January 2011 Archives

I'm writing a foreword for two upcoming volumes in the University of Chicago Press' uniform edition of Richard Stark's Parker novels.

Almanac

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Today's entry: C.S. Lewis on "benign" tyrannies.
Three-person panel (including National Gallery's Powell) supports Clough's current stance on sensitive shows. No deletions without "meaningful consultation."
In recessionary times, weakest arts institutions (including museums like Jersey City's) may go under. NEA's Landesman roils the theater world.
Google engineer Alexander Chen + HTML5 + NYC subway scheduling equals sonic art using tension in the line.

Destination Edmonton?

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One Year's Experience: Did The Art Gallery Of Alberta Become A Northern Guggenheim Bilbao?
The cache, dubbed "william s. burroughs word horde 2.0," is priced at $260,000.
Remembering that there is a rarefied strata where composer/scientists explore the most complex of musical worlds.
Should objects be repatriated if they may not be safe? Hawass unconvincingly argues what happened in Cairo could happen anywhere.
Adam Huttler from Fractured Atlas, Jean Cook from Future of Music Coalition, and AJ editor Douglas McLennan start a blog together

Neat Trick

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If you're not accustomed to willowy young women emulating James P. Johnson, get used to it, is my advice.

When opera was popular

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A vivid New York Times story from 1922 shows young girls screaming for Geraldine Farrar.

Almanac

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Today's entry: C.S. Lewis on skill and judgment.
Margaret Maitland's Comments On Damage Plus Al Jazeera's Videos; Now With Link To Hawass's Own Report

What next, death panels?

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In musing about whether we have too many cultural organizations, let's talk about what's working, not what isn't.
Survey the woeful damage along with the soldiers patrolling the vandalized museum, via a YouTube video from the Associated Press.
An all-star quartet re-ignites the explosive, relevant sound of late, great Tony Williams
Message of the NYT Magazine article on Assange: "un-bathed," "paranoid," "disheveled," "filthy," like a "bag lady," "contemptuous of American government."
...Tax payers still fund more than 99 percent of the cost of K-12 education. Private foundations should not be setting public policy for them.

Find me a concertmaster

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.... the mystery of a diminishing role
... on paralysis at Arts Council
http://www.artsjournal.com/slippeddisc/2011/01/what_joshua_bell_does_when_his.html
Pogrebin gives the other side of deaccessions---refining collections. That doesn't excuse the abuses, which she mostly overlooks.

Views and News

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Thoughts regarding a musical and a photography exhibition as well as news about a new critic's gig for me

Views and News

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Thoughts regarding a musical and a photography exhibition as well as news about a new critic's gig for me
French And Italian Museums Sell Ad Billboards; Conductor Noseda Comes Prospecting Here
Palm Beach Dramaworks' "Freud's Last Session" reviewed.

Almanac

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Today's entry: Mark Twain on popularity.

Custodial Care

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On George Balanchine's birthday, January 22, New York City Ballet offered a marathon tribute

That's my spring semester Juilliard course on the future of classical music. You can see what it's all about -- and even do the assignments -- online.
Oh, gee. Bill Keller, NYT executive editor, is terribly upset. File his complaint under Gilbert and Sullivan.
Pics of the sort of snow you have to shovel by layers...

Big one for Brigitte

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A long-deserved award
Here's my weekly theater guide.

Almanac

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Today's entry: Mark Twain's "great law of human action."

Larry Starr's superb new book is a manifesto for the "new Gershwin."

Ineradicable American roots feed power pop, alt.-folk, jazz, boomer rock and r&b
How Healthy Is The Non-Profit Sector, Financially? You Can Help Provide The Answer
Triumverate reviewing Smithsonian policies, post-"Hide/Seek," presents report to Board of Regents Monday. So THAT'S what Gergen was doing!
What I've learned so far in directing "Satchmo at the Waldorf."
A surreal conversation about whether people who work in the non-profit arts sector should be paid or donate their time.
Obama's and the arts' missed opportunity: Art as innovation stimulator and force for civility. Kimmelman's misconception about British broad-mindedness.
Reprieve for a dismantled corporate victim
...despite the coalition's size, its deep pockets and its muscular public relations operation, Mr. Bloomberg's campaign has failed to force major strengthening of federal gun control laws.

