“In comments that circulated widely in social media, self-exiled Venezuelan pianist Gabriela Montero on Thursday posted an open letter on her Facebook page criticizing Dudamel, saying he was ignoring ‘the toxic oasis’ in which she says El Sistema now operates.”
Archives for February 14, 2014
Why Do Biographies Of Writers Make Them Out To Be So…Good?
“What I find odd is that biographers apparently feel a need to depict their subjects as especially admirable human beings, something that in the end makes their lives less rather than more interesting and harder rather than easier to relate to their writing.”
The Man Who Runs Arts Council England Has Some Ideas About “Subsidy”
Just compare us to Paris, Rome or even New York. The arts are cheap – 14 pence a week per taxpayer goes to the arts, a third of what the French spend. It’s a tiny sum of money.” But the subsidy is shrinking. “I don’t use the word ‘subsidy’. It’s a wet, tedious word. I use ‘investment’. ‘Subsidy’ sounds so passive.”
Want To Write Like Hemingway? There’s An App For That (Sorta)
It points out excessive adjectives, tiresome uses of the passive voice and so on. What it doesn’t do, sadly, obviously, is get you any closer to Papa’s prose.
The Court Battle That Could Change The Way Musicians Are Paid
“The streaming service Pandora is squaring off against Ascap in a closely watched trial over royalty payments. Big music publishers like Sony/ATV and Universal are calling on the government to overhaul the system, and technology companies are accusing the publishers of trying to skirt federal rules meant to protect them.”
Danger: The Comcast/Time-Warner Merger Would Change Things Far Beyond TV
“The deal could impact satellite TV, television programmers like ESPN and Fox, online video providers like Netflix and YouTube, and the massive networks at the very heart of the internet.”
Rethinking What We Expect From Musical Instruments
“Digital audio gives us the opportunity to control any sound with a bunch of buttons floating beneath a glass screen, but it also offers the chance to create instruments that take new forms and inspire new types of performances, unbound by strings, sound holes, hammers or acoustics.”
Would You Want To Be The Guy Who Removed A Picasso And In The Process Destroyed It?
It may well be that Aby Rosen is “legally empowered to take down ‘Le Tricorne,’ and in so doing run the very real risk of destroying it. We’ll find out a few weeks from now. But it shouldn’t have to come to that. Mr. Rosen claims to appreciate art. Well, here’s the acid test of his appreciation.”
You Can Never Go Home Again (It Doesn’t Exist As You Remember)
James Wood: “When I left this country 18 years ago, I didn’t know how strangely departure would obliterate return: how could I have done? It’s one of time’s lessons, and can only be learned temporally.”
Massive Fail: US Was Supposed To Issue New Airline Rules For Transporting Musical Instruments
“Final regulations are due Friday, but the department hasn’t even started writing them. Transportation spokeswoman Meghan Keck said the agency hasn’t had enough money to do the work needed to write the regulations.”
The Academies Time Forgot – Where Traditional Academic Figurative Art Rules
These national academies in Eastern Europe maintain the academic figurative art traditions. They’re clearly out of step with the contemporary world. And yet, do they preserve traditions we might rediscover and value again?
Maybe Not A Surprise: Design-Driven Companies Wildly Outperform Competitors
A new analysis by the Design Management Institute, a Boston-based nonprofit focused on design management, puts numbers to what design junkies suspected all along: in the past 10 years, design-driven companies outperformed the Standard & Poor’s 500–a stock market index of 500 large publicly traded companies–by 228%.
Study: Dress A Bit Oddly If You Want People To Think You’re Powerful
They argue that dressing in an unconventional way “signals that one has the autonomy needed to act according to one’s own inclinations.”
Former FCC Chairman: I’m Sorry We Killed Independent Media
“Gone are hundreds of once-independent broadcast outlets. In their stead is a truncated list of nationwide, homogenized, and de-journalized empires that respond more to quarterly reports than to the information needs of citizens.”
