This summer an activist loudly objected to a no-guns rule at Atlanta's Music Midtown festival (in Georgia, no event on public property may ban firearms) and drove organizers to cancel the entire thing. He then tried the same tactic with the Savannah Jazz Festival — which, actually, has no such rule. - SaportaReport (Atlanta)
The competition was intense. In the first pair of performances, the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra eked out a slight advantage over the Philadelphia Orchestra in terms of ticket sales and the octane of its playing — but hold on to your opera glasses. In a grand upset, the Cleveland Orchestra arrived. - Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
"A joint statement issued on behalf of ... the Gulf Cooperation Council made the request, saying the unspecified programs 'contradict Islamic and societal values and principles.'" This evidently refers to depictions of LGBTQ people: Saudi TV aired a "behavioral consultant" calling Netflix an "official sponsor of homosexuality." - AP
The question of what we can know of that which lies beyond the limits of our imagination is partially about the biological function of intelligence, and partially about our greatest cognitive prostheses, particularly human language and mathematics. - Aeon
Sadler's Wells in London has announced the biennial Rose International Dance Prize, with a £40,000 main award for a full-length piece and £15,000 for a shorter work by a young choreographer. As with the Turner, the finalists for the Rose Prize will be presented to the public together. - Arts Industry (UK)
The torrential monsoon that has swamped the country has damaged the 4,500-year-old ruins, which were once the largest city in the Indus Valley civilization. There have been no floods at the site yet, but some walls have cracked, and a few have collapsed, due to the downpours. - AP
"The Atlanta Journal-Constitution will discontinue its daily print edition and go to a weekend print edition, but it will continue its digital news operation seven days a week, according to interviews with a half dozen people close to the newspaper." - SaportaReport (Atlanta)
"In June and July, Pennsylvania and Washington quietly became the first two states in the nation to explicitly list non-fungible tokens (NFTs) as digital assets subject to sales and use taxes." - Hyperallergic
The Dutch maestro is also music director of the Hong Kong Philharmonic; he leaves both positions in 2024, as he starts on a five-year contract term as music director of the Seoul Philharmonic. He succeeds Osmo Vänskä, who's leaving the turbulent orchestra after only three years. - The New York Times
"Michelle Donelan, a former WWE marketing manager who was Boris Johnson's Education Secretary for just 48 hours, is to replace Nadine Dorries as Culture Secretary in UK Prime Minister Liz Truss's first cabinet." - Deadline
"Alan Garner (at 87) has become the oldest author to be shortlisted for the Booker Prize, and is the only British writer on this year's list. He is joined ... by one Irish writer, two Americans, a Zimbabwean and a writer from Sri Lanka." - The Guardian
It's an emerging art form — inclusive dance — in which dancers may be in wheelchairs, or on crutches, or have no obvious challenges at all, and professionals often mix with amateurs. - The World
Without public education delivered as a public good, the asylum seeker in detention, the teenager in jail, not to mention millions of children growing up in poverty, will have no realistic way to get the instruction they need to participate in democracy or support themselves. And students of privilege will stay confined in their bubbles. - The New York Times
From copying my music teacher to copying the great composers to mashing-up great recorded content to learning to ask AI to create – it’s all the same process. We are copying what already exists and trying our best to do it so others will consider it art – not craft. - Shelly Palmer
Plácido Domingo has issued a statement apologizing to the Arena di Verona for his recent performances, which resulted in an onstage protest from the orchestra and a subsequent letter from the local union lambasting the showcases as “humiliating.” - OperaWire
