AJ Four Ways:
Full View (by category) | Text Only (by date) | Text (by category) | headlines only
How The Rossini Renaissance Sparked From A Beachfront Festival To The World
The Rossini Festival in Pesaro, Italy, may never be a Salzburg, but it sure changed Rossini’s reputation. Most of the composer’s “operas were long dormant. For much of the 20th century, Rossini had become a one-opera composer, known solely for his comedy The Barber of Seville.” Then the Pesaro festival ramped up, pursuing “the scholarly rediscovery of even Rossini’s most obscure compositions, together with a dedication to teaching the magnificent fireworks of Rossinian style.” – The New York Times
Guess Who Just Got Into Podcasting?
The company that’s into just about everything else (well, not that company, the one that just announced a huge slate of movies and TV show for its new streaming service, but a different big company): Netflix. The company’s line about podcasts: “We are always looking for different ways to engage with people. … We’re talking a lot with our documentary team about what opportunities are out there.” (Shocker: True crime is doing well for Netflix.) – Variety
Kicking The Sophomore Curse To The Curb, By Taking Eight Years To Publish A Second Novel
Téa Obreht took her time after The Tiger’s Wife struck the bestseller list and stayed for many, many months. She says, “It was appropriate to let the wrong books go and wait for the right one to come along.” – The New York Times
Apple Hired Hundreds Of Contractors To Listen To Siri Recordings – And Has Now Laid Them Off
This is how the recently revealed program worked in Ireland: “Fixed-term workers in Cork were hired to listen to and ‘grade’ Siri recordings. …Staff then transcribed and ‘graded’ these recordings based on a number of different factors.” Now those contractors – around 300 people – have been laid off by Apple. – The Irish Examiner
Spotify Sued For Doing Things Like Putting Eminem Under An ‘Unknown Author’ Level
Yes, that little-known songwriter Eminem … er. But it’s actually far bigger than the potential millions or billions Eight Mile Style claims Spotify owes. “Eminem’s publisher is doing more than merely questioning Spotify’s compliance with copyright law. The lawsuit also makes a pretty bold argument regarding a new law’s constitutionality.” – The Hollywood Reporter
What Is The Legal Difference Between An ‘Audiobook Caption’ And, Well, A Book?
Audible – the Amazon-owned audiobook giant – is being sued by the big 5 publishers. Why? A new feature that automatically generates “captions” for its audiobooks. Captions that … well, one might be forgiven for thinking we already have “captions” for books, which are books. The argument: “Audible didn’t seek a license, doesn’t plan to compensate publishers and won’t allow them to decide which titles are made available as so-called distributed text. [The lawyer] also says Audible’s Immersion Reading feature, which requires a user to purchase both the audiobook and eBook, meets the goal of Captions without infringing publishers’ rights.” – Wired
Dear Good Morning America: Ballet Is For Boys
When host Lara Spencer of Good Morning America decided to go after Price George (of the UK) for his 6-year-old studies, she made especial fun of his ballet studies. And her apology Instagram post didn’t go well either. “The dancer Barton Cowperthwaite said in a comment: ‘No one wants to see a hiking picture from deep in your photo library. We want to see you make an apology, on air, for publicly dragging a child and an entire art form through the mud.'” (This rather ugly episode has spawned a hashtag: #ballet4boys) – The New York Times
A Class War In Cornwall Gives Rise To A Dark Movie
Like a lot of coastal areas in a whole lot of countries, Cornwall isn’t all sweetness and ocean and light. There’s a “tension between tradition and progress,” and 20 years ago, a filmmaker wanted to write about a civil war – but now, it’s less civil war than “a question of who gets to belong in a county defined as much by its poverty as by tourists and second-home owners.” – The Guardian (UK)
Getting The Cultural Details Right
When it came to making the new Dora the Explorer movie, the production company worked hard to get things right for indigenous representation. Did it pay off? “Live-action still-pan-Latina Dora, who also speaks Quechua, was created with the help of a consultant to help ensure that the indigenous language and elements were accurate.” (And the lead actor recorded and re-recorded her lines in Quechua to make sure they were correct.) – The New York Times
Women At Edinburgh Fringe This Year Report That Sexual Harassment Was Common
The reports are to the BBC and other media, and to an actors’ union as well, but not to police. A lot of the harassment takes place on the Royal Mile as women flyer for their or their companies’ shows. And this is just disgusting on the reviewers’ part: “Another woman said many like her felt pressured into putting up with the unacceptable behaviour of show reviewers – who can make a great difference in getting more people to watch their performances.” – BBC
Faculty – Arts Administration
Butler University’s Jordan College of the Arts (JCA) invites applications for a full-time, 9-month faculty position in the Department of Arts Administration beginning August 2020.