Bernd Eichinger is dead

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German film titan, author of Downfall

Back to business models

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Did Art Museums Have A Future?

When museum websites wag the dog, the braid become a net. Net Art search.
A new phase in the great love fest
A minute's silence at noon
between steps and ideas in dance

Snapshot

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Miklós Rózsa talks about and conducts excerpts from "Ben-Hur."

Almanac

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Today's entry: Mark Twain on telling the truth.
A Memphis Group Has Its Own Idea And Is Starting To Act On It
They're certainly not programming them like that anymore.
Rethinking my approach to social media and some words about the Jacaranda Music Series
Republican Study Committee's proposed assault on cultural spending would amount to three-tenths of one percent of total savings sought.
"...other nations are catching up and surpassing us is because they are building their middle class while the United States is pursuing policies that destroy theirs."
A clue: don't leave it to a copyist or Sibelius 7

Almanac

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Mark Twain on youth.
A gift for coining phrases and making up terms
2009-10 Season Awards Go To Matisse, Pop Women, Heat Waves, Fallen Blossoms And More
Why you can fall in love with, and mourn, an unmet movie star
An overlapped, simultaneous performance by 2 pianists... Is it Girl Talk Classical?

They Died in Gaza

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The Goldstone Report, just published in an edited version, is offered as "a corrective to the attacks" on the original.

The classical music aura

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Classical performances that don't have the deadly refinement of classical music.
Howard Garnder said in an e-mail that the results "throw down the gauntlet to those progressive educators, myself included."
Howard Garnder said in an e-mail that the results "throw down the gauntlet to those progressive educators, myself included."
with a studio in lotus land
Arts Council chief appears before Parliamentary committee
Come hear me talk about "Danse Russe" on Tuesday night at Florida's Rollins College.

Almanac

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Today's entry: Mark Twain on vice.
Are we operating under a delusion that there's any such thing as 'reliable revenue that meets or exceeds expenses'?
Why Did An 18th Century Mahogony Desk Fetch More Than Five Times Its High Estimate?
Two Yup'ik Masks Sell Immediately, Setting Known Records; Recognition At Last
Paul Levy finds an exhibition at the RA fatuous
Clough told the LA Times he "didn't judge" Wojnarovicz's removed video. He told me he did. Hijacking the curatorial mandate.

Conversation contest

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A contest for the best composition (or song, or sound art, or whatever) about conversation. Easy to enter -- just submit four minutes of something you've already done.
Contemporary art specialist, formerly director of the Aldrich, will oversee PAFA's largely historic collection. Will he reconsider dubious deaccessions?
I have a soft spot for epic tales delivered via song

They Still Call It JazzFest

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The bash is overwhelmingly pop, secondarily heritage and minimally jazz. That doesn't bother the promoters and doesn't bother New Orleans
In Sarasota, Florida, Asolo Rep's "Twelve Angry Men" reviewed.

Almanac

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Today's entry: Kingsley Amis on workshops.

Critics were so quick

to find a niche for Black Swan (camp classic! horror movie!) that they didn't catch its tone. To make up for them, Foot considers tone via a bunch of works.
I tried to give NPG's curator a chance to talk about something other than Wojnarovicz. Somehow, we wound up there.

Afraid of the dark

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I'm REALLY angry about the thwarted attempt to shut down a student production of an August Wilson play.

A Happy Ending

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Picasso Exhibition Provides A Lifeline To Seattle Museum: Attendance And Membership Set Records
A great South African band is perfectly capable of pleasing US audiences without drawing on its 80s impresario
Not the next Charlotte Church?
New York conductor decried as brattish and rude
How does an engineer analyze an arts crisis? By "doing the math." Probing his thoughts in a wide-ranging discussion.
An executive from the Elle Group helps us think about how to lead teams.
Lessons In Risk From The Asian Art Museum; Good Programming Begets Donors
Here's my weekly theater guide.

Just because

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One of the most unintentionally funny commercials ever filmed.

Almanac

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Today's entry: Kingsley Amis on children.

