ArtsJournal: Daily Arts News

TT: The slapdash genius Leonard Bernstein would have turned ninety years old on Monday. Carnegie Hall and the New York Philharmonic have decided to...

Posted August 29, 2008

TT: If you've written me in the past three weeks... ...there's a very good chance that your e-mail got deleted. My blogmailbox gets crammed with press releases and spam, and...

Posted August 29, 2008

TT: Almanac "Silence and tact may or may not be the same thing." Samuel Butler, Notebooks...

Posted August 29, 2008

TT: So you want to see a show? Here's my list of recommended Broadway, off-Broadway, and out-of-town shows, updated weekly. In all cases, I gave these shows favorable...

Posted August 28, 2008

The Artful Manager

Andrew Taylor on the business of Arts & Culture

Three questions for the CEO candidate A friend and colleague once asked an arts consultant what qualities he found in demand by most CEO search committees. Here's the gist of his response:Can you create and read a budget and then manage by it?Can you raise money?Can...

Posted August 29, 2008

Seeking social currency Interesting thoughts from Jack Shafer in Slate about the current lot of newspapers, and their loss of ''social currency.'' Says he: The phrase, which comes from sociology, is often used to describe the information we acquire and then trade...

Posted August 28, 2008

Orchestra concert as carnival ride It's always a challenge to convey the experience and emotion of one medium in the language of another medium (dare we call it an art?). But as attempts go, this one for the Zürich Chamber Orchestra isn't bad at all....

Posted August 27, 2008

The new 990 is here! The new 990 is here!

The redesigned IRS 990 tax forms and instructions may not be beach reading, but if you run a nonprofit, they're a must-read.

Posted August 26, 2008

The great transfer of wealth...or not The New York Times article and the corresponding blog entry may be a few months old, but they're still worth a moment, as they flag a different future than many in philanthropy have been awaiting. ''8 Reasons You Should Not...

Posted August 25, 2008

blog riley

rock culture approximately

Join Together Five Essential Music Ebooks from Hypebot, via Music Press Report and don't forget New Music Strategies manifesto: 'Convergence' is an example of a way of discussing new online technologies by reducing them to a single idea without understanding them in...

Posted August 28, 2008

Draper Don Does Post-Bop Live Coltrane was wasted on patrons like Don Draper....

Posted August 26, 2008

Social Currencies ...Other institutions do far better jobs at issuing social currency these days. What is Facebook but the Federal Reserve Bank of social currency? And it's all social currency you can use! Like cocktail chatter, a Facebook posting--be it a link,...

Posted August 25, 2008

Can't Stop Won't Stop: Ben Kingsley, Sir ...The real turning point was Sexy Beast. For in that inspired, delirious film, we went from asking ourselves what on earth Ben Kingsley was doing, to praying that he would not stop. It's as if his director, Jonathan Glazer,...

Posted August 25, 2008

Circuitous Route to New Music Social Blogging... "Snagged by a sour, pinched guitar riff, the song has an acerbic tinge...and Dylan sings the title rejoinders in mock self-pity. It's less an indictment of the system than a coil of imagery that spells out how the system hangs...

Posted August 19, 2008

CultureGulf

Rebuilding Culture after Katrina

Waiting in the Ninth Ward for Godot This looks cool: *** CREATIVE TIME PRESENTS PAUL CHAN'S WAITING FOR GODOT IN NEW ORLEANS What: Creative Time is pleased to announce the presentation of Waiting for Godot in New Orleans, a project by Paul Chan, co-produced by Creative Time...

Posted October 29, 2007

Beaucoup recruiters So one of the kids I occasionally tutor through the YEP program was talking the other day about how 'beaucoup recruiters been coming around my mama's place lately,' which set he and another boy off on a discussion of which...

Posted October 17, 2007

I've been a miner for a pot of gold Ever since the Grace Mansion was struck by lightning a few months back, a small army of workers has been milling about the property as they gut and rebuild the top floor. In keeping with most post-Katrina phenomenon, this has...

Posted October 1, 2007

Katrina and Me: Meta storytelling on the post-storm stage I was reading Andrew O'Hehir's film column in Salon today, where he mentions a new Katrina documentary screening at the upcoming New York Film Fest, "The Axe in the Attic." I can't tell much about it based on the synopsis...

Posted September 27, 2007

Another long goodbye My friend called me today -- she was crying, having just left her office here for the last time. In a few days, she'll be headed north for good. "I'm really, really sad," she said, and she sounded like my...

Posted September 21, 2007

Dewey21C

Richard Kessler on arts education

The 10 Most Powerful People in K-12 Arts Education I was inspired by Barry's Arts Blog and Updates list of the 25 most powerful people in nonprofit arts. So, as we close out one of the quietest weeks of the year, here's my list for the 10 most powerful...

Posted August 28, 2008

Parents Beware: Preschool May Cause Harm So, what is a parent to do? On one hand, you've got the New York City Department of Education unveiling standardized tests for kindergarten through second grade students, some of which are as long as 90 minutes. (And if you...

Posted August 27, 2008

"To Teach Children What it Means to be an American" It happens every year: summer comes to a close, signaled by The Jerry Lewis Telethon and a return to school. The public school battles will surely continue, and between testing, charter schools, vouchers, small schools, and so many other issues,...

Posted August 25, 2008

People/Organizations You Should Know Every month or so, I am going to highlight an organization and/or person doing terrific work in arts education. It may be in K-12, or adult education, youth development, or even branch out beyond arts education per se, to another...

Posted August 22, 2008

The Educational Industrial Complex Dwight D. Eisenhower, 34th President of the United States and supreme allied commander, introduced the term "Military Industrial Complex," in his 1961 farewell speech before leaving office. He had wanted to call it the "Military Industrial Congressional Complex," but decided...

