Farmer and the Cowman Redux
Three years ago I published a post titled The Farmer and the Cowman in which I acknowledged an epiphany about the relationship between arts marketing and community engagement. In the past six months … read more
AJBlog: Engaging Matters Published 2015-09-29
The Pope, the music and the evacuation
A pope without music is like a ship without a flag. It’s part of the papal aura – but, unlike incense, it doesn’t send your sinuses into spasms. At the Festival of Families Saturday night … read more
AJBlog: Condemned to Music Published 2015-09-30
October Blues: Line-Dance Clicks
“Owing to the Greeks” – Tom McCartney on historical roots of the European Union fiscal crisis. “Do we mistake inaccessibility for brilliance?” – Leslie Jamison in NYT’s Bookends column (turkey headline), August 30 … read more
AJBlog: blog riley Published 2015-09-30
Diffident Leviathan
Accordionist Veli Kujala did a lovely job on my piece Reticent Behemoth for his quarter-tone accordion. Here’s the recording from the world premiere last Thursday in Turku, Finland (duration five and a half minutes). … read more
AJBlog: PostClassic Published 2015-09-30
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Archives for September 2015
That Football TV Theme Music That’s So Recognizable Has Classical Origins
“These composers are using the same tricks classical music composers have used for centuries — combinations of pitch, tempo, rhythm, dynamics, and melody — that resonate in the human subconscious to evoke emotion. Today, football fans will sit rapt in concert halls, listening to the Green Bay Civic Symphony or the Philadelphia Orchestra play the soundtrack of their favorite sport.
NY Post Cuts Theatre Writer Michael Riedel Back To Once A Week
“At the Post, a redesign of the features section now ghettoizes arts coverage to Fridays. Among other headline-worthy occurrences, that means that plugged-in Broadway columnist Michael Riedel has been cut back to one column a week, instead of two — odd since Riedel is the Page Six of theater news, followed and love-hated by the most powerful people on the New York/Hollywood entertainment axis.”
Here Are Real World Clues To Our Cities Of The Future
“A century, plus or minus, after human beings started putting their minds toward designing cities as a whole, things are getting good. High tech materials, sensor networks, new science, and better data are all letting architects, designers, and planners work smarter and more precisely. Cities are getting more environmentally sound, more fun, and more beautiful. And just in time, because today more human beings live in cities than not.”
Movie Economics Have Killed Mid-Budget Movies (Can Anything Be Done?)
“In recent years, the recession and the concurrent rise of VOD streaming services have already torpedoed the midbudget movie. Suddenly, in order to be financially viable, a project has to cost less than $2 million or more than $200 million. Anything in between is dead in the water. Many of the country’s most vital filmmakers, unwilling to accept that their next movie would have to be either shot on an iPhone or connected to the Marvel Cinematic Universe, have begun to abandon ship.”
How Do Artists Make An Impact In Communities? (Some Ideas)
“If we are looking for artists to help make change in our communities, there needs to be an infrastructure that supports them: intermediaries to make connections and develop programs, training to assure artists feel secure and safe in what may be a new environment, and the sharing of knowledge and resources for artists to learn from one another and from other-sector experts.”
Report: UK Theatre Is Less Diverse Than Other Arts Sectors
“The Creative Diversity report, penned by the Creative Industries Federation in partnership with Music of Black Origin, suggests that only 6% of those in working in the performing arts are from black, Asian or minority ethnic backgrounds, compared with 11% of those employed in the creative sector as a whole.”
Herzog And De Meuron Reveal Plans For New Vancouver Art Museum
“In the design, the 310,000-square-foot gallery is a tall, distinctive monolith. In drawings it appears as a stack of slabs, growing bigger at the middle and then smaller again at the top; some of these boxes are wrapped in wood-and-glass screens, others almost entirely in wood. An inukshuk? An Inca temple in the air? Pick your likeness.”
How The Internet Is Killing The Art Of Book Collecting
As the art of pricing books rapidly dissipates, so does that of describing them evanesce.
New Dia Director Cancels Plans For New Space In Chelsea
“I want to be programming constantly in Chelsea again because it makes no sense to have this incredible real estate and to be renting it out. It’s essential that we have a presence in the city.”
The Art World Seems To Have Fallen Under The Spell Of Marketers (Pssst! Don’t Listen To Them)
“At the risk of being dismissed as naïve, I’ll repeat: it takes eyes, ears, brains, and passion — not an art market degree — to run a culturally meaningful gallery. The problem with the ever-growing barrage of marketing schemes lies in the sentence they all open with: “Art is like any other business.” It isn’t. No two artists require the same approach; I have as many hats as I have artists. If only I was in the business of selling hats.”
