Source Author
Stoppard Never Got the Nobel Prize for Literature
Which is remarkable, except that neither did many writers of the highest esteem. Was he considered for it? You'd certainly think so, given his record of achievement.
Curtis Stewart shares the complexity of his creative process
Curtis Stewart, Composer-in-Residence of the Sphinx Virtuosi & Artistic Director of the American Composers Orchestra, shares the complexity of his artistic process of creation.
Jordana Leigh shares the unique importance of the San Juan Hill Festival
Jordana Leigh, Vice-President of Artistic Programming at Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts, shares the historic significance of their San Juan Hill Festival and the impact of their artist-centered initiatives.
Kaneza Schaal talks about the America 250 season at Detroit Opera
Kaneza Schaal, Theater & Opera Artist & Director, talks about the extraordinary upcoming America at 250 season at Detroit Opera and its impact for audiences and community.
Tomoko Fujita shares how the Cali Pathways Project transforms lives
Tomoko Fujita, Coordinator of the Cali Pathways Project & Assistant Professor at the Cali School of Music at Montclair State University, shares the Pathways structure they utilize to transform lives.
Kennedy Center audiences vote with their feet. What happens next?
Kennedy Center subscription sales are in free fall. How much danger does that put the Center in?
Michelle Wu
Michelle Wu was a musician, a pianist, before she was a politician—and she remains a musician today. You might have heard her play George Gershwin’s Rhapsody in Blue across the street at Symphony Hall with the Boston Pops, or music by Mozart with the Boston Symphony.
Pro-Social Parents Sing More to Their Infants and, By Doing So, Contribute to Greater...
Plenty of studies, some of them published by the Arts Endowment, have shown how arts participation in early childhood appears to awaken greater social skills and behaviors at a crucial stage of development. It’s no surprise, especially among infants and toddlers, that most arts activities involve a parent or caregiver. It
Heroes & Zeroes: Why DOGE Shouldn’t Fund Trump’s Redundant Sculpture Garden UPDATED
UPDATE: Mary Anne Carter, whom I identified (in this post, below) as Senior Advisor to the National Endowment for the Arts, has since been nominated by President Trump to resume her previous position as NEA’s chairman (as reported by Zachary Small of the NY Times.). Where’s Elon Musk, the DOGE
Celebrating 100 Episodes of Call Time
Last Thursday’s episode of Call Time with Katie Birenboim, featuring actor and choreographer Aigner Mizzelle, marked the 100th episode of the show — in some form or another. Longtime listeners, friends, or fans might remember that a different version of Call Time, then known as “Theatre Book Club,” started under
Across North America, 29 “Jazz Heroes”
Twenty-five years ago the Jazz Journalists Association began to identify and celebrate activists, advocates, altruists, aiders and abettors of jazz as members of an “A Team,” soon renamed “Jazz Heroes.” Today the JJA announced its 2025 slate of these Heroes, 29 people across North America who put extraordinary efforts into
Revisiting Dublin through an Arts Research Blog Post
In deference to St. Patrick’s Day, I’m reposting an entry from ten years ago. Titled “Yeats and the Economics of Creativity,” it originally ran on the Arts Endowment website on May 7, 2025. Last month, at the invitation of the U.S. Embassy in Dublin, I took part in a conference
Shake It Up: The Benefits of Free-Form Dance May Rival Those of Other Forms...
When we talk about the arts and DIY, we commonly refer to craft activities or teaching oneself how to play a musical instrument. But what could be more DIY than free-form dancing? The adjective says it all. Free-form, freestyle, or free dance is a series of unstructured, personally directed movements
“Trump”-l’Oeil & “Entrumpy”: Museums’ Re-envisioned Missions Under a Capricious Ruler
Call it entrumpy—a “gradual decline into disorder” (riffing on “entropy”), attributable to the unpredictability of our unprecedented President. Exploiting his “new” (more accurately: “renewed”) position on the White House bully-pulpit, Donald Trump has impelled U.S. museum heads to change their acronymic imperatives from DEI (Diversity Equity Inclusion) to DWI—Directing While
Learning out loud during sabbatical
As I start a semester-long sabbatical from teaching to think and write, I'm revisiting/repurposing this platform as a field guide for that journey.
Getty Center Under Mandatory Evacuation Order As Fires Get Frighteningly Close
This is all I could get from the Getty’s press office when I asked at 2:50 p.m. ET about what I’d been reading elsewhere regarding the approaching fires: Getty is complying with the current evacuation order and is closed with only emergency staff on site. There is no damage to
UFOs, Nazis, God…this is DPS’s alt best-of-the-year list
Fear of missing out on cultural turning points is a significant New York preoccupation. My own incessant curiosity takes me to small urban churches, inside security zones requiring a QR code (such as the Columbia University campus) and – as of the early hours of 2025 – to a 3 am
Russell Sherman (1930-2023)
At a memorial event in Jordan Hall in Boston on September 29, 2024, these were my remarks: This concert hall, this space, the vibrating air in here, the music that’s been heard, those sounds. The piano playing done on this stage… In 1907, Ferruccio Busoni played the piano right about
Introducing The Jazz Omnibus
I’m proud of my two published books (Miles Ornette Cecil – Jazz Beyond Jazz and Future Jazz) and my unpublished ones, too; the two iterations of the encyclopedia of jazz and blues; I edited, and my collaborations with some musicians creating their own books — but right now I’m crazy
Broadway Melody: Jack Viertel’s Love Letter to Broadway, New York, and the Great, American...
I was so pleased to get back to Call Time after some time off (for both work and pleasure) and to get to come back to it with the amazing Jack Viertel. As some of you might know, Jack was one of my original guests on Call Time when it
Lincoln Center’s new-ish Festival Orchestra is cheered by audiences – upstairs and down –...
The program was not a crowd pleaser. But the crowd seemed open to whatever they were given at this closing Aug. 10 concert of the Festival Orchestra of Lincoln Center’s summer season. From a distance, the program looked a lot like a particularly wide-reaching New York Philharmonic subscription concert, but
Tanglewood: Idyllic to the eye, radical to the ear
So much stimulating, challenging music threatened to overflow and overload the Tanglewood Music Festival’s annual composer’s week that one had to stand back and realize how radically this bucolic setting in Lenox, MA diverges from the typical summertime concert life of major orchestras. The closest thing to recreational listening over
Eric Cornell, and a New Generation of Commercial Producers
Katie checks in with commercial theatre producer Eric Cornell, and they discuss transparency and multi-hyphenates in the theatre industry.
A New “Golden Age” Off-Broadway: Where Less Is More
About a month ago, Michael Paulson wrote an article for The Times about an unexpected “bright spot” in the American theatre landscape. “Broadway is struggling through a postpandemic funk, squeezed between higher production costs and lower audience numbers just as a bevy of new shows set sail into those fierce headwinds,” Paulson
