Yearly Archives: 2023
Is This Wing-Shaped, Standing-On-Its-Side Baby Grand Piano Ingenious Or Ridiculous?
"Dan Harden's proposal, called the Ravenchord, is shaped like a bird's wing, with strings fanning out from the center. In concert, a pianist would...
Director of Florence’s Galleria dell’Accademia Fears Italy’s Rightist Government Will Revoke The Museum’s Independence...
"Even as Cecilie Hollberg highlights her achievements at Italy's second-most-visited museum" — it's the home of Michelangelo's David — "since arriving in 2015, rumors...
At Colorado’s Central City Opera, CEO Pamela Pantos Is Suddenly Out In The Middle...
Pantos joined the summer opera festival as president in February of 2022 — with longtime company chief Pelham Pearce remaining as artistic director. But...
Since The Password-Sharing Crackdown, Netflix Has Gained Nearly 6 Million Subscribers
The streaming company added 5.9 million new paid subscribers during the second quarter of 2023, the first period after instituting what it calls its...
Ancient Dance Floor Designed To Sound Like Thunder Is Discovered In Peru
"Found at the site of Viejo Sangayaico, 200km southeast of Lima, the floor was built into an open-air platform sometime between AD1000 and AD1400....
For Its New Artistic Director, Chicago Shakespeare Turns To One Of England’s Great Theatre...
Edward Hall, who founded the all-male Shakespearean specialist Propeller Theatre Company, is the brother of actress/director Rebecca Hall and son of Royal Shakespeare Company...
Another Jackass Carves Her Name Into The Colosseum In Rome
"A Swiss teenager is the latest offender to start carving her name into the ancient amphitheatre. The 17-year-old was caught in the act, with...
American Theatre Is Collapsing – It Needs A Bailout
So how do we avoid this catastrophe? Just as in other areas of recent American life where entire industries were imperiled — banks, the...
Seattle Theatre Is Broken. It Might Not Survive
What worries me more than money at the moment is the spiritual pall hanging over the theater community – a simmering angry paralysis mirroring...
Why Has Brooklyn Public Library Become A Monument To A Celebrity?
The show’s opening last week raised further questions about its intended audience. On a hot weekday, the heavily trafficked library was closed to its constituents in...
What’s The Point Of Eco-Art? (It Won’t Save Us)
What feels different about ecocritical art is that the very topic it engages with proposes widespread ruin and demands that action be immediately...
NYC’s Commercial Real Estate Market Is Collapsing. This Will Significantly Change Manhattan
Last year, a team of academics from Columbia University and NYU published a paper with the eye-catching title “Work From Home and the Office...
When The Biggest Indie Stars Sell Out It’s Bad For Everyone
Writer and actor strikes in the US show that selling out is not just a question of personal ethics, but an industry-wide concern. A...
What Are The Rules For Ghost-Written Celebrity Novels?
What about literature’s latest trend: the celebrity novel? Do the rules that apply to the celebrity memoir remain the same when it comes to...
Explosions, Radiation Sickness, And A Love Song To The Periodic Table: Simon Mayo On...
"The head of Opera Holland Park, James Clutton, … approached Jonathan Dove to compose the music and Alasdair Middleton to write the libretto. The...
A Next-Generation Orchestra?
The Cornwall Youth Noise Orchestra is the brainchild of Matt Ashdown and Liz Howell of Moogie Wonderland, which began as a club night and now...
Explaining “Situation Deepfakes”. How They Could Affect Elections, And How To Guard Against Them
"The idea and technology of a situation deepfake are the same as any other deepfake, but with a bolder ambition: to manipulate a real...
An AI App For Musicians To Help Them Create
Alex Mubert's vision is of an app that will allow people to easily experiment and create music on their own. Because of licensing complications...
The Little Red Barn Where Some Of The World’s Best Ballet Dancers Grow
The Central Pennsylvania Youth Ballet was founded in Carlisle, a college town in the south-central part of the state, in 1955. The school has...
Analyst: Hollywood Strikes Could Cost $450M-$600M
Moody’s debt analyst Neil Begley wrote in a July 17 report, “we believe this standstill could be a relatively long strike, with the stakes being larger than...
Amsterdam Is Trying Very Hard To Shed Its Reputation As A Party Destination
"To combat the excess of party tourism, new rules (began) this February — among them, a law that window brothels, bars and pubs in...
The Remarkable Resurgence Of Otto Klemperer
From the mid-1950s to the end of the 1960s, Klemperer was among the most prolific conductors on record. Yet around 1950 everyone thought he...
At 50, Carlos Acosta Is Returning To The Stage Of London’s Royal Ballet
"I was playing with doing the balcony pas de deux of Romeo and Juliet but that would have been way too much. I have...
Harriet Choice, A Pioneering Female Jazz Journalist, Is Dead At 82
"Thousands of people knew Harriet Rosenfeld Choice by the words she wrote for this newspaper, decades worth of her enthusiastic and influential coverage of...
Standup Comedians Aren’t Terribly Worried About The Threat Of AI (For Now)
"'Writing jokes will be one the very last tasks AI will be able to do convincingly and effectively,' predicts Conan vet Matthew Broussard. 'Meaning,...
