AJBlogs

Colin Asher, author of the critically acclaimed biography of Nelson Algren "Never a Lovely So Real," now focuses on five emblematic figures — Huddle Ledbetter, Elmo Hope, Johnny Cash, Ike White, and Tupac Shakur — as he explores the influence of incarceration on blues artists, jazz musicians, country singers, rock'n'rollers,

Their faces are so familiar there is no need to name them.

I’ve always been skeptical of the idea that simply engaging with a lot of narrative fiction will make people more ethical, or more generally empathetic (which is not the same thing), or will increase the depth of their political understanding. There isn’t any evidence for it, and too many counter-examples

The threat isn't that AI replaces artists. It's subtler and more coercive: that an algorithmically saturated environment erodes the capacity for the kind of thinking that we like to think art requires. Tolerance for ambiguity. Patience with difficulty. The willingness to be bored before a breakthrough.

Anna Weber, General Manager for Artistic and Operations at Carnegie Hall, shares the depth of their festival programming and focus on collaborative partnerships.

Boston’s “Arts Fuse” today carries my thoughts on “Furtwängler in Wartime” occasioned by Ian Buruma’s new book “Stay Alive.”  Excerpts follow. You can read the whole thing here. One learns from Ian Buruma’s Stay Alive: Berlin 1939-45 – an absorbing study of what it was like to live in the German

What a grift. It only exists to make folks feel worthless, angry, and divisive. As such, it’s the perfect tactic to sow national unrest.

You have to go behind the billboards to understand what's happening in America. So said the novelist Nelson Algren, who was as sharp a social critic of the culture as H.L. Mencken ever was. Seems to me that the British author A. Robert Lee would agree Algren. But Lee has

The current Boston “Arts Fuse” carries my thoughts about the pertinence today of Henry Higginson, who invented, owned, and operated the Boston Symphony until 1919. You can access the full article here. Excerpts follow: About a dozen years ago I was invited, impromptu, to address a gifted youth orchestra at

That Chopin’s 24 Preludes are commonly performed as a set makes sense. They are individually short and concise, they vary greatly in mood and texture, they suggest a trajectory beginning with a clearing of the throat and ending with a firestorm. That Chopin’s waltzes are not commonly performed as a

Old systems of certification are failing from every direction: technological, legal, institutional and political. So what's left when you can't just say "trust us"? You have to show your work and construct a context, making the case not by institutional credential but by demonstration.

His mouth is too big, and his conscience . . . well . . . he doesn't have one.

John Milbauer, Dean of DePaul University’s School of Music, shares the three things he learned in policy school that he wished he learned in music school.

Conrad L. Osborne’s detailed assessment of the new Met “Tristan und Isolde,” a definitive critique of Yuvan Sharon’s obtrusive production, is compulsive reading for all remaining Wagnerites. Even more distressing than this version’s shortcomings is the acclaim it has received and the influence it may exert on opinion and practice.

Here’s another reason for nonprofit arts organizations to make that scene change toward charitable activities.