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The Throat-Singing Mongolian Rock Band That Has Taken Worldwide Music Charts By Storm
Their first two videos, for Wolf Totem, and Yuve Yuve Yu (or How Strange, How Strange) have amassed more than 45m views on YouTube over the last year, while their debut album, The Gereg, opened at No 1 on Billboard’s Top New Artist chart and No 2 on the magazine’s Indie Label chart. – The […]
Conductor Raymond Leppard, 92
He was part of a generation of musicians who, aided by the burgeoning recording industry, helped revive Baroque music in concert halls after World War II. That group included Nikolaus Harnoncourt of Austria and Neville Marriner of Britain. – The New York Times
How Unionizing Has Helped Hollywood Assistants
“The recent outcry online over the low wages, high stress and professional instability that assistants face — given a voice through the hashtag #PayUpHollywood — has served to highlight the significance of writers’ assistants and script coordinators’ successful unionization efforts.” – Variety
The Oscars Have Become More Politicized. More Troubled
“The Academy’s response to any criticism no matter how facile or valid—including accusations of radical leftism, elitism, racism, sexism, and general mustiness—has been to make vague, grand mission statements while frantically ushering some younger, less white, and less male Academy members into the ranks. The result has been generally non-transformative.” – The Daily Beast
A Frightening History Of America’s Theatre Fires
William Paul Gerhard, an engineer with the British Fire Prevention Committee, stated in a report that by May 1897 there had been 1,115 recorded theater fires in Europe and America (since records had been kept); there were 460 theater fires across America and Europe just from 1800 to 1877. Gerhard claimed that the average life […]
The Goofy Appeal Of Renaissance Faires
“Part of the appeal is the sheer human spectacle provided by costumed attendees (or playtrons, in Renfaire-ese). Though the village is ostensibly set in the 16th century, it most accurately represents an era that might be called the Age of Ribaldry.” – CityLab
Meet The Newest Head Writer At ‘Jeopardy!’
Way back in the ’90s, Michele Loud applied to be a researcher for the show just a few weeks after she flunked the test to be a contestant; a year later, out of the blue, they called her in. Twenty-six years on, she’s now one of two staffers running the writers’ room. Here she explains […]
Why We’re Attracted To Things That Creep Us Out
“There are different types of creepiness, and the array of things that creep us out ranges from dolls that are too lifelike to clowns in places where clowns should not be… The basic premise is that those who in some way fall outside of the norm put us on our guard because they are unpredictable, […]
‘Angels’ In East Texas: How Tony Kushner’s Play Tore Apart, And Then Changed, A Small Southern Town
In 1999, a small college in Kilgore, TX — in an area where, at the time, gay men were routinely beaten and sometimes murdered — staged Angels in America, angry protests from local fundamentalists led to a showdown that attracted national media attention. Wes Ferguson, who edited the college paper at the time and whose […]
The (Click)bait And Switch Of Modern Curiosity
“It’s that disconnect between long- and short-term interests that makes frothy articles so frustrating. The feeling of curiosity promised you’d learn something and, admittedly, you did — now you know French citizens’ favorite macaron flavor — but you’re disappointed because your new knowledge doesn’t contribute to your long-term interests. You’ve been clickbaited by your own […]
Viengsay Valdés Steps Into Alicia Alonso’s Formidable Shoes At National Ballet Of Cuba
Her dancers, she tells Marina Harss, “are very excited. I want to give them confidence, a sense of security and, above all, justice. I think there are dancers who haven’t had an opportunity to prove themselves. … They’re so young, so impatient, and if you don’t motivate them, they lose their drive. You have to […]
111 New Plays Are Premiering In America’s Bigger Theatres This Year. Here’s A Statistical Analysis
Who is being produced on our stages? What kinds of characters are appearing on our stages? And what do these plays look like in terms of form and thematic content? – Howlround
Huang Yong Ping, One Of China’s Most Daring Modern Artists, Dead At 65
“In his sly installations and sculptural work, Huang often melded techniques derived from the history of Chinese art and international avant-garde movements alike. His ability to deftly combine seemingly opposed methods of art-making made him one of the foremost artists in an emergent group of Chinese artists during the late 1980s … [and] allowed him […]
Why Should Anyone Be Upset That The Booker Prize Chose Two Winners?
