"(He) has canceled a piano recital at the Opéra de Monte-Carlo due to the effects of a serious neurological condition. … Barenboim was diagnosed last year with the condition, which forced him to step down in January as music director at the Berlin State Opera after three decades." - AP
Molly Johnson has achieved at the highest level in Canada, with the awards to match: “I gotta say I was depressed. It saddened me, initially, deeply, that here I am in this stage of my career and I still can’t really pay my bills." - Toronto Star
The bill would make it defamatory to claim that someone is racist, sexist, or homophobic based on that person’s religious beliefs. This is, in some ways, the bill’s most reactionary provision, because it recasts what courts ordinarily consider an opinion as a defamatory fact. - The New Yorker
More than half the respondents (53.5%) said they were scared of clowns at least to some degree, with 5% saying they were “extremely afraid” of them. Interestingly, this percentage reporting an extreme fear of clowns is slightly higher than those reported for many other phobias. - The Conversation
Using around 90 per cent of the brain-imaging data, the pair trained a model to make links between fMRI data from a brain region that processes visual signals, called the early visual cortex, and the images that people were viewing. - New Scientist
One of the first things I’d learned about optimization was that something is optimal if it is equal or preferable to any alternative. To optimize an experience, then, is to shepherd it toward the preferable. - Wired
One of the advantages of RadioGPT is that it knows about an artist or a song or about a current event, so it can speak to a broad range of topics concisely and in an entertaining way. When we set up RadioGPT voices, this is not text-to-speech. This is setting up character and personality in A.I. - Slate
"The rules of physics that apply in a real scene appear to be optional in a painting; they can be obeyed or ignored at the discretion of the artist to enhance the painting's intended effect. ... Our visual brain uses a simpler, reduced physics to understand the world." - The MIT Press Reader
Idaho Code 18-8705 states that public funds cannot be used “to perform or promote abortion, provide counseling in favor of abortion, make referral for abortion, or provide facilities for abortion or for training to provide or perform abortion.” - Hyperallergic
The first four episodes of the updated version of Homer's epic will be produced in Stoke-on-Trent, Doncaster, Trowbridge, and Sunderland, with each episode adapted by a local playwright. For the finale, the teams from all four towns will converge at the NT headquarters in London. - The Guardian
The BBC, as the biggest commissioner of music and one of the biggest employers of musicians in the country, has a vital part to play in the British cultural landscape and a duty to future proof what we deliver for the public. - BBC
"Though complicated and sometimes fraught, these transformations can feel organic: They apply the ideals of creative practice to administrative practice. ... Not all dancers want to supplement exhausting rehearsal schedules with leadership responsibilities. But for those weary of inhabiting the performer-as-obedient-vessel cliché, that level of involvement can be refreshing." - The New York Times
Fiction or not, the sort of backstage backstabbing depicted in “Tár” is, alas, very real. We conductors do not generally like our colleagues, and we delight in denigrating one another — that is, until one of us dies. - The New York Times
"A new documentary ... brought together musicians, artists and journalists who used music and art to rebel against their imprisonment and to assert their right to a multicultural identity amid Serb nationalist attempts to destroy them and their cultural heritage." - The Guardian
“He brought the attitude of a businessman and an entrepreneur to a sector that, as you well know, is much less focused on that than on the present moment.” - Artnet
