“I knew it was possible because our masters die with their shoes on. … You dance until your 90s. … To be able to be a dancer and a musician at the same time, there’s nothing like it.” (audio)
Archives for September 2015
How Billy Crystal’s One Five-Minute Scene Nearly Derailed ‘The Princess Bride’
Mandy Patinkin came away with a bruise, and for some takes Cary Elwes had to be replaced with a mannequin.
Sale Of Harmonia Mundi Record Label Finalized
The acquisition by the Brussels-based indie rock label group PIAS, effective Oct. 1, includes all of Harmonia Mundi’s subsidiary labels, catalogues, inventory and other assets in classical, jazz, and world music, but not HM’s book publishing business or retail outlets.
Top Posts From AJBlogs 09.29.15
Phil Woods, 1931-2015
Phil Woods died today, less than a month after he announced his retirement from playing. He was 83. Woods’ longtime drummer Bill Goodwin told me this afternoon that the veteran alto saxophonist “went out on his own terms,” … read more
AJBlog: RiffTides Published 2015-09-29
Girls Growing Up Black
How fast their feet are! Skittering, stepping, bouncing up and down, kicking out those feet, six women dance as if the ground itself is both untrustworthy territory and something that needs mastering. … read more
AJBlog: Dancebeat Published 2015-09-29
Postminimalism Takes Finland
The Fifth International Conference of Minimalist Music, in Turku and Helsinki (harbor above), Finland, was a smashing success. I ate sautéed reindeer and plenty of herring. We ended up Sunday night with only a few people left in the upstairs bar at the Torni Hotel, … read more
AJBlog: PostClassic Published 2015-09-29
Monday Recommendation: Playboy Swings
For sixty years, Hugh Hefner and his Playboy magazine have been easy targets for lampoon and parody. With their fixation on the care and feeding of the male libido, they have attracted plenty of both. But there has always been more to Playboy than preoccupation with sex. … read more
AJBlog: RiffTides Published 2015-09-28
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Book Blurbs Are A Scourge, A Blight, A Fraud. On The Other Hand…
And if no less a luminary than George Orwell — way back in 1936 — credited the decline of the novel (even then!) with “the disgusting tripe that is written by the blurb-reviewers,” one question naturally arises: Why are blurbs still around — and still, at least among publishers, so popular?
Cincinnati Symphony Takes On A Three-Year Experiment
The orchestra is presenting a multimedia, three-year “Pelleas and Melisande” project that will combine live music, a site-specific installation and – in the third year – the performance of a full opera.
Is A Restoration Damaging Chartres Cathedral?
“According to author Stefan Evans, the restoration has made the cathedral’s interior look like it was built just yesterday. Its walls and vaulted ceilings have been covered with historically inaccurate paint and plaster. And many architectural nuances — for instance, the fact the north tower was constructed in the 16th century in a different style from the rest of the church — have become imperceivable.”
French Thinking Used To Animate The World. So What Happened?
“French public debate has been framed around enduring oppositions such as good and evil, opening and closure, unity and diversity, civilisation and barbarity, progress and decadence, and secularism and religion. Underlying this passion for ideas is a belief in the singularity of France’s mission.”
Which Cities Are The Best For Artists?
You have to consider many factors. How expensive is housing and work spaces? How much does a city support culture? Is there anything going on?
Gustavo Dudamel: Why I Won’t Take Sides In Venezuelan Politics
Dudamel’s editorial, headlined “Why I Don’t Talk Venezuelan Politics,” is a 650-word essay in which he describes himself as “neither a politician nor an activist.” He says, “I will not publicly take a political position or align myself with one point of view or one party in Venezuela or in the United States.”
What We Can Learn From The Art In Eli Broad’s Vault
“Listen to Eli Broad, and it’s a great sin for museums to have art in storage. That’s why he built his own museum (with 1700+ works in storage). Storage is a fact of life with a contemporary collection, where tastes change quickly. Nobody buys 11 Taaffes thinking they’re all going to be on permanent display or constantly on loan. And nobody knows what art-of-our-time will resonate 50 or 100 years hence. A few of today’s artists and works will survive the winnowing of history. Everything else will be in storage.”
Vivendi To Build 10 New Theatres Across Africa
“The foundation stone of the first hall in Guinea’s capital Conakry has already been laid. The other cities where the theatres will be built include Benin’s main city Cotonou, the Congo capital Brazzaville and the Senegalese capital Dakar.”
