Last week, when minister Nathi Mthethwa presented plans for the Mzansi National Philharmonic Orchestra, with an annual budget of 30 million rand (about $17.6 million), comparing the new band to a national sports team, he did not get the ovation he'd hoped for. - Sunday Times (South Africa)
Indeed, they were often required to keep watch at city gates and were sometimes required to show skill at swordsmanship. This isn't just because musicians could raise a loud alarm when necessary. In fact, European cities often made their paid musicians a point of civic pride and ceremony. - Ted Gioia
Many people draw lines in the sand when it comes to what they believe. If a narrative doesn’t fit their worldview, it’s deemed untrue, worth ignoring and sometimes re-framed entirely. - The Conversation
"(He) is firmly woven into the fabric of French cultural identity. As such, to condemn Depardieu amounts to a kind of self-harm. ... 'He is like a symbol of France, even the way Depardieu disregards and criticises his own country is so French.'" - The Guardian
More than ever before, people are identifying less and less with a religious tradition. This leads some people to look for meaning and identity in the things they love most. My goal here isn’t to argue against those who consider Disney their religion. - The Conversation
Every other summer since 2004, composer Delf Maria Hohmann has been visiting the vessels docked in the harbor at St. John's to learn about their horns' sounds — which he then mixes-and-matches into a composition called a "Harbour Symphony." - Yahoo! (Canadian Press)
"In conversation with (several) artistic directors, one trend seems abundantly clear: more equitable access to better opportunities for fewer people. ... Is that a bad thing? Not necessarily." - American Theatre
The Forbidden City Cultural Relics Museum, which opened in 2020 in a restored Yangtze River-front warehouse complex in Chongqing, had a large number of roof tiles slide off, leading to the collapse of one of the museum's several buildings. - Artnet
No, these aren't about Sylvia Plath (who was Hughes's first wife): they're about Assia Wevill, who took up with Hughes (her landlord at the time) the year before Plath gassed herself — as Wevill did, along with her daughter by Hughes, six years later. - The Guardian
Among the issues surrounding the film, titled Sebaya: a key scene doesn't show the rescue it purports to show, whether the women onscreen legitimately consented to appear, and an issue the film avoids entirely: rescued women being separated from the children sired by their ISIS enslavers. - The New York Times
"Revolutionary at the time – and still cutting edge — Zollar's choreography synthesizes movement from modern dance and traditional folk African dance styles with the kind of text and shouted language the company describes as 'the urgent dialogue of the 21st century.'" - NPR
Twice the financially beleaguered school had secured a merger deal with the University of San Francisco, and both times USF backed out due to concerns about falling enrollment and continued viability. Still uncertain is the fate of SFAI's Diego Rivera mural. - SFist
Mr. Oldenburg entered the New York art scene in earnest in the late 1950s, embracing the audience-participation “Happenings” then in vogue and expanding the boundaries of art with shows that incorporated things like street signs, wire-and-plaster clothing and even pieces of pie. - The New York Times
As the scope of algorithm-based applications in social reality has expanded over the past decades, we have by the same measure been conditioned to approach ever more fields of human life as if they were strategy games. - Liberties Journal