Big Adventure

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Feeling sluggish or uninspired in your creative life as you cruise into 2011? Here's some inspiration.
Catlett: None-Too-Innovative Or Pioneering Artist? Young Artists Say

My soloist is a witch

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Did young composer really mean to say that?
On the Bay Area's only commercial classical radio station changing its business model.
http://www.artsjournal.com/slippeddisc/2011/01/why_is_it_always_music_teacher_1.html
An organist hounded to his death
Having once written a spoof piece about the Guggenheim Antarctica, I rubbed my eyes in disbelief. No architect, no vision.
Desmond: "I don't know whether it was professional courtesy or the half-pint of bourbon, but old Charlie talked up a storm."

It's real

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Adventures of a newly hatched playwright-director.

Snapshot

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This week's video: Louis Prima and Keely Smith sing "That Old Black Magic."

Almanac

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Today's entry: Mozart on the advantages of travel.
A pilgrimage to Port Arthur in honor of my first and foremost diva, Janis Joplin.

Looking Backward

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At the Guggenheim Museum, the Works & Process series explained Pacific Northwest Ballet's upcoming scholarship-fueled "Giselle"

A David Daniels' concert in Berkeley provokes an oenophile-like response
Is the most famous classical music so often performed that it's worn out?
What do the "edu-experts" have to say?
Expect the full English from flying maestro?
Not long ago, we told you about stealth comments intended to lure Rifftides readers to websites that sell stuff

For Floridians only

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Come see me talk about Duke Ellington at Florida's Rollins College on Tuesday night.

Just because

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See Duke Ellington perform "Satin Doll" in 1962.

Almanac

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Today's entry: Claude C. Hopkins on the high cost of achievement.

Going, Going...

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32 Old Master Works, From Another Museum Deaccessioning, Head For The Sotheby's Sale Room

Film Plays

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Theatre productions based on films are undeniably crowd pleasing. But can they go further than mere entertainment?

Film Plays

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Theatre productions based on films are undeniably crowd pleasing. But can they go further than mere entertainment?
On Martin Luther King Day, let's see...

Devastating Impact

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Government funding cuts...
The cultural elite, those naked emperors trying to control everyone, are not actually art gallery curators and orchestra CEOs, but rather the marketing arms of corporations
An old-fashioned label tiff
Experiments with a scanner
Pennsylvania Academy bankrolled curatorial spending sprees by selling works previously deemed important enough for inclusion in traveling exhibitions. Robinson's "masterpiece."
Or, how I flew from Florida to Philadelphia and back again to make "Danse Russe" a better opera.

Almanac

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Today's entry: John Gielgud on acting and truth.

New Restitution Case

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Nazi-looted Painting, Held By Zimmerli Art Museum, Returned To Goodmans, But Its Travels Continue
Reflections on the unsustainable and uncontrollable growth of the arts sector
I see there's a new one-man show on the boards, "Abbie," starring a lookalike. I remember the real one-man show.
To know who you are, you must know where you come from.
Dramatic 17th Century Ivory Reemerges - What Musculature! -- And Given New Attribution

New Life For The Jazz Bakery

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There is good news for jazz listeners in Southern California. The Jazz Bakery can stop roaming.
Architects need to come up with design that makes sense as an art museum. But let's stop the Broad-bashing.

Mining the Past

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Trisha Brown's radical dances from the Seventies, performed at MoMA, are as fresh as ever

Daniel Pink's Travel Tips

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A Whole New Mind about Travel Tips
A San Francisco student's impressions of a music biz event
Viewing three versions has convinced me we need to ask not only "Whose 'Belly' Is It?" but also, "Which Belly...?"

Ever tried opera-oke?

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More breakages in the classical supermarket
Solo improvisation by Jarrett, a virtuoso who's tried to free himself in public for 40 years

She's a real dog

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Florida Rep's "Sylvia" and the Roundabout Theatre Company's "Importance of Being Earnest" reviewed.

Almanac

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Today's entry: William James on feeling and individuality.
Drop Dead. His Proposed Budget Eliminates All State Funding For Public Libraries

What Is Rock?

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Before we start digging rock music's grave, we should stop to consider how to define the genre
Images of what Pennsylvania Academy has lost and what it has gained. It should abort its misconceived deaccession plan.

Margaret Whiting

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Whiting recorded "Moonlight in Vermont" when she was 19. It helped make her a star.
..."I think, a source of a great deal of frustration that exists between people in creative and non-creative universes,"
Why can music be heard live for free, but not downloaded?
High ratings for contemporary music
Retiring from Chicago Opera Theater
Here's my weekly theater guide.
A beautifully reprocessed color kinescope from the Fifties.

