AJ Four Ways:
Text Only (by date) | headlines only
- Oracle Pays $10 Million for Nashville Symphony’s Season
Good Morning,
Oracle is giving the Nashville Symphony $10 million, reinstating a season the orchestra cancelled a week earlier and ending furloughs of 77 musicians and 27 staff that were to begin Oct. 18 (The New York Times). Music director Leonard Slatkin, who had just conducted three sold-out concerts, was as surprised as anyone.
Adults and teens are now 40 percent of Build-A-Bear’s customers, and its stock rose more than 2,000 percent between 2020 and 2025 (The New Yorker). The NHL is courting a different crowd with 60-to-90-second romance-novel teasers about players like the Flyers’ Trevor Zegras. Emily Rath, a best-selling hockey romance novelist the league approached, says she never turned down an offer so fast (Wired).
At the South Sound Powwow in Graham, Washington, Shawn Reynolds, a Puyallup Tribe member, persuaded organizers to hold a dance where participants could skip regalia, keep headphones on and bring caregivers. His 11-year-old autistic twin sons led the procession (OPB).
In 1926 Edison told the New York Times that radio was a fad and the phonograph would win listeners back. The BBC began broadcasting the Proms the next year, when the festival’s finances were threatening its survival (Classical Music). They’ve going ever since.
All of our stories below.
- Oracle Gives $10M To Help Save The Nashville Symphony
The gift will allow the symphony to resume the season, which runs through June 2027, and to retain staff, Mark Tillinger, Nashville Symphony’s president and chief executive, said in a news release on Sunday. – The New York Times
- Why More Adults Are Playing With Kids Toys
“People just stay very playful for a longer period of time. And it’s cross-brand. You know, it might be Teddy bears. It might be Lego bricks. It might be Transformers. It might be Barbie dolls.” – The New Yorker
- Will We Still Need Punctuation When Machines Are Writing?
What are those commas doing there, anyway? By modern usage, they should mark off a non-restrictive clause, but they don’t. Nor are they marking items in a series or natural pauses in speech. – The New Yorker
- Musical Instruments Are Getting More Expensive
The consequences have reverberated across the country. Higher instrument prices are a particular threat to lower-income districts where enrollment and budgets are shrinking. – The New York Times
- The NFL Is Trying To Woo New Fans With Its Own Romance Writing
That is … not going well (though romance readers are still gaga for M/M, W/W, and M/W hockey tales from more traditional channels). Fans “see the stories as cheap pandering that fails to engage with female and LGBTQ hockey fans’ concerns about homophobia and toxic masculinity in the sport.” – Wired
- Can A Movie Make A Global Difference?
“In the coming weeks, NAZA will continue its rollout to theaters across the U.S., and this week it hit No. 1 at the Italian box office, surpassing Avengers: Endgame.” – Vulture
- If You Can’t Hold It, You Don’t Own It
Physical media are really making a comeback in the era of streaming services removing series and movies at (seemingly) random, book censorship, and AI music. – The Guardian (UK)
- Authoritarian Politics Are Threatening Culture Worldwide
In addition to established understandings of intrinsic esthetic and historic values of heritage, new emphasis on development reconceptualizes heritage as a resource that can generate economic development, tourism, employment and social cohesion. – The Conversation
- What, Exactly, Is Literary Substack?
As Substack has become a more respectable platform and mainstream academics have begun to join in some numbers, they have encountered a strange simulacrum of fields they thought they knew intimately. Cultural and symbolic capital seem to work differently here. – Paroxysms
- Smithsonian Is Using AI To Help Interpret Its Collection
The goal is to allow the public and scholars to both search the institution’s collection and draw connections across the Smithsonian and other organizations, such as the Library of Congress, to gain a deeper sense of how communities formed and functioned at the nation’s birth. – AP News
- How Ravinia Reconfigured Itself
The pavilion reopened partway through the 2026 summer season after two seasons of design and construction, then quickly began demonstrating its newfound flexibility. – Architect Magazine
- How AI Might Help Humanize Museums
In addition to museum workers, of course, the public and artists are already using AI, which means that AI is already affecting any museum’s digital strategy, ability to attract visitors, understanding of the ever-changing art world, and capacity to fulfill its mission. Avoidance is not an option. – ReMuseum
- Christopher Jackson Makes A Return To ‘Hamilton’ As An Older, Wiser Washington
But Hamilton plays differently now. “The show was written in a time where hope was what we were striving for, holding on to, and the pandemic did a lot to diminish that and exhaust people and scare people.” – The New York Times
- Philadelphia’s Beloved Academy Of Sciences Almost Made It To 200
“When they announced the one month notice it was a surprise for everybody. … It’s like the leadership didn’t even try to keep it open, and that’s why there’s a lot of frustration around what’s happening. It’s just not right.” – NPR
- The Radio Wasn’t A Live Music Killer