Posted August 18, 2008

diacritical

Douglas McLennan's blog

ArtsJournal is Hiring [UPDATE] ArtsJournal is expanding and I'm looking for a part time editor. The job involves culling stories from the publications we monitor...

Posted August 26, 2008

Why Newspapers Are Failing... I've been posting lately at the National Arts Journalism Program's new Articles blog. Today I enumerated the business reasons why newspapers...

Posted February 20, 2008

A New Blog At NAJP In my other life (what other life?) I'm the acting director of the National Arts Journalism Program (NAJP). NAJP started out...

Posted February 4, 2008

The Rise Of Arts Culture Today I want to make an argument about the rise of arts culture. In the 1950s, at the dawn of TV,...

Posted November 21, 2007

A Low Pressure Air Mass... If the power of mass culture is based on the ability to attract a mass audience, then perhaps it's worth looking...

Posted November 16, 2007

Flyover

Art from the American Outback

It's really, really real! There’s an interesting piece over at LiveScience called “Monsters, Ghosts and Gods: Why We Believe.” It was inspired by the recent string of weirdness. That string began with the so-called Montauk Monster on Long Island, then a Big Foot, then...

Posted August 26, 2008

It wasn't me; it was the one-eyed man! The famed glass artist gave a talk and presentation recently at Google’s speakers series in California. Chihuly is widely recognized for his distinct work. His Gardens of Glass series has been exhibited in municipal botanical gardens throughout the country....

Posted August 26, 2008

The Charleston-Bollywood Connection Dan McCue, a terrific business journalist, has sent City Paper a story about Charleston’s connection to Bollywood, which is shorthand for India’s hugely profitable movie business. Dan reports on Robert Miller, head of a local company called ReelSports that...

Posted August 26, 2008

Blogs are fine, but newspapers are better This is from Mark Potts' blog, Recovering Journalist. He's been tracking the decline of American daily newspapers. He's compiled a database of all the job cuts and setbacks in the industry for the past couple of years. While this looks...

Posted August 18, 2008

What does cancer sound like? Music A Harvard researcher developed a computer program that translates the genes of cancerous cells into music. What does it sound like? Well, Karl Stockhausen might like it, especially if they’re malignant. The scientist, Gil Alterovitz, designed the program to play...

Posted August 18, 2008

Life's a Pitch

For immediate release: the arts are marketable

The commentator and the man are not the same I get excited whenever someone comments on this blog. People are engaged and want to brainstorm about marketing the arts, three cheers! One scary guy did comment on the Contact field and e-yelled at me, saying I should find a...

Posted August 28, 2008

Meta review, take two In what seems to be the theme of the week here on Life's a Pitch, I'd like to give my own glowing review of Vivien Schweitzer's review of the Emerson String Quartet. I actually worked on the ESQ concert at...

Posted August 27, 2008

Auf Wiedersehen, New Media! I think an important moment in the industry happened at my "day" job today: we got rid of the New Media section of a marketing report, and instead moved topics like e-cards, banner ads and blogs into the community outreach,...

Posted August 26, 2008

Brave, new(ish) world I'm generally very pleased to be alive in 2008. For example, just this morning I got an interview request from Time Out Beijing. Who knew. It appears to be a monthly publication rather than a weekly publication, but other than...

Posted August 26, 2008

Talk to me about opera management Each week (usually on Fridays, but, on occasion...Mondays), I'll post an interview with someone far more knowledgeable than myself on specific marketing and publicity subjects. This week, vocal manager Matthew Horner on the changing faces (and bodies) of opera and...

Posted August 25, 2008

Mind the Gap

No Genre Is the New Genre

(Half) Turn of the Screw I've been overwhelmed by the guilt that the stack of unopened CDs on my desk perpetually induces, and so I've devoted several hours a day this week to spinning discs and reading liner notes. The music has run the gamut...

Posted August 28, 2008

This Just In: The New News Sound Bite Suffering from Olympic withdrawal? Counting the minutes till the Democratic convention kick off? Just plain sick of the broken-record rotation of CNN Headline News? Whoever said that news reporting would one day be distilled down to a Twitter message needs to make...

Posted August 25, 2008

Personal Cultural Quandary As you may have gathered, I'm sort of a sarcastic person. What can I say? I watched a lot of M*A*S*H as a kid, and it rubbed off. In personal email, this sets up a 21st-century quandary, because you want...

Posted August 20, 2008

Saturday in the Park The CounterstreamRadio/New Amsterdam Records post-concert photo re-cap. ...

Posted August 20, 2008

Who Needs a Label ...when you have stuff like this: When listening to this music you should keep in mind artists such as Frederic Chopin, Cat Power, Keith Jarrett, Talk Talk, and Chris Whitley -- unless you don't know any [of] them or are...

Posted August 19, 2008

Rockwell Matters

John Rockwell on the arts

Vibrato, portamento, Elgar and me Much fussing of late from London's Proms, where Roger Norrington threatens to strip Edward Elgar of his vibrato. I'm not a staff employee of the new New York Times any more, so I won't belabor you with a Music 101...

Posted August 29, 2008

Critical Meanies This is maybe getting a little circular, linking back and forth between the two blogs to which I contribute, this one and the National Arts Journalism Program's ARTicles. But here's a link to an ARTicles entry I just wrote on...

Posted August 29, 2008

Half of Hair On a lovely late August night, I walked out during the intermission of the Public Theater's "Hair" revival at the Delacorte Theater in Central Park. My wife, of my generation, and our 19-year-old daughter walked with me. I felt free...

Posted August 29, 2008

Golden Oldies When you reach a certain age, artists you grew up with, whom as a critic you championed, become sufficiently established for not only prestigious performances in which they're hailed as icons, but for more or less hagiographic films. This late...