Almanac

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Today's entry: Thomas Macaulay on the dramatist's job.

Let's get physical

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A conversation with pianist Jonathan Biss about expressiveness in classical music performance.

Wrong Way In Chicago

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Art Institute Changes Its Hours, Closes Friday Nights; "Target Shoe" Set To Drop In May
Chinese authorities' ominous promise is devastatingly fulfilled. See online photos. Human Rights Watch publishes "Promises Unfulfilled" on China's violations.
Knighting jazz elders, live & forever on the web -- $ for 15 stages - talk at JEN and APAP
Coming up with a list of top Bay Area world premieres every year isn't as hard as I invariably think it's going to be
Smithsonian Secretary's powers of persuasion changed mind of one skeptic. Clough needs to get out in front of this issue.

Out of joint

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Reflections of a man in a state of snowstorm-induced suspended animation.
Ed Smith resumes his Mersey beat
Two new classical ventures

Plus an arm and a leg

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Another innocent is lured to Sony
For decades James Thurber (1894-1961) entertained readers with the incisiveness and wit of his stories and drawings.
Agenda For Meeting In Puerto Rico, Plus A Visit To The New Home Of Flaming June

Two giant steps

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Come see the latest workshop performances of my new opera this weekend.

Snapshot

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This week's video: Joe Venuti and Eddie Lang play "Wild Cat."

Almanac

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Today's entry: Dr. Johnson on violinists.

Fantasy Festival

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On making audiences feel like expert panelists

Cautiously pessimistic

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Ilan heads north

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It's not the Titanic

Culture change 2 -- Hide/Seek

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http://www.artsjournal.com/sandow/2011/01/culture_change_2_--_hideseek.html

Culture change 2 -- Hide/Seek

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Classical music can't make cultural statements the way visual art can -- more evidence that it's grown distant from our culture.
AAMD precipitously endorses private sales of historic art for acquisitions of very recent, demographicaly correct examples. Trendy choices, belated "transparency."

Almanac

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Today's entry: Joseph Szigeti on bureaucracy.
Out Goes Hassam, Chase, Twachtman, Prendergast, Benson, With Five More To Go; Half-Transparency
Having singers and not celebrities host the Met HD Broadcasts is another "shrewd move" by Peter Gelb.
Does Times critic who lobbied for the current music director know a perfunctory performance of Mozart when he hears it?
Ol' amigo Norman O. Mustill's collage says plenty about that.

Troubled silence

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Big classical music institutions have cut, sometimes drastically, the number of performances they're giving. From a terrific essay on the current state of classical music, by Brian Wise.

String Quintet Boogie

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Imagine that: People dancing at a chamber music concert!
Play gains resonance in light of horrifying Arizona events. Green Day frontman makes the experience real, rather than tribute-band.
Live: Tuesday, January 11th, 3:00pm-4:00pm (EDT)

Oh no, Rolando

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What Villazon did next
Selling Braque, Picasso, Matisse, Romney. But Just How Did We Learn About Sales?

Landmark

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Read the last two paragraphs of the newly written second chapter of my Duke Ellington book.

Just because

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See Miles Davis and the Gil Evans Orchestra play Dave Brubeck's "The Duke."

Almanac

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Today's entry: Gregor Piatigorsky on warming up before a concert.

Being a bridge

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Rick Robinson rethinks classical music
Same small grants, more hoop jumping ...
Is making your brain stronger the best reason to play or listen to music?
The manuscript, before your very eyes
Is the term "jazz journalist" limiting, ghettoizing? I hope not, but if so: Shoe fits, I wear it
Cowper was right: "Variety's the very spice of life, That gives it all its flavour."
Bad move by young baton

Wikileaks Update

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Assange and Wikileaks get the Vanity Fair treatment.
A Short Story About A Yup'ik Windmaker Mask That Inspired The Surrealists...In Today's WSJ
Viklický played a lovely Petrof grand piano. Robinson used only three instruments from his armory--soprano and tenor saxophones and euphonium.
Perhaps an art-museum first: No art on the walls! Making skylit space hospitable to light-sensitive works still unresolved.

In honor of a death...