POSITION: Butler University’s Jordan College of the Arts (JCA) invites applications for a full-time, 9-month faculty position in the Department of Arts Administration beginning August 2020. Depending on the candidate’s interests regarding service and research, the position will either be a tenure-track position or a three-year renewable contract.
RESPONSIBILITIES: Responsibilities include 18-24 units of undergraduate classroom instruction per year, including introductory level and upper-division courses; advising and mentoring arts administration students; participation in service to the department, college, and University; continued research/creative/service work in the field; and contributing to building an inclusive learning environment for an increasingly diverse student population.
QUALIFICATIONS: Required qualifications include:
- A terminal degree and professional experience in a relevant field
- Significant work in the field of Arts Administration and/or specific arts disciplines
- College-level teaching experience preferred
- A willingness and desire to collaborate within the department, Jordan College of the Arts, throughout the university, and the greater community.
Candidates with teaching or professional experience in fundraising, finance, special event planning and execution, social justice and diversity, and/or museums are especially welcome. As the program looks to grow, desirable candidates may also have experience and a willingness to teach courses in graduate or certificate programs and have broad national arts/culture contacts. Butler University, and especially the Department of Arts Administration, are focused on serving the whole student and as such, looks for candidates who are dedicated to advising students beyond their curricular needs. The Department of Arts Administration fosters strong connections between faculty, staff, and students and seeks candidates who embody this ideal.
APPLICATION: Those interested in applying should submit a cover letter, curriculum vitae, statement of teaching philosophy, and contact information for three (3) professional references. The requested information should be submitted in a single PDF document to aaldridg@butler.edu. Application review will begin September 15 and continue until the position is filled.
Butler University’s Department of Arts Administration is one of the first comprehensive undergraduate arts administration programs in the country. The department awards Bachelor of Science degrees in Arts Administration with concentrations in either dance, music, theatre, art, or general/multi-arts; there are currently 90 majors. This JCA program is fully integrated into the University’s liberal arts curriculum, and arts administration students are required to be personally involved in multiple art forms. The undergraduate arts administration program focuses on preparing students for careers working with a wide variety of artists and nonprofit arts organizations. Students are given opportunities to learn and develop skills through experiential learning, internships, and special projects with small and large arts organizations.
The Jordan College of the Arts at Butler University includes undergraduate programs in arts administration, art, dance, music, and theatre; a graduate program in music; and the Butler Community Arts School, an arts education program. Butler University is an institutional member of National Association of Schools of Dance, Music, and Theatre.
Founded in 1855 by abolitionist Ovid Butler, Butler University is a nationally recognized master’s comprehensive institution located in Indianapolis. The University’s six colleges offer more than 65 undergraduate areas of study, 8 pre-professional programs, and 19 graduate programs to a student body of approximately 4,700. The student-to-faculty ratio at Butler is 11:1 and the average undergraduate class size is 20. The University supports over 44,000 active alumni living in all 50 states and nearly 80 countries worldwide.
Butler University is committed to enhancing the diversity of the student body and our faculty and staff. In addition hiring decisions are made on the basis of an individual’s qualifications, past experience, overall performance, and other employment-related criteria. Butler University provides equal opportunities for employment and advancement for all individuals, regardless of age, gender identity, sex, race, religion, color, disability, veteran status, sexual orientation, national origin, or any other legally protected category.