Beautiful British Columbia – Where They’re Killing The Band
“Every single step that they [the board and the school administration] have taken is counterproductive to music education,” he says. “It was like an abusive relationship. You only take so much for so long and then you ask, “Why am I killin’ myself here?”
Why Is There So Little Horror In The Theatre?
There have been countless comedies, musicals and tragedies, but only a few pure horror plays. Why is that?
The Music Discovery Problem – This Company Thinks It’s Figured It Out
“How do you discover new music? Some companies have bet on human editors, while others put their weight behind clever algorithms. One company thinks the solution is actually more like a pendulum that swings back and forth between the two.”
A New NEA Chief Is Great. But There’s A Bigger Problem…
Philip Kennicott on arts in the Obama Administration: “Why has it neglected one of the fundamental tools it has for shaping attitudes to American culture? Why did President George W. Bush manage to use the NEA so effectively while Obama has manifested only indifference? Is this the sad reality of the technocratic mindset, that culture is secondary or tertiary, and not worth the bother?”
Is Amazon Bad for Books? Not Just Publishers, But Books Themselves?
George Packer: “Recently, Amazon even started creating its own ‘content’ … In the book business the prospect of a single owner of both the means of production and the modes of distribution is especially worrisome: it would give Amazon more control over the exchange of ideas than any company in U.S. history.”
Amazon’s Secrecy Problem (And It Really Is a Problem)
George Packer: “Perhaps a sector that monetizes information is more likely to become obsessed with protecting it than if the product were oil or cars. But even in this atmosphere, Amazon is reflexively, absurdly secretive … From Amazon’s point of view, there might be nothing to be gained from greater openness … But I would argue that a culture of secrecy is bound to end up harming the institution itself.”
Publisher Recalls All Copies in India of Controversial Book on Hinduism
“Penguin India has agreed to recall and destroy all remaining copies of a book on Hinduism by a leading American academic … Wendy Doniger’s book The Hindus: An Alternative History had been the subject of a legal challenge claiming the text was offensive to Hindus.
Sex, Lies and Hinduism: Why A Hindu Activist Targeted Wendy Doniger’s Book
“Dinanath Batra has arm-twisted … Penguin India into recalling and destroying American scholar Wendy Doniger’s book, The Hindus: An Alternative History. Here’s why he has a problem with it.”
Pharmaceuticals for the Lovesick
“As we discover more about love’s neural basis, we are getting closer to a pill to diminish heartbreak.”
If There Is a Cure for Love, Should We Use It?
“Breaking up is hard to do. If drugs could ease the pain, when should we use them, asks neuro-ethicist Brian D. Earp.”
Where Valentine’s Day Is a Chance to Rebel
“While arranged marriages are considered the moral norm, pursuing individual love fantasies are potentially frowned upon and discouraged in a lot of traditional … homes.” (Can you guess? Probably.)
Another Francis Bacon Painting Sells for a Massive Amount of Money
“An unnamed American collector paid $70 million [£42 million] for Portrait of George Dyer Talking, a 1966 canvas depicting the artist’s lover perched on a stool, his twisted body positioned under a naked light bulb as though he were being interrogated.”
What the Monuments Men Brought Back to America
Christopher Knight looks at how the men and women who rescued so much great European art from the Nazis affected U.S. museums – much for the better – after they came home.
Irish Government Launches Complete Audit of Abbey Theatre
The Arts Council of Ireland has engaged London-based consultants to conduct a top-to-bottom review of the Republic’s national theatre company. While the Abbey has a high reputation in the U.S., observers at home have lately found it to have serious problems with both costs and artistic quality.
Actor Ralph Waite, 85
He’s best remembered for his Emmy-winning portrayal as Pa Walton, but he continued to work frequently in television through last year and founded a theater company in Los Angeles.
Director of Sacramento Philharmonic and Opera Resigns After Seven Months
“Recently hired general director Rob Tannenbaum has resigned as head of the Sacramento Region Performing Arts Alliance – the merged organization formed out of the Sacramento Philharmonic and Opera … for ‘personal and professional reasons’.”