“If the judges felt that they needed the world to know about these two novels, shouldn’t that be a cause for celebration? It seems to me that the work of these two fine writers is being overlooked as commentators express their disappointment that there wasn’t a knock-out in the final round. Do we really long […]
How Condé Nast (Who Was A Real Person) Invented The Glossy Magazine
“The equation of upscale readers and upscale brands with profit, projecting an aspirational image of the ideal consumer through both editorial and ads so that vulnerable readers would chase it, made Nast’s fortune many times over. His company established the template of the editor as a heroic, godlike figure casting down commandments from a print […]
This Cathedral Is Building Itself A Separate Caravaggio/Rubens Wing
Next year, St. John’s Co-Cathedral in the Maltese capital, Valletta, will open a €4 million annex as a home for Caravaggio’s 1607 St. Jerome Writing and the world’s largest complete set of tapestries, which is based on a 29-piece original by Rubens depicting scenes from the life of Christ. – The Art Newspaper
Managers Of Paris’s New Concert Hall Try To Fine Its Architect €170 Million, And Architect Counter-Sues
In 2006, when plans for the Philharmonie de Paris were announced, the venue, with a flashy, futuristic design by starchitect Jean Nouvel, was supposed to open in 2013 at a cost of €173 million. By the time it actually opened in 2015, the building’s cost was €386 million. So authorities sent the architect a bill […]
Leonardo Da Vinci’s Design For The World’s Longest Bridge Would Have Worked, Say MIT Scientists
In 1502, Leonardo submitted to the Ottoman sultan a design for a bridge over the Golden Horn in Istanbul that would have been, at the time, by far the world’s longest, and tall enough for ships to pass underneath. The skeptical sultan rejected Leonardo’s plan, but a team at MIT has modeled it out and […]
While Many Arts Institutions Are Giving Up Oil Money, This Major Music Festival Is Raking It In
At this past summer’s Salzburg Festival, director Peter Sellars turned Mozart’s opera Idomeneo into a warning about climate change. Not even three months later, the Festival announced a big sponsorship deal with Russian fossil fuel colossus Gazprom and Austrian oil firm OMV. – The New York Times
Australia Changes The Way It Funds Major Performing Arts Companies
“A meeting of Australia’s arts and cultural ministers in Adelaide … has seen a major overhaul of the way the Major Performing Arts sector is funded through the Australia Council for the Arts, and contemporary circus company Circa – whose Artistic Director Yaron Lifschitz once described the system as a ‘protectorate of the privileged’ – […]
Stella Abrera To Retire From ABT
“Ms. Abrera, 41, joined Ballet Theater in 1996. Five years later she was promoted from the corps de ballet to the rank of soloist. A serious injury in 2008 made further advancement difficult, but she fought her way back to health and was made a principal dancer in 2015. Ms. Abrera, who was promoted on […]
Liberating Stereotypes Of Indigenous Americans From Children’s Tales
“From the dull art of crafting Thanksgiving turkeys out of handprints to the bad politics of making headdresses out of turkey feathers, the point of contact between Indians and non-Indians begins and ends (for the most part) in grade school. It could be said that the primary place where Natives continue to exist for most […]
US Army To Create New “Monuments Men” Unit To Try To Save Artifacts
The Army is forming a new unit with a similar mandate to be composed of commissioned officers of the Army Reserves who are museum directors or curators, archivists, conservators and archaeologists in addition to new recruits with those qualifications. They will be based at the Army Civil Affairs and Psychological Operations Command at Fort Bragg, […]
San Francisco To Make Its Busiest Street Car-Free
“It can’t be overlooked that San Francisco has some heavyweight car-free peers. Once, pedestrianized urban cores were largely the domain of enlightened mid-sized cities in northern Europe. But now Paris and Barcelona have expanded the concept, and Toronto is mulling a car blockade for multiple downtown corridors. London charges a pricy fee for vehicles entering […]
Orange County’s Segerstrom Center Gets A New Leader
He’s Casy Reitz, currently executive director of New York’s Second Stage. “Before taking the position at the Second Stage Theater in September of 2010, Reitz was director of development at the Public Theater and director of individual giving at Manhattan Theatre Club. He holds a master’s in fine arts in theater management from Yale School […]