It’s an ambitious project, and a challenge for the box office. Undaunted by the idea that the original Spring for Music festival, at Carnegie Hall, had trouble attracting audiences to unfamiliar ensembles playing unfamiliar work, Shift’s presenters have opted for programs focusing almost exclusively on living American composers, with a healthy dose of multimedia for good measure.
Archives for May 2015
Boris Eifman: What’s Missing In Today’s Ballet
Eifman is unwavering in his belief in dance as theater and spectacle and not shy about expressing his disdain of most prevailing contemporary approaches to choreography. “There is one problem in the modern arts scene, that many younger choreographers are really creating some movements just to the music. For me, ballet theater is not just about movement and music. It’s about something more; it’s about theater.”
Venezuela Is In Trouble – And Its Two Best-Known Musicians Don’t Agree On A Solution
“This Venezuelan revolution is the music story thus far of the 21st century. But now Venezuela is in trouble. The price to save El Sistema may turn out to be high, politically and morally. The answers are not clear, and the country’s two best-known classical musicians, pianist Gabriela Montero and Dudamel, once friends, are, as is much of the country, painfully divided on what to do.”
New SEC Rules Could Revolutionize Crowdfunding For Movies
“Until now, the public has been giving away millions of dollars to startup companies on sites like Kickstarter, and some of these startup companies have gone on to sell for billions, with no reward to the initial public funders. It had been difficult for the startup companies to issue equity in exchange for this funding because of the restraints of securities laws, and the fact that the public was funding these companies with nothing in return made a mockery of those laws, since it is hard to make a worse investment than just giving money away for free (or even for a Veronica Mars T-shirt).”
Report: Writers’ Incomes Are Falling (Precipitously)
“Over all, the writers’ incomes from writing have dropped 27 per cent since the last time they were surveyed, in 1998. Their average annual income from writing is now less than $13,000 and half report they are working harder than before to make the money. American and British surveys have reported similar drops.”
After 150 Years, Lewis Carroll’s “Alice In Wonderland” Is Still Influencing Children’s Literature
When Lewis Carroll finally got his story down on paper 150 years ago and published it under its now familiar title, Wonderland—a shape-shifting tale that is both a love letter to the English language and an extended metaphor for childhood—changed children’s literature forever.”
So Now Taking Instagram Images And Turning Them Into Art Is Art. A Discussion Well Worth Having
“Here, you’ve got an appropriation artist whose whole reputation is from taking images that he finds interesting and turning them into art,” Ian Ballon, an Internet copyright litigator with Greenberg Traurig, LLP told The Daily Beast. “But courts evaluate ‘fair use’ based on a multi-part balancing test and, if you change the facts just a little bit, something that looks very similar could actually be a ‘fair use.’”
In 1992 Richard Woodward Wrote A NYT Mag Cover Piece On Sally Mann That Caused A Firestorm. Now He Reflects On Mann’s New Book
“What’s clear from Mann’s not always coherent defense of her actions in the book is that she, too, is uncertain about the answers to her questions I asked—a confusion that, I believe, only increases her stature by adding a complicating layer to her motives. No one likes a smug, self-satisfied artist and Mann’s intelligence attractively joins a bold disregard for convention and self-doubt.”
St. Paul’s Ordway Center Leader To Retire After Rebuilding And Bringing Peace
Patricia Mitchell “leaves a legacy both as peacemaker and builder. In February, the Ordway opened a 1,100-seat, $42 million concert hall that was greeted with plaudits for Tim Carl’s elegant, simple architecture and its exquisite acoustics. Serving as principal home of the St. Paul Chamber Orchestra, it complements an adjoining 1,900-seat theater where operas, musicals and major stage shows are presented.”
Pro Sports Has Discovered: Broadcasting Their Games Free and Live On TV Increases Their Business
“Research actually shows that TV broadcasts can increase game attendance. And while blackout policies are meant to increase revenues, as Forbes pointed out, the policy has done little to boost ticket prices for the Indy 500.”
A New Animal-inspired Algorithm Is Letting Machines Learn (Much) Faster
“An injured animal doesn’t diagnose its sprained ankle; it finds a limp that allows it to keep moving. Similarly, the team’s robots didn’t pinpoint the damage; they just noticed a drop in speed or a change in course, and selected a new movement to resume their actions.”
Our World Is Becoming More Globalized. So Why Are American Universities Becoming Less Global?