Instead, it brought classical music to much wider audiences, especially during and just after WWII. – Classical Music (BBC)
- Protesters In Culver City Demand That Media Companies Commit To Democracy
“Spotlighting Sony Pictures Studios, Apple, Pinterest and Amazon MGM Studios, all with local offices, protesters demanded that the companies sign on to the ‘Business for Democracy Pledge’ ahead of the elections in November.” – Los Angeles Times (Yahoo)
- Peppino Mazzullo, The Voice And Soul Of Puppet Topo Gigio, Has Died At 100
Mazzullo was “an Italian actor who for more than 40 years provided the endearing voice of the floppy-eared mouse puppet Topo Gigio, a TV character beloved by children all over the world,” not to mention by Ed Sullivan. – The New York Times
- Sadly, It’s Rational For Musicians To Fear, And Worry About, The Music Biz
For Liz Harris, “an elevated digital profile comes with a range of new concerns – like fake remixes and songs posted with the same titles as hers by bad actors trying to skim whatever royalties they can.” – The Guardian (UK)
- Why The Back Of The House Shouldn’t Choose The Dining Music
Screamo isn’t it. “Music can manipulate consumer moods. It’s why soothing, well-known songs for the local demo play in the grocery store (so you feel comfortable and familiar), why fancy restaurants play jazz, classical, or piano music (to create a sense of elevated place, influencing a higher spend).” – Ravenous
- Los Angeles’ Mayoral Frontrunner Promised To Be A ‘Relentless Advocate’ For Hollywood
“Nithya Raman comes by her Hollywood bona fides honestly. Her husband, after all, is Vali Chandrasekaran, writer on Modern Family, 30 Rock and other TV hits.” – The Hollywood Reporter
- After Years Of Renovation And Work, A Maryland Theatre Is Reborn
“Theater is so hard to do for so many reasons,” says one actor in the renovated Olney Theatre. He’s pleased “to see an actual new facility come up out of the ground, and to see talent and audience members come into this space and relish in the experience.” – Washington Post
- Gillian Anderson, Doing Theatre, Asks Her Superfans To Get Out Of The Front Row
She was laughing, but the X-Files (and current Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf) star told her fans, “It’s so distracting. You can’t come 20 times and sit in the front row, it’s driving me mad.” – The Telegraph (Yahoo)
- Freaked Out About Artificial Intelligence?
Look to Kant. – Aeon
- Powwow Dances Aren’t Always Very Accessible
One man is trying to change that. ”You can come down with your blankets, your tablets, your headphones. You don’t have to be in regalia. You can have your caregivers with you. You can have your parents with you, a support person or persons.” – OPB
- NPR Goes Back In Time To Talk To A Younger Steve Reich
As the composer turns 90, Fresh Air mines the archives – and it’s worth a listen. “I don’t work as a scientist. That’s not an intellectual – it’s not an emotionally rewarding way to work. I was just following my intuition, just following my nose, so to speak.” – NPR
- In Censor-Happy Texas, School Librarians And Teachers Are Afraid To Discuss Books
“When you put your finger on every single book in order to type it into a spreadsheet, you really do think, ‘Am I willing to lose my job over this particular book?’ … I think that is a real concern for teachers around the state.” – The 74
- Nashville Symphony’s Musicians ‘Blindsided’ By The Cancellations And Furloughs
Violinist Dawn Gingrich: “We have new hires this season who upended their lives and moved to Nashville at the end of August … gave up prestigious fellowships and positions with other orchestras because they believed that the work here was secure.” – The Tennessean (Yahoo)
- Anton Seidl and the Lost Promise of American Classical Music
- Digital Lists Are Destroying The Fabric Of Society
“The issue goes deeper than presents. I have four kids from elementary to high-school age, and as hard as I try to expose them to life’s realities, they remain sheltered from disappointment and dissatisfaction at every turn.” – Slate
- The British Museum Adds An Audio Tour To The Bayeux Tapestry in Response To Blind Man’s Lawsuit
The museum apparently hadn’t thought of adding an audio description to its app, or having more audio description tours, before the lawsuit – despite saying they worked with specialists on accessibility. – BBC
- We’re In A Gross ‘Great Man’ Statuary Backlash, But Look At Ancient Egypt
“The great public efforts—the colossal statuary, the expansive propaganda programs, the image campaigns, the attempts to remake the world of living people—have been shattered, defaced, and refaced.” – The Atlantic
- The Joys Of Music Discovery Don’t Include Robots
With AI-generated “music,” “It’s not just the lack of discovery. … It’s more about the lack of anything personal behind the music. No history, no struggle, no catharsis, no exploration, no humanity. I listen to music because it’s flawed, raw and human.” – Salon
- Turning Millennial Nostalgia For Raves Into A Big Business
But this one’s for the real kids (of Millennials and older Gen-Zers): “We wanted to get the baby into the rave scene,” says one set of parents. – NPR
- As A New Show Opens, It’s Past Time To Reevaluate Our Reactions To Lee Krasner’s Work
“Her response to life with a mean and desperate drunk was to cannibalize her old canvases and explode into the pugnacious scale, audacious color, and thrusting verticles of collages.” – The New York Times