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To honor a family member who died, I'm going to write music today. After retiring from a long career in physics, he devoted himself to making art -- inspiring...

RIP Live to Tape

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The pros...and cons...of taking an arts program on public radio to the next level
He calls out Lang Lang for a duel

It's Chaliapin singing Anton Rubinstein.

Just because

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Hadda Brooks sings Ray Noble's "I Hadn't Anyone Till You" in Nicholas Ray's "In a Lonely Place."
While San Francisco's Asian Art Museum Restructures Debt, Seattle Gets A Gift

Tune in tomorrow

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John Simon, Jacques le Sourd, Michael Riedel, and I chat about theater on TV Saturday night.
"Dracula" reviewed.
The difference between Stephen Sondheim and Ira Gershwin.

Almanac

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Today's entry: Billy Wilder and I.A.L. Diamond on victims.
A guerrilla video-jazz news clip initiative calls for applicants (no experience necessary)

Culture change -- Glee

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Why Glee spells trouble for classical music.

Troubling long-term signs...

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...of classical music trouble: the aging audience, the falling percentage of people going to classical concerts, and the retreat of classical music from mainstream media.
Pre-press conference look at plans for 120,000-square-foot home for Broad's trove. Still a drive-through museum? No.

Coffee as Art?

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Bay Area baristas esspress themselves with their esspreso-making skills

Cardiff singer shrinks

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'Due to challenging financial circumstances'
Here's my weekly theater guide.

Almanac

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Today's entry: David R. Dow on nature and nurture.
A Who's Who Of Members On Newly Appointed Advisory Committee

A Rare "Bernie's Tune"

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An ad hoc Gerry Mulligan quartet with Bob Brookmeyer, Ray Brown and Art Blakey
Guitarists proposed to drummer onstage, she said yes, now they groove as one

Lost Temper

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Specific tuning, and the ensuing beating that occurs between notes, influences pace and rhythmic delivery. Pianists are responders
One who saw and discussed original video with Wojnarovicz in 1987 says artist's "intent has been changed" by posthumous alterations.

More Nuts to crack

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...now that your jaws are weary: Alexei Ratmansky's wondrous new version and Mark Morris's wondrous old.

Ballet Cliché

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Darren Aronofsky's Black Swan dances in worn, old shoes
Musicians, journalists, presenters and educators convene; NEA Jazz Masters stream online
"They have reduced themselves to a cipher. They vote. The vote totals up. But it means nothing."
60% drop in Google searches for art? Comparing Warhol to bananas. Plus In new census, what is a household? What is tract? Where are artists?

Snapshot

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This week's video: Ralph Richardson appears as the mystery guest on "What's My Line?" in 1963.

Almanac

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Today's entry: David R. Dow on cowardice.
With former Bloomberg-ian at the helm, will emphasis shift from art history and criticism, towards news and finance?
With "Connections." Nice Idea, New Entry Points To Collections. But, Alas, Big Flaws, Too
Jimmy Kimmel's musical guests have impressed me before, and they continue to do so.
Developing a plan to help a new generation of independent cultural journalists grow their ideas

Almanac

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Today's entry: David R. Dow on the power of coincidence.
Already A Destination Starchitect Museum Is Set To Open...Linking Art And Science
Brief reflections on professional aims for the New Year
A personally tough year for me was still a reasonably good year for CultureGrrl. Top 20 CultureGrrl Stories of 2010.
A rare human being whose identity transcended all the categories that defined her -- poet, teacher, feminist, human-rights activist.
Neologism Offers A Challenge To Cultural Institutions In 2011: A Goal To Keep In Mind
If you want your regional drama company to get reviewed in The Wall Street Journal, here's what to do.

Almanac

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Today's entry: David R. Dow on why he proposed to his wife.

On and Off Broadway

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If Broadway is 'Spider-Man' and 'Jersey Boys', why is getting there still the ultimate goal for Off-Broadway productions?
free download #13 is another world premiere

Happy New Year

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The Rifftides staff hopes that your 2011 will be as happy as this performance by Venezuela's Simón Bolívar Youth Orchestra

Alexei Ratmansky's new Nutcracker for ABT is comfortably positioned between the old and the new

About this Archive

This page is an archive of entries from January 2011 listed from newest to oldest.

December 2010 is the previous archive.

February 2011 is the next archive.

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