CEO Exit Interview: A Model That No Longer Works
Arti Prashar: “We operate in a climate where we have been asked to grow and grow, following a business model that just doesn’t work for the arts – of seeking bigger turnover and bigger and wider audiences. We need a mixed economy – always have, always will. I hear of many venues and organisations running huge deficits – how are they going to plug those holes?” – Arts Professional
UK Study: Businesses Are Not Investing In The Arts
Fewer than one-third of businesses do. “Most individuals surveyed by the funder wanted more cultural opportunities where they live (55%), but businesses were less enthusiastic: they prioritised other spending, felt local arts groups were “not business minded enough”, and didn’t see how investing in arts and culture would benefit them.” – Arts Professional
The Increasingly Oh-So-Complicated Politics Of The Politics Of Arts Organization Donors
“You don’t want to have either Fox or MSNBC after you. Those are huge distractions of the time of individual board members and senior management.” – The New York Times
Russian Literature And The Meaning Of Truth
“We usually assume that literature exists to depict life, but Russians often speak as if life exists to provide material for literature. Russians, of course, excel in ballet, chess, theater, and mathematics. They invented the periodic table and non-Euclidian geometry. Nevertheless, for Russians literature is in a class by itself. The very phrase “Russian literature” carries a sacramental aura.” – New Criterion
The New Streaming Reality Is Looking More And More Like The Bad Old Days Of TV
The rise of digital video is bringing back more than just bloated bundles and bills. Many companies are returning to TV’s original business model: selling you anything and everything but the television show in front of you. – The New York Times
How “Sesame Street” Revolutionized Teaching Using Music
Since its inception in 1969, the public television show has redefined what it means to teach children through TV, with music as its resounding voice. Before “Sesame Street,” it wasn’t even clear that you could do that; once the series began, as a radical experiment that joined educational research and social idealism with the lunacy of puppets and the buoyancy of advertising jingles, it proved that kids are very receptive to a grammar lesson wrapped in a song. – The New York Times
Conductor Leo Driehuys, 87 – He Built The Modern Charlotte Symphony
“He was a very strong face for the Charlotte Symphony, but he worked his butt off behind the scenes with the power players in Charlotte. He got people to realize that this was something important to put money into because it was good for the city.” – Charlotte Observer
The Joys Of Traveling From Small Town To Small Town Performing Shakespeare For High Schoolers For $225 A Week (A Reminiscence)
“As a recent graduate with a BFA in acting, I could have been stuck lip-synching to Buddy Holly at an amusement park or being cast as a Native American in a problematic outdoor drama in Chillicothe, Ohio. But here I was doing something respectable; noble, even.” Jeremy D. Larson recalls the three-hour load-ins for 8 a.m. shows. The flu passed from cast member to cast member when no one could sit out a show. The drink and drugs. The streaking. And the time they made the mistake of uttering the title of The Scottish Play out loud – The Outline
Fascinating Rights Issue: After Dispute, Taylor Swift Says She’ll Re-Record Her Early Albums
The singer reached an impass with her recording label, which owns masters of the original songs. So Swift says she’ll simply re-record them all so she has control. Travis Andrews untangles the copyright implications. – Washington Post
Comfort Reading: In Defense Of Returning To The Same Book Over And Over
Rebecca Jennings — who confesses to having read each of the Harry Potter books at least ten times and insists she’s “not advocating for laziness” — points to research on “repeated hedonic experiences” that explains why those repeated experiences are hedonic (that means pleasurable) and, in fact, good for you. – Vox
Cruising For Art – The Bizarro World Of Cruise Ship Art Auctions
One gimmick in particular stood out: A pair of works presented turned away from the audience, and sold as one lot, without any idea of what they looked like. “They are going to be two of the most gorgeous works of art that anyone has ever seen,” Borotescu promised the audience. “Once you turn it around, if it’s something you don’t like, you don’t have to keep it.” – artnet
Anish Kapoor’s ‘Orbit’ — AKA Boris Johnson’s Giant Erector-Set/Sliding Board — Is Millions In Debt
The 376-foot sculpture was commissioned by Johnson, then London’s Mayor, for the 2012 Olympics, and he had hoped that it would become London’s answer to the Eiffel Tower (7 million annual visitors) or the Statue of Liberty (over 4 million). But Orbit never even cracked the 200,000-visitor mark — not even after it was bailed out by tycoon Lakshmi Mittal (which is why it’s now named ArcelorMittal Orbit) and Johnson had Carsten Höller add a sliding tube for which admission is now £17.50 ($21). (Maybe that’s why visitorship is down more than 20% from its peak.) Total debt on the contraption is now £13 million ($15.7 million). – Artnet
UK Entertainment Unions Lament Decline In Arts Journalism
The letter states that recent job losses for arts critics at the Guardian and the Evening Standard highlight this issue. It goes on to quote figures from the List magazine that reveal the number of reviews in eight major national and arts titles dropped from 5,134 in 2012 to 3,169 in 2017. – The Stage
Inside India’s First-Ever Contemporary Sculpture Park
At the Madhavendra Palace, just outside Jaipur, “floral murals, elaborate arches, patterned columns, dark paneled doors, and stone-lined courtyards serve as maximal backdrops for sculptures — many of them site-specific — that simultaneously respond to the environment and introduce challenging new ideas into the space. Beauty and contemporary politics collide in room after room; visits to the palace become opulent treasure hunts.” – Artsy