'Don't let anybody convince you this is the way the world is and therefore must be. It must be the way it ought to be.' — Toni Morrison 'Waiting until everything looks feasible is too long to wait.' — Rebecca Solnit
Today’s Boston’s “The Arts Fuse” carries an investigative piece of mine exploring how the Boston Symphony trustees decided not to hire Leonard Bernstein as the orchestra’s Music Director in 1949 even though he was the chosen successor of Serge Koussevitzky. This story is not irrelevant to the current controversy over
Reviewing my new novel “The Disciple: A Wagnerian Tale of the Gilded Age,” the British critic Clive Paget writes in “Musical America” that it’s “a richly detailed depiction of [New York] at the apogee of the Gilded Age and its embrace of all things Wagnerian.” His review reads in part:
I don't mean to be pedantic, but I think defining what we mean by excellence really matter if we're really going to figure out the place of AI in creativity. Four stories this week suggest layers to this debate:
Maribeth Stahl, Chief Development Officer of The Cleveland Orchestra, shares why Data, Depth and Discovery are key ingredients for successful fundraising.
Fired FBI agents are suing the bureau and Kash Patel for dismissing them because they took part in an investigation of el presidente Trumpscheisse’s attempt to overturn the 2020 election.
In Verdi, the elephants are in Aida. In Wagner, the elephant in the room is a pamphlet: “Judaism and Music.” It seems the Rosetta Stone of Wagner scholarship, the central text that lays bare what lurks hidden in his life and work. Beyond a doubt, it is an egregious text,
[A human named David Szalay]. Paul Bloom posted this note on Substack: I’ve always thought that I would never want to read an AI-written novel, no matter how objectively well-written it is. But I’m starting to question this. I’m on a real David Szalay kick these days; last night, I finished “London
The infrastructure carrying culture to audiences — legal, technical, financial, corporate — was not built for the creative sector. It was built by and for technology companies, telecommunications firms, and entertainment conglomerates.
I am in Ann Arbor, participating in a Mahler project with Ken Kiesler and his fervent University of Michigan Symphony Orchestra – the group with which I memorably toured South Africa a year ago (and about which I blogged and broadcast). Addressing a class of young conductors this morning, I
(Kudos to the art director who chose that American flag done with handprints – it’s perfect). I enjoyed reading Becca Rothfield’s “Listless Liberalism” in The Point, in which she reviews Ezra Klein and Derek Thompson’s Abundance, and Cass Sunstein’s Liberalism, and also asks the question of why the aesthetics of a liberal society, barely addressed
