The Theme of the 2019 Summit, which took place in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, was Mobile Minds: Culture, Knowledge and Change. And the panel on which I spoke was listed as a provocation called: Actors in Change. Below is a transcript of my remarks. – Diane Ragsdale

I’ve been away for a few weeks, but I don’t want you to miss notice of an excellent exhibition at the Kimbell Art Museum: The Lure of Dresden: Bellotto at the Court of Saxony, which runs until Apr. 28. – Judith H. Dobrzynski

Is it mere coincidence that First Lady Melania Trump tweeted a shoutout to the National Endowment for the Arts on the same day that her husband released a FY2020 budget proposal that would eliminate the NEA and NEH? – Lee Rosenbaum

Keith Patchel, a New York-based composer and producer, has created a free online/mobile application called Plinkout, which he is touting as “the easiest way to teach anyone,” especially kids, how to play an instrument as well as how to learn “the core cognitive ideas of music.” – Jan Herman

Silenced at LA MOCA last year, curator Helen Molesworth lets loose. – Lee Rosenbaum

Philipp Gerschlauer, David Fiuczunski: MikroJazz! (Rare Noise Records)
This exploratory venture is subtitled, “Neue Expressionistiche Music,” and the music is, indeed, expressionistic. Ears accustomed to conventional tuning may initially find the microtonal approach difficult to absorb. However, after a hearing or two the microtonality begins to move beyond exoticism, and a listener accepts that the Western equal-tempered scale does not have to be accepted as gospel. – Doug Ramsey

The Rinzai Zen master Ikkyū Sojun (1394-1481) was a poet, musician, artist, and rebel. He led a life of whoring and drinking. His poems — “often erotic, argumentative, contradictory, judgmental, self-doubting, and occasionally shaded with guilt” — are still as startling as the day they were written. – Jan Herman

Chucho Valdés, Jazz Batá 2 (Mack Avenue)
Valdés’s Jazz Batá was considered a departure into the avant-garde when he made it in 1972. Nearly half a century later, the follow-up finds him as adventurous as ever, heading a quartet that concentrates on mastery of the batá tradition of West Africa. – Doug Ramsey

Aaron Shulman’s collective biography of the Spanish Panero family, The Age of Disenchanments — just out from Ecco, an imprint of HarperCollins — has a cast of dramatic characters that is nothing less than stunning. – Jan Herman

Daniel Szabo, Visionary (Fuzzy Music)
Szabo’s work reflects influences of jazz, classical and modern European music. But more striking is that the music has coherence and — for lack of a more exact term — a distinct personality. – Doug Ramsey

I’ve found strikingly few resources available in any media about the craft, practice, and management of arts organizations in the live performing arts (beyond the usual-suspect books). So I’ve started a series of video interviews with performing arts professionals. First up is Pamela Tatge, who took the reins at Jacob’s Pillow Dance Festival in 2016. – Andrew Taylor

It’s not a real iguanodon tooth, I don’t think. Though in a story about how to interpret the material world and humanity’s place within it, identification is an unusually fraught subject. – David Jays

Dominic Miller: Absinthe (ECM)
Abetted by producer Manfred Eicher’s canny guidance and ECM’s flawless sound and studio presence, Miller draws on inspiration from painters of France’s impressionist period, delivering power and subtlety in equal measure. – Doug Ramsey

Stuart Murphy isn’t hiring consultants, just making immediate change at the English National Opera. – Greg Sandow

“We come to know the choreography’s codes, if not always certain what they conceal.” – Deborah Jowitt

The power and imagination in his composing and arranging have made Ed Partyka a major contributor to the European big band scene. The Ed Partyka Jazz Orchestra’s two most recent albums reflect a distinct musical personality and, often, his relaxed and refreshing approach to serious music. – Doug Ramsey

I began pondering issues related to community engagement almost 30 years ago. What has become clear to me is that the economic pressures faced by institutions presenting Eurocentric art forms are, throughout the world, forcing greater attention on spreading the reach of those arts. Community engagement is, to my mind, the best available means of doing so. – Doug Borwick

Dear SFMOMA and Sotheby’s: Have you no shame?
It’s bad enough for a museum to decide it no longer wants a work that it had specifically requested from its owner. It’s much worse when that owner is the artist himself. How will future potential donors regard such caprices? – Lee Rosenbaum

What museum director would choose to sell from his institution “an important work completed at the apex of Rothko’s artistic powers, … one of just 19 paintings completed by the artist in 1960” — a year that marked “a critical juncture in the iconic Abstract Expressionist’s career”? – Lee Rosenbaum

The obituaries for André Previn were respectful, even admiring, in a way that they wouldn’t have been had he died a quarter-century ago. It took a very long time for Previn to be fully accepted by the classical-music establishment, … – Terry Teachout

One of Canada’s finest musicians, guitarist Ed Bickert, died on Thursday at 86. He was quiet and reserved, but the rich harmonies in Bickert’s playing captivated listeners and fellow musicians alike. – Doug Ramsey

Here is a piece from the 1975 Paul Desmond Quartet album Live, recorded at Bourbon Street in Toronto in 1975. – Doug Ramsey

Has any artistic movement since been as all-encompassing as the counterculture of the 1960s? – Jan Herman

In interviews, I found Previn bemused by the difficulty that critics, and sometimes his fellow musicians, encountered when they tried to strike a balance in considering his variegated musical personas.
Gitler was an invaluable chronicler of the crucial years when jazz made the transition from the swing era into bebop and a model of clarity. – Doug Ramsey

Bill Mays Trio Live At COTA
Pianist Mays recently reassembled his trio for a concert and their first CD release in more than ten years. Mays, bassist Martin Wind and drummer Matt Wilson came together in a live performance at last Fall’s COTA (Celebration Of The Arts) festival in the Poconos. – Doug Ramsey

Ned Bennett’s galvanic production for English Touring Theatre and Stratford East sets Peter Shaffer’s play at the time of the 1973 premiere, and the production’s props assemble like a toolkit of the 1970s and its discontents. So what’s in the 1970s toolkit? – David Jays

The hits to the Metropolitan Museum’s finances attributable to its previous director, Tom Campbell, just keep on coming. – Lee Rosenbaum

Bill Young/Colleen Thomas & Co. February 22 & 23
The wall to our right is mirrored; a trio can become a sextet, a duet a foursome. The wood floor — golden brown, unmarred, and glowing — plays a starring role. It all but invites a dancer to rest on it. Or fall to it, roll across it, and spring back up and into the arms of a colleague in one seamless maneuver. – Deborah Jowitt

Here’s a Flash Mob video featuring a huge number of Muscovites having more fun than may be legal in Russia, dancing to the most joyous and metrically challenging song Irving Berlin ever composed. – Doug Ramsey