When William Jennings Bryan died, in 1925, H.L. Mencken wrote the most devastating obituary of an American politician you'll ever read—and that includes Hunter S. Thompson's farewell to Nixon. All you need to do is substitute "Trump" for "Bryan" to see how snug the fit will be when Trump takes his permanent leave.
Classical music pundits have no shortage of ideas for saving classical music. More social media, cheaper tickets, shorter concerts, more contemporary repertoire, young musicians on Instagram, concerts in bars, movie scores, video game scores, new donor programs, new audience initiatives, new branding. Some of these are good ideas and a few of them demonstrably work.
My concern is that we...
She was Bob Dylan's first manager in Greenwich Village and became a social activist. He was once a critic and became an avant-garde literary artist. Their story is told in a documentary short film by Alex Bijan Zandi.
Vince Paul, President & Artistic Director of Music Hall Center for the Performing Arts, talks about building facilities and strong connections with community.
A year ago James Marriott had a Substack post on “the dawn of the post-literate society” that as I write has over 21,000 likes and 6,000 restacks: clearly something that struck a chord. And now we have a book length treatment of the issue, though a short book – put your phone away and you can read it in...
Adam Schumaker, Director of Education at The Gilmore, talks about the impact of their $300,000 prizes along with role of The Gilmore Fellowship in the field.
A flood of books, music and images is overwhelming creative markets. Some of it is democratization of tools. Some of it is pure AI. Is this a crisis or an opportunity?
This has been all over the papers, so I’ll only give a brief synopsis: Ed Sheeran is on a US stadium tour, and has Macklemore as an opening act. Macklemore makes statements about Israel-Palestine on stage. A forthcoming stadium gig, at Robert Kraft’s Gillette Stadium in Massachusetts, is cancelled owing to Macklemore’s remarks, and other stadium owners follow suit....
https://youtube.com/watch?v=oi1zTIVpwKE&version=3&rel=1&showsearch=0&showinfo=1&iv_load_policy=1&fs=1&hl=en-US&autohide=2&wmode=transparent The current issue of “The New York Review of Books” includes my essay on state of American orchestras