Posted August 14, 2008

Presumptuous Presumptions Here's a link to my latest entry to the National Arts Journalism Program's ARTicles blog, about the fallacy of critics' basing their negative reviews on a false presumption of the artist's intentions....

Posted August 14, 2008

Straight Up |

Jan Herman - Arts, Media & Culture News with 'tude

McCain the McMaverick, a 'Hood Ornament' I've been calling him the Gasbag, but Thomas Frank has come up with another description for him -- the best I've read anywhere: John McCain is "a hood ornament on a hit-and-run machine." Frank writes in his weekly Wall...

Posted August 14, 2008

Ho Hum ... Aug. 12 — Did someone say war profiteers? Check out the top 25 and this private army....

Posted August 7, 2008

Oh Please ... The Gasbag's latest McBullshit gets a review called "Changing Lanes" from Elizabeth Kolbert in this week's New Yorker. She notes that "he's opted out of truth altogether." Really. As if the hype for his so-called "straight-talking days" was ever credible...

Posted August 4, 2008

A Man for This Season I've been waiting for Q&A to post a transcript of the Chris Hedges interview on Sunday night. But it's been two days already. Nada. So click the link and watch the video. It's stunning. [Aug. 12 — Finally, the posted...

Posted July 29, 2008

A Gasbag Update See this. Postscript: July 30 -- The Gasbag Express, aka the Low-Road Express? Of course. As today's NYT editorial notes, "...it is hard to imagine a worse role model than the one Mr. McCain seems to be adopting: President Bush."...

Posted July 21, 2008

DANCE

Foot in Mouth

Apollinaire Scherr and guests talk about dance

That endangered species, touring dancers Merce Cunningham dancer Daniel Madoff has constructed a very nifty website for touring dancers and their fans. He explains: Touringdancers.com is targeted specifically at touring dance companies and their audiences. It features a combined company calendar in which the viewer...

Posted August 27, 2008

In lieu of a real post: a cat and some notes Among the books and flowers Wood engraving by Raoul Dufy from my namesake's bestiary poems, subtitled "Procession of Orpheus" (1911) Notes on ballet events long past William Forsythe's "Impressing the Czar," performed by the Royal Ballet of Flanders at the...

Posted August 24, 2008

Lovecat Among the many absurd and badly paying jobs I've had--ghostwriting a mail-in Ph.D. on economics, wrapping holiday Crate and Barrel purchases in enough paper to have kept little Jesus warm, translating Richard III into easy English--one I recall without shuddering...

Posted August 7, 2008

Alvin Ailey's fiftieth, from the inside out Foot in Mouth invited dancer, dance teacher, and writer Theresa Ruth Howard to reflect on Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater's fiftieth anniversary, which the company is currently in the middle of, from the inside out. Here she is: In...

Posted July 28, 2008

Jerome Robbins' "Goldberg Variations," back and front I know, I know, Foot in Mouth has been experiencing a time warp lately. Here, for example, are some thoughts on a ballet I saw more than two weeks ago. In his "Goldberg Variations," to the complete Bach...

Posted July 13, 2008

Seeing Things

Tobi Tobias on Dance et al.

Cloddish Men, Feathery Lovers Dance to Hubbard's Sly Rhythms This article originally appeared in the Culture section of Bloomberg News on August 6, 2008. Hubbard Street Dance Chicago dancers take part in a performance of "Extremely Close" in Philadelphia on Oct. 20, 2007. The company will be performing at...

Posted August 6, 2008

Guest of Summer It's summer, the lazy season, and dancing, which never rests, has taken to outdoor venues. The full article appeared in Voice of Dance (http://www.voiceofdance.org) on July 30, 2008. To read it, click here....

Posted July 30, 2008

Dancing `Czar' Finds Lull in Crazy-Quilt of Chaos This article originally appeared in the Culture section of Bloomberg News on July 19, 2008. Helen Pickett as Agnes, top, and Jim De Block as Mr. Pnut take part in the Royal Ballet of Flanders production of "Impressing the Czar"...

Posted July 19, 2008

Undertow Noche Flamenca Theater 80, 80 St. Mark's Place, NYC / July 9-August 12, 2008 Soledad Barrio and Noche Flamenca. Photo courtesy Noche Flamenca. The cast members work as a team to provide mounting excitement, but Soledad Barrio is still the...

Posted July 16, 2008

Mark Morris Rethinks Prokofiev's `Romeo' as Lusty, Gender Bending, Not Tragic This article originally appeared in the Culture section of Bloomberg News on July 7, 2008. Noah Vinson and Maile Okamura dance during a rehearsal of Mark Morris' "Romeo & Juliet, On Motifs of Shakespeare," in New York, on June 11,...

Posted July 7, 2008

MEDIA

Out There

Jeff Weinstein's Cultural Mixology

Unabomber Aesthetics Robert Kusmirowski, Unacabine, 2008 Art forms that appeal to modern leftist intellectuals tend to focus on sordidness, defeat and despair, or else they take an orgiastic tone, throwing off rational control as if there were no hope of accomplishing...

Posted August 21, 2008

'Project Runway' Summer Buffet Oat Couture Every writer has readers who reside only in his or her brain, and right now my tenants are clamoring for an opinion about the fifth season's first episode of Project Runway. What's the cerebral word-of-mouth? They're...

Posted July 23, 2008

Jerk Jerk chicken Now here's an ethical problem, one that applies to the culinary as well as the musical arts. The New York Times recently featured in its Wednesday food section a smooth, workaday article about jerk cooking in the city,...

Posted July 7, 2008

I Have Never Depended on the Kindness of Judges, but ... ...Yesterday's court-tossed wedding bouquet was caught by me and thousands of others who will visit City Halls all over California in a state of "finally" and make it legal. Of course, the decision to allow queer marriage can be reversed...

