnaev to Americans’ continuing fascination with JFK’s presidency and murder are reflected in Sophocles and Euripides.
The Great Literary Feuds Of 2013
“Among this year’s conflicts, presented here in rough chronological order, a few themes emerge: clashes over the function of online literary criticism, questions about gender and literature, and struggles over who controls an artist’s legacy and fortune.”
What It Feels Like For A Girl – To Read Roth, Kerouac, And Other “Midcentury Misogynists”
Sara Marcus: “I remember putting On the Road down the first time a woman was mentioned. I was just like: ‘Fuck. You.'” Emily Witt: ““I read the [coming-of-age novels] by men instead, until I was like, ‘I cannot read another passage about masturbation. I can’t.’ It was like a pile of Kleenex.”
Nadine Gordimer Remembers Nelson Mandela
The Nobel laureate reveals the terrible secret he told her after he was released from prison, recalls the joy of seeing crowds cheering him in Oslo after he won the Nobel Peace Prize, and recounts one telling instance she witnessed of his extraordinary capacity for forgiveness.
Nelson Mandela And ‘War And Peace’
The lessons Madiba learned from Tolstoy’s General Kutuzov, “whom everyone at the Russian court underestimated.”