The New NEA Jazz Masters: Jamey Aebersold
Source: RiffTides | Published on 2014-01-12
This composer might help you overcome performance anxiety
Source: Slipped Disc | Published on 2014-01-12
Woody Guthrie’s Sad End Revealed In Picture Book
Source: Real Clear Arts | Published on 2014-01-12
“Playing Mozart and Beethoven to young children improves their listening skills, concentration and self-discipline, according to a study this week by the Institute of Education.”
“This year’s awards, which celebrate the best writing, acting and production of the year, are being hailed as the most diverse yet, with a significant number of minority actors up for awards. … Beyond those standout actors and writers, Hollywood is still a tough town for minorities.”
But that’s not new – there’a a “remarkable scale and breadth of art that has been collected by corporations since the Renaissance, when the Monte dei Paschi bank in Siena decided it needed nice things for its walls and established what is thought to be the first corporate art collection, in 1472.”
The Grand Theatre 14 “apologized for the cancellation of multiple screenings of films such as The Wolf of Wall Street, American Hustle, Grudge Match, Paranormal Activity, Anchorman 2 and other titles.”
“I first thought of making the film when I read an article in Liberation that interviewed actors who played corpses in the reconstruction of crimes with the real-crime witnesses. Some actors had problems doing this.”
“When Amazon ventures into the physical world — whether with in-store delivery lockers or grocery trucks or vending machines — the company’s sheer scale and ambition demand that you think in terms of world domination.”
“Before this phone call, it had never occurred to Kirkpatrick that her contest winner might have spent the past 25 years in prison, where he’s serving a life sentence for murder.”
Updated as it happens.
“The Board of Trustees announced they had voted against the Working Group’s report, which, among other things, suggested the school reduce faculty’s salary expenses, sell the school’s sole resident hall and slash the president’s salary.”
“Mr. Baraka got himself into trouble sometimes with the things he said, but then he got himself out, too, and it wasn’t his fault if you decided to pay attention only to the first part. He had an unshakable devotion to change, even if his ideas were imperfect.”
“[Madeline Arakawa] Gins practiced an idiosyncratic and highly personal brand of art that sought to deploy architecture in the service of large essential questions about the nature of being.”
And if it does, does that make it a reprehensible film?
Janice Min transformed The Hollywood Reporter. Can she work the same magic on a trade magazine that used to have all of the power in the music biz?
“The Valencia authorities threatened to sue [Santiago] Calatrava last month after chunks fell off in high winds, forcing the closing of the building ahead of Christmas performances and the cancellation next month of Puccini’s ‘Manon Léscaut,’ directed by Plácido Domingo.”
Yes, sometimes Lena Dunham is nude to be amusing – but “the nudity on Girls often serves another valuable function that is neither funny nor sexy, in that it illustrates the intimacy between the show’s characters.”
Is it “12 Years a Slave” or “Gravity”? Or will “American Hustle” come from late in the game to win it all? And what about “Wolf of Wall Street”?
“She enforces order, here a street and there a house, and then – wham! – she is able to destroy the whole plan and start again. Given the God-like way many architects carry on, it’s probably helpful to get a sense of this feeling as early as possible.”
Seriously bad news: The Nook division over the holidays saw “a 60.5 percent drop compared with the nine-week holiday period a year earlier. Barnes & Noble executives said their total share of the e-book market had fallen to 20 percent.”
“At bottom the hackneyed, infantile writing of Twombly underscores a terrible solipsism, a real, modern solipsism that is romanticized in a way that embodies the toxicity of modern life, and there’s nothing soft or clean or pleasurable about it at all.”
The medievalist who compressed Beowulf into 100 tweets says it “forced me back to the Old English to try and capture, in the shortest possible length, what I thought were the essential components of the poem.”
“Mr. Hess’s attempts to find his birth mother were unsuccessful — he made three trips back to the convent, where he was told by the nuns that they had no records about Ms. Lee and they had no idea how to find her — he did opt to be buried in Roscrea, in the hopes that Philomena would one day find him.”
“We love the speed and community of the Internet, but there’s so much noise. … We wanted an opportunity to give some pieces a second life, one that won’t be lost to Google searches.”
Donna Tartt’s bestselling book inspires fans to converge on the small museum, which has more than doubled its membership during the show that features the painting from the novel.
“The distance between being willfully unlikable and a total Mary Sue is vast, and within that space live hundreds of female characters who are both challenging and appealing.”
“What does it say that the biggest ‘theater’ stories at the end of 2013 were about a TV show and a movie? Has the definition of theater changed? Can you call it theater if you’re not breathing the same air as the actors?”
Beth Morrison, producer: “The ability to make decisions as I want to make them, without an institution, means that I can take more risks, and it means that we can change course on a dime.”
“Ever since the Academy expanded its best picture category to as many as 10 nominees in 2009, only 59 percent of Golden Globe best picture nominees have earned Oscar nominations. The odds improve for the actual Golden Globe winners: 88 percent of them have gone on to earn Oscar nominations.”
“Getting ready for a night of Sunday television ‘takes more preparation than getting ready for the workweek ahead of you,’ said Ron Simon, a curator at the Paley Center for Media.”
“With every F-bomb comes more work for editors skilled in dubbing over such expletives for different markets, age groups and broadcast times.”