Posted May 16, 2008

Gay Rice Down the Aisle, Slowly It took the supposedly liberal New York City mayor David Dinkins ages to come to his political and humanistic senses and order City Hall to issue domestic partnership certificates. That was January, 1993, more than...

Posted May 12, 2008

Serious Popcorn

Martha Bayles on Film...

Gray Hats I have not seen the original 3:10 to Yuma (1957), made during the high noon of 1950s Westerns, when the hats were either white or black, and the heads wearing them either good or evil. So I don't know how...

Posted August 24, 2008

The Socialization of Young Men A wise social scientist once commented to me that the most important task facing any society is the socialization of its young men. Philosophers have concentrated on this question for thousands of years, and like it or not, almost every...

Posted August 17, 2008

A Treat for the Fourth "Mausoleums, statues, monuments will never be erected to me ... Panegyrical romances will never be written, nor flattering orations spoken, to transmit me to posterity in brilliant colors."So wrote John Adams to his friend Benjamin Rush in March 1809. He...

Posted June 29, 2008

Worth the Trouble When Khaled Hosseini's novel The Kite Runner was first published, so many friends recommended it, I felt obliged to read it all the way through, even though my reaction was "Good story, uneven writing, will make a great movie." Whatever...

Posted June 14, 2008

Sucks in the City I would go to see Sex and the City, the movie, if somebody paid me -- a lot. Otherwise, no. I've put in my time trying to appreciate the TV series, because it is always a challenge to figure out...

Posted May 29, 2008

MUSIC

The Future of Classical Music?

Greg Sandow performs a book-in-progress

Book 2.0
Episode 16: Modernism, Analysed and Tamed For earlier episodes, see my summary at the start of the last one. If you'd like to be notified (by...

Posted December 21, 2006

Book 2.0
Episode 15: Glorious Noise In recent episodes: I've been talking about the origins of the classical music world as we know it today. In...

Posted November 28, 2006

Book 2.0
Episode 14: Hardcore Argument In recent episodes: I've been talking about the origins of the classical music world as we know it today. In...

Posted November 7, 2006

Book 2.0
Episode 13: Just Before Modernism In recent episodes: I've been talking about the origins of the classical music world as we know it today. In...

Posted October 25, 2006

Book 2.0
Episode 12: Classical vs. Popular In recent episodes: I've been talking about the origins of the classical music world as we know it today. In...

Posted October 11, 2006

Jazz Beyond Jazz

Howard Mandel's Freelanc Urban Improvisation

Chicago jazz fest in neighborhood clubs A city's jazz scene is best measured not by an annual festival -- though Sonny Rollins free at the Frank Gehry-designed Pritzker Pavillion in Chicago's Millennium Park on Thursday night was a fine thing. The real signs of Chicago's jazz...

Posted August 28, 2008

World Music redefined by blogs World Music, a phrase that literally should include all cultures' sounds but as a genre has become narrowed, softened and commercialized, is being re-invigorated by a new cadre of bloggers with interests in adventure and discovery as well as analytic...

Posted August 24, 2008

Jazz fests of August Free jazz fests across the U.S. mark summer's glorious end. Manhattan's Charlie Parker festival (held Saturday Aug. 23 and Sunday 24 in Marcus Garvey park uptown and Tompkins Square Park downtown), the Chicago Jazz Festival (which formally starts Thursday Aug...

Posted August 23, 2008

Pandora radio on deathbed? The wonderful web radio giant Pandora.com -- and lesser web radio sites, too -- are reportedly about to be done in by per-song performance royalty rates doubled last year by a federal panel. Pandora's founder says he'll have to shut...

Posted August 16, 2008

New beyond-jazz in NYC clubs Alto saxophonist Greg Osby debuted a sextet with vocalist, electric guitar and vibes at the Village Vanguard, and pianist Lafayette Gilchrist brought an unusually horn-heavy band from Baltimore into (Le) Poisson Rouge, opening for guitarist Vernon Reid's rockin', scratchin' Yohimbe...

Posted August 15, 2008

ListenGood

Focus on New Orleans. Jazz and Other Sounds

yes we can can Sunday night, when Allen Toussaint played "Yes We Can Can" for Democratic convention delegates in Denver, the song sounded tailor-made for the Obama campaign. But he wrote it in New Orleans, in 1970, inspired by a different era of...

Posted August 29, 2008

moving message from the unmovable Were I in New Orleans now, here's where I'd head tomorrow: (Though I cringe at the evocation of "We Are the World," there's no way New Orleans would give way to such an unfunky tune...) The following contents of...

Posted August 8, 2008

lobstercrackers social aid & pleasure club Well, the eighth annual Deer Isle Jazz Festival, on a tiny island in Down East Maine, was an unqualified success -- a presentation of the beauty and intensity of New Orleans music within a larger context of its social and...

Posted July 30, 2008

condoms, tampons, excess hair It's almost time for the Deer Isle Jazz Festival in Stonington, Maine. For eight years, I've helped bring great jazz to this tiny Down East Maine island. In that time, both the fest and I have grown. This year's...

Posted July 11, 2008

vision fest looks at new orleans New York's annual Vision Festival is one of my favorite annual events, not just for wall-to-wall musical improvisation at its freest, and often finest, but also for the context: Various art forms relating to each other in real time, plus...

Posted June 10, 2008

On the Record

Exloring America's Orchestras with Henry Fogel

Different the Second Time: Variation Brings Life to the Music I was listening recently to a new operatic recital disc of bel canto arias sung by the remarkable young tenor Juan Diego Florez. Some of the scenes were rarities, but there were some old chestnuts too. The most familiar...

Posted August 29, 2008

Musicians: The Fourth Leg of the Stool In a recent discussion with members of the board and some musicians from one of America's orchestras, I was asked what I thought should be the role of musicians in shaping major policies and decisions of an orchestra. In...