American Military Turns To Hollywood For Propaganda Help In Waging War In Middle East
Sunnylands was in charge of pulling together the roster of talent, and invited the State Department to participate. One of the goals was to connect Middle Eastern filmmakers with influential Hollywood figures to start plotting “how to engage and empower storytellers [to] create alternative and positive narratives, and how to talk about youth empowerment,” according to the official, who works on these initiatives.
New York Philharmonic Opens New Season With Big Challenges, Many Unanswered Questions
“Somewhere in the chasm ahead lies a massive fund-raising campaign (just $375 million to go to pay for the actual renovation!), a redesigned hall, a new music director, financial stability, and an artistic vision, all of which will need to materialize at roughly the same time.”
St. Paul Chamber Orchestra Musicians Get A Raise
“The terms were strictly financial. Musicians making less than $80,000 a year will receive a $4,000 raise in the first year and $2,000 in the second. Musicians above the $80,000 threshold will only get the bump in year two. The guaranteed minimum salary will rise to $66,000 in 2018, an increase of 10 percent over two years. The roster will stay at 28 players.”
First Female Winner Of Thurber Prize For American Humor
“Julie Schumacher became the first female winner of The Thurber Prize For American Humor on Monday night, taking the prize for her epistolary novel Dear Committee Members. It was destined to be a historic night for the nearly 20-year-old award; all three of this year’s finalists were women.”
Why Have There Been No Great Women Bad-Boy Artists? There Have Been, Of Course. Says Jerry Saltz, But The Art World Has Refused To Recognize Them
“Dana Schutz and Katherine Bernhardt are among the liveliest American painters to emerge in this country in 15 years, and both opened big new shows over two nights a few weeks ago. Before we get to the exhibitions, a little history to help explain why the reputations of these two painters have careened so much over that time – they’ve been celebrated, passed over for big shows, and become dark horses, all while helping to shape the current charismatic painting moment.”
Can Art Dissuade Young Saudis From Radical Islamism? This Artist Is Trying
“We need to invest in these young people before ISIS does,’ says Abdulnasser Gharem, a former lieutenant colonel in the Saudi Arabian army, sipping a glass of water in the Tate during a flying visit to London. ‘They have energy and have little to do in their own country – so what would you expect them to do?'”
Chicago’s Goodman Theatre Names First All-Female Playwrights Unit
“The Playwrights Unit offers Chicago playwrights a year-long residency to foster new work with the Goodman’s artistic team. The group will meet twice a month and their work will culminate in public staged readings held in summer 2016.”
Phil Woods, 83 Revered Jazz Saxophonist
“[He] was one of the leading alto saxophonists in the generation that followed Charlie Parker … For much of that career, he was a sought-after section player in big bands because of his ability, unusual at the time, to read sheet music with as much breezy authority as he brought to his solos.”
Nonesuch Records Chief Robert Hurwitz To Retire After 32 Years
“When executives at big record companies leave their jobs, there is usually a quick announcement and a scramble behind the scenes to install a new regime. Not so with the long sunset for Robert Hurwitz of Nonesuch Records, the prestigious Warner Music imprint that is home to acts as varied as Steve Reich, Laurie Anderson and the Black Keys.”
See Our Movie, Save The World: Marketing Documentaries On Climate Change And Endangered Species To Viewers Who’d Rather Not Get Depressed
“Two movies on similar missions are opening within weeks of each other this season, Racing Extinction and This Changes Everything, both exploring the devastation humanity has wrought on the natural world. Yet rather than focusing only on what is dying and lost, both films offer messages of hope, profiling people who have helped stop, animal by animal, acre by acre, the pillaging of wildlife and land.”
Are Apple Stores The 21st Century’s Temples? Maybe So, Says A Cultural Historian
“In more ancient times, when communal experiences were mediated by religion, crowds used to gather outside temples on feast days. … Nowadays, we have Apple Release Day – the Feast of St. Jobs – when faithful customers gather outside Apple stores and await the renewal of a next generation iPhone.” Says NYU professor Erica Robles-Anderson, “It’s so obviously a cult.”
When Experimental Theatre Companies Take On Shakespeare
Complicité’s Simon McBurney, Improbable’s Phelim McDermott, Kneehigh’s Emma Rice (who takes over Shakespeare’s Globe next April), and Told by an Idiot’s Paul Hunter talk about the unusual approaches they use – and which Shakespeare plays they do and don’t get encouraged to stage.
Is Nefertiti Buried In Tutankhamun’s Tomb? This Archaeologist Thinks So
“With the help of a sophisticated radar, [Nicholas] Reeves aims to prove Nefertiti is buried there in a hidden chamber of the young pharaoh’s underground tomb that long hid the most fabulous treasure ever discovered in Egypt.”
Chicago Symphony Musicians, Board Ratify Three-Year Contract
“Following one of the longest and hardest-fought series of collective bargaining sessions in recent Chicago Symphony Orchestra history, the musicians finally have a new labor contract.” The agreement includes small raises each year and no change in health care benefits.