Juilliard To Open New School In China
The Tianjin Juilliard School is expected to open in 2018 and will offer U.S.-accredited master of music degrees in orchestral studies, chamber music and collaborative piano. The school will have its own permanent faculty; guest artists from the New York campus will also teach there.
Fall For Dance Is A Hit In New York. So Now It’s Moving North
In Ilter Ibrahimof’s mind, this year’s Fall for Dance North is only the beginning of what he thinks the festival can do. In future years, he’s hoping to commission longer pieces and to add a second stage, allowing for more intimate performances. “Toronto is a great place for Fall for Dance because of its extreme diversity, its openness. In a way, it’s almost better-suited to this festival than New York.”
Brian Eno: We Need To Rethink The Place Of Culture
“I think we need to rethink how we talk about culture, rethink what we think it does for us, and what it actually is. We have a complete confusion about that. It’s very interesting.”
Neuroscience Says Drummers’ Brains Are Different
“Now we know that there is something anatomically different about them.” Their ability to keep time gives them an intuitive understanding of the rhythmic patterns they perceive all around them.
Seattle Repertory Theatre Deals With A Big Deficit By Going Big
“You might expect the Rep to tighten its budget, to produce fewer or smaller shows. But board members and top staff are not going that route. Rather, they’re gambling that financial risk will yield eventual reward — and that mounting large-scale, crowd-pleasing shows can keep the box office flush, and the cash contributions flowing.”
MacArthur ‘Genius Grant’ Winners For 2015 Include Ta-Nehisi Coates, Michelle Dorrance, Lin-Manuel Miranda, Nicole Eisenman, Basil Twist
“When puppeteer Basil Twist got the call in the middle of rehearsal for his new show, he bristled. ‘I was like, ‘Who is this, a bill collector?””
What Music Critics Want (Allan Kozinn Explains)
“Have I mentioned that one thing a critic learns, over time, is that there is not a single Right Way to hear music? … And that brings us to the slippery notion of taste. No matter what critics may assert, taste is both individual and fluid. Yes, there are rules and standards separating the tasteful from the crude, and in theory, there are absolutes and boundaries that shouldn’t be crossed. But if you listen long enough, you’ll hear a good many of them crossed after all.”
Dallas Museum Of Art Director Resigns For New Job In New York
“Maxwell Anderson, director of the Dallas Museum of Art since 2012, made public Monday what he told the board of directors last week: He is resigning, effective immediately, to take an executive position with the New Cities Foundation in New York City.”
They Made The Wrong Jokes: What Happened To Three Comic-Book Artists In The Arab World’s Freest Country
“Sitting outside, Khouri and Baki tried to make sense of the racket. ‘Every time the door opened, we could hear the General Security guys yelling at Hatem while he tried to explain to them what a comic book was,’ Baki said.”
Eighty Years of Penguin Books – By The Numbers
“Before Allen Lane began his publishing house in 1935, good books were the purview of the privileged, costing more than many Londoners spent on a week’s rent. But that all changed when Lane, then managing director of the now-defunct Bodley Head, bought the rights to 10 already popular hardcovers … redesigning each with a uniform set of specs so simple that even small, inexperienced print shops could mass-produce them on the cheap.” (infographic)
Christopher Jackson, 67, Montreal’s Godfather Of Early Music
“For generations of Montrealers, the pure tone and clear expression he cultivated with the Studio de musique ancienne de Montréal, an ensemble he co-founded in 1974, defined the way Palestrina, Victoria, Lasso, Tallis and other Renaissance masters should sound.”
LA Philharmonic Takes Its Virtual Reality Machine To The Streets Of LA County
“The Los Angeles Philharmonic has launched a virtual reality project in which people don VR goggles and Samsung headsets that give them a 3-D, 360-degree experience of four minutes of Beethoven’s Symphony No. 5, performed by the orchestra at Walt Disney Concert Hall. The VR goggles and other equipment were put aboard a bus, dubbed Van Beethoven, and sent out to tour the county through October.”
Is The Internet Doing To TV What It Did To Newspapers And The Music Business? Maybe Not
“Despite sharing the vulnerabilities of other long-standing media – shrinking audiences, changing consumption patterns, new competition for ad dollars – the television dinosaur has only grown fatter.”