Posted August 22, 2008

Exploring "Non-Standard" Repertoire: Ten Suggested Recordings A listener who wanted to go beyond what we call the standard repertoire recently asked me if I would make a list of a handful of recordings of "non-standard" symphonic works that I could recommend to someone whose taste...

Posted August 15, 2008

How "Good" Is Your Orchestra? The Myth of Rank Recently a well-meaning citizen of a major American city with a major international orchestra asked me if I thought the orchestra in her city was "the best," or at least "one of the three best." She never specified whether...

Posted August 8, 2008

Eyes on the Stage: Why Supertitles are Critical to Audience Involvement At a concert in Houston a few months ago, I heard a dramatic work for soloists, chorus, and orchestra called The Refuge, with music by Christopher Theofanidis and text by Leah Lax. While I found it absorbing in part...

Posted August 1, 2008

Overflow

Harvey Sachs on music, and various digressions

How about ignoring Norrington? Come on, folks, let's get serious! A to-do about Sir Roger's anti-vibrato movement (or lack of movement, as the case may be)? Don't we have anything better to talk about? Or is it a question of arts journalists frantically searching...

Posted July 24, 2008

Time out The long hiatus in this blog is a result of a lot of other work, intense heat in my fifth-floor, under-the-roof walk-up Manhattan apartment, and sheer lethargy. I've gradually been looking back over some of the performances that I attended during the...

Posted July 4, 2008

A few performances to remember - 2 The first installment of my backward glance at the just-ending New York musical season was all about the Met. This time I'm thinking about some of the events that I attended at Carnegie Hall in 2007-08 -- first and foremost, Andras Schiff's four magnificent...

Posted June 3, 2008

A few performances to remember - 1 I have been remiss in updating this blog because I was participating in a seminar on "The Musician as Listener" at the Orpheus Institute in beautiful Ghent, Belgium. I discovered that in addition to van Eyck's celebrated altarpiece in the...

Posted May 26, 2008

Mutatis mutandis: Muti goes to Chicago I've looked up a note I wrote to myself on June 22, 1976, after having observed Riccardo Muti (who was then not quite 35) rehearse the orchestra of La Scala. Bear in mind as you read the following excerpts from...

Posted May 12, 2008

PostClassic

Kyle Gann on music after the fact

Light Me Five Postclassical Candles The official debut of my blog took place on the 51st anniversary of the premiere of 4'33", the birthday of Charlie Parker, Diamanda Galas, and Mark Morris, and unfortunately on the day of the year upon which, two years later,...

Posted August 29, 2008

Mouths of Babes The following is a not entirely accurate introduction to John Cage's thought: In order to even begin to understand the music of John Cage, it is necessary to examine some of his most important philosophies and ideas whether you agree with...

Posted August 24, 2008

The Whine of the Amateur, the Cry of the Critic In 1877 the art critic John Ruskin damned James McNeil Whistler's magnificent Nocturne in Black and Gold by saying he "had never expected to hear a coxcomb ask two hundred guineas for flinging a pot of paint in the public's...

Posted August 24, 2008

Sources of Originality Unless I mistake my readership, most of you will recognize the following excerpts from John Cage's "Experimental Music: Doctrine" (1955), one of the first essays in Silence: QUESTION: I have noticed that you write durations that are beyond the...

Posted August 18, 2008

Upstaged by My Progeny Again [UPDATED BELOW] Tomorrow night my son Bernard is playing at Lincoln Center. That is, he's one of 200 electric guitarists performing Rhys Chatham's The Crimson Grail at Lincoln Center Outdoors. I had no idea the piece was already recorded (with 400...

Posted August 14, 2008

Rifftides

Doug Ramsey on Jazz and other matters...

Compatible Quotes: Bix Beiderbecke One of the things I like about jazz, kid, is I don't know what's going to happen next. Do you? -- Bix Beiderbecke Finally Beiderbecke took out a silver cornet. He put it to his lips and blew a...

Posted August 30, 2008

Diversion: Marimba Queens Meet Insane Bassist Rifftides reader David Peterkofsky inquired about modern-day jazz marimba players. In the course searching, I ran across a 1940s soundie with marimbists galore. This has little to do with jazz, but it's an opportunity to see a bass player who makes Chubby...

Posted August 28, 2008

CDs: Michael Weiss, Ryan Kisor Michael Weiss, Soul Journey (Sintra). Michael Weiss has been a pianist to follow since his impressive 1986 debut recording, Presenting Michael Weiss. As his career rolled out in work with Art Farmer, Johnny Griffin, Lou Donaldson, Tom Harrell and other...

Posted August 27, 2008

Johnny Griffin Memorial Tribute Readers in and around New York City may be interested in this announcement sent by Michael Weiss. CELEBRATING JOHNNY GRIFFIN: A TRIBUTE IN WORDS AND MUSIC Reminiscences from fellow musicians, family and friends. Johnny Griffin's compositions performed by Johnny's longtime...

Posted August 25, 2008

Bix Beiderbecke: Overrated? The recent Rifftides item about the continuing medical needs of Bix Beiderbecke biographer Richard M. Sudhalter brought interesting comments about both men. You can read it and the comments here. The piece stimulated a correspondence with Paul Paolicelli, blog reader,...

Posted August 25, 2008

Sandow

Greg Sandow on the future of classical music

No hedgehogs yet I'm on vacation, back in the same lovely hideaway in England that I went to last summer. But no hedgehogs yet! Faithful readers (and I'm grateful to you) might remember that last year we had hedgehogs around our house --...

Posted August 9, 2008

Good reading Robert Everett-Green, a music and culture critic of the Toronto Globe and Mail, takes on -- to quote the teaser at the top of his piece -- "the increasingly strident turf wars between fans of pop and of classical music,...