“A 2012 report by the American Council on Education said that American colleges have actually taken a step backward in certain key areas of campus internationalization: Fewer colleges today require students to take courses that emphasize global perspectives as part of their general education, and the number with mandatory study of a foreign language continues to plummet.”
How Our Comedians Became Our Social Critics
“The stuff of late-night LOLs used to be quippy monologues, vapid celebrity interviews, Stupid Human Tricks both official and less so. It still is, to some extent. More often, though, TV comedy that self-consciously defines itself as “comedy”—the stuff that originally airs on Comedy Central and FXX and HBO, the stuff that is firmly rooted in traditions of sketch and standup—is taking on subjects like racism and sexism and inequality and issues including police brutality and trigger warnings and intersectional feminism and helicopter parenting and the end of men.”
91 Percent Of Wikipedia’s Editors Are Male. Is That A Problem?
“When it comes to how it is made, Wikipedia is a colossal failure. Only a tiny proportion of users now edit articles and the overwhelming majority of those editors are male. The most recent survey by the Wikimedia Foundation, the charity that supports but does not control Wikipedia, found that 91 per cent of the editors are men.”
Bone-Breaking – The Dance Craze That’s Exploding On Instagram
“Bone-breakers are known for dislocating their shoulders to create fluid movements that are spectacular to watch — but also might make you a bit squeamish. Instagram users are loving it, though. Dancers have uploaded more than 7,000 posts under the hashtag #bonebreaking, with 4,000 more under #bonebreak.”
American Publishers Look To China But Authors Fret About Censorship
“Organizers of the event say China deserves a seat at the table because it is such a big and potentially lucrative market. But some authors and free speech advocates have seen this as an opportunity to shine light on censorship in China.”
Joe Dowling Leaves A Reinvented Guthrie Theatre After 20 Years
“Not since Tyrone Guthrie founded the company that would bear his name has someone become more associated with the Guthrie Theater, one of the nation’s acclaimed regional theaters. The journey Dowling took to become its 20-year leader, reinventing the theater in the process, was unlikely and unexpected.”
Want To Know How The Brain Processes Creativity? We’ll Have To Devise More Creative Tests
“Interdisciplinary collaborations are often a good thing, especially between science and the arts. It makes sense that a design scholar would want to know how creativity works—in this case, a person who teaches a creativity course at Stanford’s d-school actually suggested the study. But creativity is, in the end, a human construct. That lack of definition makes it tough to study, even though the researchers tried to focus on a specific kind.”
Is The Top Of The High-End Art Auction Market Softening?
The percentage of guaranteed contemporary works at Christie’s evening auctions increased to 52 percent in May from 44 percent in November, according to ArtTactic. Meanwhile, average prices decreased 15.8 percent.
Repressive Middle East Governments Hiding Behind Shiny International Art Buildings
“In this context of repression, it’s clear that whatever the Louvre, the Guggenheim and New York University might say, the reality is that they provide a sheen of high-end respectability to an autocratic state.”
Want To Make Art About Superheroes? It’s Not Easy (As These Leaked Sony Emails Show)
“Gagosian Gallery worked for months to license images of Batman, Superman, Iron Man and Spider-Man for a series by the German photographer Andreas Gursky. More than six prominent Hollywood executives were involved in the negotiations, including Robert Iger, the chairman of the Walt Disney Company, Kevin Tsujihara, the chairman of Warner Brothers, the producer Charles Roven and the chief executives of DC and Marvel Comics.”
Musical Theatre For The Deaf
Musicals may seem like a counterintuitive choice for a deaf theater company, but they aren’t uncommon for Deaf West, one of the few theater groups in the country led by a deaf artistic director, in its case DJ Kurs.
Study: Possible To Reduce Prejudice While You Sleep
A research team led by psychologists Ken Paller of Northwestern University and Xiaoqing Hu of the University of Texas-Austin reports it was able to able to reduce prejudice through a combination of conscious brain training and subliminal reinforcement as the study participants napped.
Want To Exercise Better? Listen To Music (Duh!) (But Here’s The Science)
Computer scientist Shahriar Nirjon, working with a team at the University of Virginia, found that the tempo of songs played a role in producing a certain heart rate in study participants. They found that people who listened to calming music reported lower anxiety and heart rate; similarly, they could increase a person’s heart rate by playing songs at a faster tempo, he said.
The Product Placements That Are Controlling Your Favorite Music
“The trick is that as with a lot of what’s taking place in the music industry these days – witness the backroom deals between the major labels and the streaming services, most of which leave the musicians out of the equation – the financial relationships are mostly opaque.”