Posted August 1, 2008

Classical and pop reviews (6) I've said that classical music reviews normally don't do what a lot of pop reviews do -- engage the music (and, even more, the critic) with the world outside the music. But in the past, this wasn't always true. Here...

Posted July 28, 2008

Cultural disconnect For the fifth straight week, the number one pop song in the U.S. is Katy Perry's "I Kissed a Girl." Which was also voted the best summer song of 2008 by public radio listeners in New York, giving it double...

Posted July 25, 2008

Classical and pop reviews (5) Comments have trailed off...is everybody sick of this?Here are two New York Times reviews to contrast. First, Steve Smith on a concert of music written by women. A very well-written, evocative review (which someone commenting on a previous post was...

Posted July 22, 2008

Slipped Disc

Norman Lebrecht

Franco tells all An afternoon with Zeffirelli in the garden of his Roman villa, a stone's throw from the Cinecitta studios, brought back memories of a bygone age when directors flitted easily from opera to film and back. Franco was brought into the...

Posted August 29, 2008

Getting brought to book A nice journalist on The Scotsman rings up to say his editor is banging on about well-known authors, me included, whose events have not sold out at next week's Edinburgh Book Festival. 'Give us a chance, guv!' I cry. 'I haven't got on...

Posted August 8, 2008

In a critical condition (4) Twenty years ago, I got taken to a convention of music critics in Washington DC. Isaac Stern depped as keynote speaker for a sick Lenny Bernstein and the atmosphere was chummy and convivial until the session was thrown open to...

Posted August 6, 2008

Brigitte Fassbender tells it how it really is Few singers have been subject to more idle gossip than the wondrous German mezzo, now a theatre intendant. In Monday's Lebrecht Interview, she speaks out for the first time about the real Brigitte. Catch it here http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio3/lebrechtinterview/ and if you check...

Posted August 1, 2008

In a critical condition (2) Last night, I went to see Kurt Weill's Street Scene at the Young Vic, its first UK staging in 20 years which drew chief theatre critics from almost every national daily. This morning, I addressed a dozen students, year 10-11, at corporate HQ...

Posted July 18, 2008

PUBLISHING

book/daddy

Jerome Weeks on books

Apologies. book/daddy has been on the road the past week or so -- delivering his daughter to college in Ohio. ...

Posted August 25, 2008

The Dallas Myth: A Review The neon Pegasus has been a traditional symbol for Dallas because it graces the top of the Magnolia Building, at one time the tallest skyscraper in town, and could be seen for miles. If it looks familiar, that's because it...

Posted August 12, 2008

Look to the skies! Put on your cape and fly over to book/daddy's other worksite, Art&Seek! There you will find a feature about superheroes -- they seem to be rather a big deal right now, don't they? I've heard something about one or two...

Posted August 4, 2008

Black and white and brain dead all over. Eric Alterman in The Nation on the accelerating deterioration of American newspapers: The dearth of decent ideas designed to save newspapers--or reinvent them for the digital age in ways that preserve their crucial democratic functions--is curious and depressing.... Take the...

Posted July 26, 2008

Cozying up to Kara? With the Amazon Wish List, book/daddy was vaguely aware that one can store the data on an assortment of items you want at the online retailer. But I was fuzzy on the fact that the list can be public. Anyone...

Posted July 25, 2008

Quick Study

Scott McLemee on books, ideas, trash-culture ephemera

Scenes from the Class Struggle Available online from Walmart... According to a message posted on the Left Business Observer list, the DVD comes with "a free CD sampler of bands like A-Ha, Erasure, INXS, etc." My feelings about all of this are complicated. But then,...

Posted August 20, 2008

Least I Don't Need to Beg or Borrow According to the Wikipedia entry for the Van Halen song "Running With the Devil," Robert Walser contends that "the feeling of freedom created by the freedom of motion of the guitar solos and fills can be at various times supported,...

Posted August 19, 2008

"Summer Reading You Can Watch" How unfortunate that this program is not real. It would be infinitely preferable to a lot of what PBS puts on. Yes, I'm looking at you, Yanni at the Acropolis. I'm pretty sure Gettin' Head: History's Most Famous Decapitations is...

Posted August 17, 2008

To Serve Man Henry has written about Wendt and Duvall's "Sovereignty and the UFO" at The Monkey Cage. And my column yesterday lauded both the timely urgency of the paper and the aesthetically satisfying way it resists counterarguments. But after thinking it over...

Posted August 14, 2008

A Cry for Help It turns out there is a born-again approximation of The Onion called Lark News. Sample story: ST. PAUL -- College students from a Bible school here have started an unusual outreach program to men with ponytails. "We consider them...

Posted August 12, 2008

THEATRE

Drama Queen

Wendy Rosenfield: drama, onstage and off

Raging Against the Political Machine in Denver I'm still in Colorado, a pretty exciting place to be right now. With all the fuss surrounding the Democratic National Convention, the city of Denver has done an admirable job of highlighting its arts scene. There was a New York Times...

Posted August 25, 2008

All the News That Fits If you've been keeping up with my Twitter stream, you're aware that I'm currently on vacation in Colorado. Earlier in the week my family and I spent a few days in Aspen, bunking at the Little Nell, a slopeside boutique...

Posted August 21, 2008

Keeping Ken Alive I'm currently on vacation, which means that theoretically I have time to finish a book. Usually my excuse for not finishing a read has something to do with children, but this time it's entirely different. I'm four-fifths of the way through...

Posted August 17, 2008

What New York Really Needs is More Shakespeare? In this Sunday's New York Times "Week in Review" section, Charles Isherwood laments the city's paucity of Shakespeare offerings. I usually agree with Mr. Isherwood wholeheartedly and appreciate his championing of underdog (by which I mean non-revival, non-Disney) Manhattan productions....

Posted August 10, 2008

Tiny (Thought) Bubbles Just joined Twitter and though I'm fashionably late to the party, that doesn't make it any less fun. Who wants polite introductions and a table full of appetizers when you can show up to a boozy, smoke-filled room packed to...

Posted August 5, 2008

lies like truth

Chloe Veltman on how culture will save the world

On Being Accosted At The End Of A Play Every now and again, a director, producer or cast member of a theatre production which I am reviewing will accost me as I'm exiting the theatre after seeing the show to ask me what I thought of it. This is...

Posted August 28, 2008

On Asking The Difficult Questions Most reporters save the hard questions for the end of an interview. The reason for doing so is simple: It's much easier to get an interview subject to open up to an interviewer on a touchy, difficult or otherwise challenging...

Posted August 27, 2008

Macbeth's Curse On Screen I've seen a lot of films inspired by Shakespeare's plays in my time, but I've never seen one quite like Never Say Macbeth.This new feature length comedy written by Joe Tyler Gold, directed by C. J Prouty and produced by...

Posted August 26, 2008

Not the Outside Lands Festival I've been careful to avoid Golden Gate Park in San Francisco this weekend. A big part of me wanted to hear Radiohead perform at the first ever Outside Lands Festival in the park. But I've never been one for crowds...

Posted August 25, 2008

Chartres Bleu The Di Rosa Preserve in Napa, California, came into being in the 1960s when art collector and journalist Rene di Rosa purchased and transformed 460 acres of dilapidated vineyard into a working vineyard, a home and space for fueling his...

Posted August 23, 2008

Stage Write

Elizabeth Zimmer on time-based art forms

Timely and Timeless When I was interrupted, a couple of weeks ago, by the news of Deborah Jowitt's dramatic change in status at The Village Voice, I was about to comment on the burgeoning of "historic preservation" in the dance and theater community.In...

Posted April 10, 2008

Everything at Once The Performing Arts Library at Lincoln Center just launched a new exhibition, "New York Story: Jerome Robbins and his World." Since his death a decade ago, the resourceful choreographer-director has spawned at least three biographies, but a gallery show is...

Posted March 26, 2008

Time Step In this era of ecological consciousness, there's one endangered resource we hear little about. It is especially important to those of us who make our living in the arts. That resource is time.Technology enables us to sample the wisdom of...

Posted March 19, 2008

Stage Write Stage Write is a blog about time-based art, and our changing relationship to performances that require protracted attention. As I witness plays and dance concerts, I'll be responding to them in terms of their value in an ecology of time....

Posted January 27, 2008

Elizabeth Zimmer Elizabeth Zimmer has been writing about the arts since 1971, beginning as a freelancer for the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation in Halifax, Nova Scotia. A native New Yorker, she has worked as a writer and editor for ......

Posted January 27, 2008

VISUAL

Aesthetic Grounds

Public Art, Public Space

Public Art as Science Project MOMA and PS1 prepare the public for the "Watersfalls" later this month in NYC. The the scaffolding has been constructed under the Brooklyn bridge. Photo taken on May 26. From the Bay Area and Boston emerge artworks that are mainly science projects overlaid with...

Posted June 1, 2008

Starting Over Again Returning to New York City after a 20-year journey in Seattle and South Florida. New York taught me how to think art. Psychologically, NYC has changed dramatically. Signs in the subway remind parents to keep baby carriages off the escalator. Street territory has been reapportioned for...

Posted May 17, 2008

Public Buyers of Public Art On April 11 in North Carolina, Glenn Harper, Editor of Sculpture Magazine and Bill Thompson, Editor of Landscape Architecture, and I meet to kick off the "Public Art 360" Conference. Click Here to Attend. In the next few weeks,...

Posted March 16, 2008

Knitters beat MGM Mirage in Public Art Media Blitz At the end of last week, two public art projects competed for media attention in the USA. In the small town of Yellow Springs, Ohio, a few local women knitted a sweater for ONE tree during a winter day....

Posted March 11, 2008

New Urbanism in Memphis and Atlanta Twice I read Derek Merrill & Beau B. Beza's essay in Refractory: a Journal of Entertainment Media. The writers utilize the concept of the "screen" to explore Atlantic Station development in Atlanta, Georgia. Atlantic Station is a environmental urban brownfield...

Posted March 9, 2008

Artopia

John Perreault's art diary

Paul McCarthy Spin; Eliasson Falls; Bourgeois Fails Paul McCarthy: Bang Bang Room, 1992. Collection Fondazione Sandreto Rebaudengo, Turin. Courtesy of the Artist and Galerie Hauser & Wirth Photo: Sheldan Collins Disorientations Who is Paul McCarthy? Not having the good grace to...

Posted July 29, 2008

BUCKMINSTER FULLER: MINISTER OF MIST Debunking Uncle Bucky Buckminster Fuller (1895-1983) invented the geodesic dome, sort of. He was not the first to use the icosahedron for construction. Walter Bauersfield in 1922 in Jena, Germany built a planetarium that had...

Posted July 7, 2008

Chris Burden: What My Father Got Me Father's Day 2008 Majid Majidi's The...

Posted June 23, 2008

Olafür Eliasson: Underneath a Waterfall Olafur Eliasson: Ventilator, 1997 For weeks now my Eliasson Problem has loomed. MoMA and its satellite P.S.1 ----...

Posted June 3, 2008

Keith Haring Redux Some artists make art. Some make icons. Some, like Keith Haring, made both. Haring (1958-90) started out as a guerrilla subway artist. You see, there were all these unsold advertising boards in the subways: blank and all-black, like vertical schoolroom...

Posted May 22, 2008

CultureGrrl

Lee Rosenbaum's Cultural Commentary

The New "Art in America": Vetrocq Vets the Masthead New Regime: the September issueIt's out with the old, in with the new in the September issue of Art in America magazine, where Marcia Vetrocq assumed the editorship in June, replacing artworld editorial giant Betsy Baker (who remains as "Editor-at-Large/Special...

Posted August 28, 2008

More on Hollein: Another U.S. Museum Connection; "Too American"? A CultureGrrl reader helpfully alerted me to the fact that Max Hollein, possibly to be named the next Metropolitan Museum director, is also on the board of trustees of the Neue Galerie, New York. And I've also discovered that a documentary...

Posted August 27, 2008

Name That Met Director: The Game Show's Final Round Max Hollein: The frontrunner?Pop Quiz for Met Museumologists: Which of these four museum professionals is not like the others?A) Gary Tinterow, the Metropolitan Museum's curator in charge of 19th-century, modern and contemporary artB) Ian Wardropper, the Met's chairman of European...

Posted August 27, 2008

Hirst Skull to Rijksmuseum Exhibition, Curated by Diamond Damien Damien Hirst, "For the Love of God," 2007It looks like the investment syndicate that owns Damien Hirst's diamond skull, "For the Love of God," has finally succeeded in lining up an exhibition for it at a major museum: The Rijksmuseum,...

Posted August 27, 2008

Obama Drama: Tax Fairness for Artists, Impact Film Festival Claude Gerstle, subject of an Impact Film Festival documentary on stem cell research, being shown during each party's national conventionNow that we've shifted from the athletic Olympics to the political olympics, it's time to peruse Barack Obama's Platform in Support...

Posted August 26, 2008

Modern Art Notes

Tyler Green's modern and contemporary art blog

Dead or alive? 'Billboard art' is the rage of late. No idea why. But this example raises questions of politics, public art, commercial interests and on and on......

Posted August 28, 2008

Five favorite summer sights Five favorite things I saw over the course of the summer... 1.) Two super installations at the Akron Art Museum, which is taking full effect of its striking new Coop Himmelblau building: Upon entering the museum's smart new post-war galleries, visitors...

Posted August 28, 2008

Wednesday links When 'watercolor painting' was an Olympic event, from the LAT's David Colker.The Boston Globe's Geoff Edgers explains what college art museum lost a Leger and how they seem to have done it.Sebastian Smee, the Boston Globe's new art critic, says...

Posted August 27, 2008

Diebenkorn revisits Picasso (and others) Last week I posted about how the "Diebenkorn in New Mexico" show now at the Phillips Collection reveals how Richard Diebenkorn worked his way through a number of modern masters on his way to becoming one of the greatest post-war...

Posted August 26, 2008

Weekend roundup I am confused. In Sunday's NYT, Roberta Smith declares that public art is "one of contemporary art's more exciting areas of endeavor and certainly its most dramatically improved one." Sure. There may be an argument to be made in that...

Posted August 25, 2008

MOST RECENT POSTS
AJBlogCentral | rss

music

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music

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Half of Hair A veteran of the 1960's is offended by the Public Theater's revival of "Hair."...

Rockwell Matters | 08/29/08@11:44AM

music

Different the Second Time: Variation Brings Life to the Music I was listening recently to a new operatic recital disc of bel canto arias sung by the remarkable young tenor...

On the Record | 08/29/08@10:54AM

music

Club tour expands Chicago Jazz Festival Busses to neighborhood "show lounges" expand fest's scope, demonstrate scene's depth and diversity...

Jazz beyond Jazz | 08/29/08@08:41AM

media

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Life's a Pitch | 08/29/08@08:02AM

theatre

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About Last Night | 08/29/08@06:44AM

music

The slapdash genius Leonard Bernstein would have turned 90 years old on Monday....

About Last Night | 08/29/08@06:44AM

ideas

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people

Franco tells all Can music ever get on with the movies?...

Slipped Disc | 08/29/08@02:03AM

music

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PostClassic | 08/28/08@09:16PM

culture

(Half) Turn of the Screw Liner notes translated into Ikea....

Mind the Gap | 08/28/08@06:22PM

ideas

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culture

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Dewey21C | 08/28/08@09:16AM

visual

The New "Art in America": Vetrocq Vets the Masthead Masthead watchers will be interested to see who's in, who's out, in the magazine's revamped roster of contributing editors....

CultureGrrl | 08/28/08@09:12AM

theatre

On Being Accosted At The End Of A Play How to exit a theatre gracefully without giving the game away...

lies like truth | 08/28/08@08:04AM

ideas

Seeking social currency Jack Shafer in Slate thinks newspapers have lost their social currency. What's the current balance for the arts?...

Artful Manager | 08/28/08@07:53AM

visual

Five favorite summer sights Some random summer faves in Akron, Berkeley, Cleveland and Chadds Ford...

Modern Art Notes | 08/28/08@06:33AM

dance

A new website for touring dancers and their fans...

Foot in Mouth | 08/27/08@06:37PM

issues

On Asking The Difficult Questions A director won't reveal her age to a reporter. Is there any basis to her scruples?...

lies like truth | 08/27/08@02:00PM

media

Nice is different than good The Emerson String Quartet gets an interesting, relevant and well-written NY Times review....

Life's a Pitch | 08/27/08@10:52AM

visual

More on Hollein: Another U.S. Museum Connection; "Too American"? He's a Neue Galerie trustee and subject of a recent documentary that shadows him in Frankfurt and New York....

CultureGrrl | 08/27/08@10:52AM

media

In a critical condition (5) Some newspapers have decided to cherish their critics...

Slipped Disc | 08/27/08@10:22AM

dance

Snapshot This week's video: Mark Morris in "Dido and Aeneas."...

About Last Night | 08/27/08@09:33AM

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