The research, commissioned by and conducted at the Konzerthaus in Dortmund, used dummies that simulated breathing, with and without masks, placed at various points in the auditorium; the spread of aerosol droplets and carbon dioxide in the breath was measured. Results indicated that with checkerboard seating and masked audience members there is "almost no risk" of transmitting COVID-19. -...
"The five-year contract extension comes amid Luisi's first full season as artistic head of the orchestra. … vision for his first full season was stifled by the pandemic, but the orchestra has forged on. The DSO is one of the few professional orchestras in the country performing before a live audience during the pandemic." - KERA (Dallas)
Talking to Le Monde about diversity, racial equity, and blackface/yellowface in the ballet company, the world's oldest, new Paris Opera chief Alexander Neef said, "Some works will no doubt disappear from the repertoire." Critics on the political and cultural right in France immediately attacked the arrival of North American-style "cancel culture": Marine Le Pen tweeted about "anti-racism gone mad,"...
"For most of us, the beginner stage is something to be got through as quickly as possible, like a socially awkward skin condition. But even if we’re only passing through, we should pay particular attention to this moment. For once it goes, it’s hard to get back." - The Guardian
In the U.S., some artists have turned to philanthropic or community support to get by. But in France, dancers, musicians, even the set-builders, costumers and lighting designers who work on the production enjoy regular unemployment support. - NPR
“The ‘X-factor’ that drew me to an organization was their organic feel. Anyone with money or political ambition can rent a space, start a 501(c)(3) and write a fancy application. The part you can’t fake is the organic passion and joy that comes from serving your community. I kept my eyes and ears open for that, and that’s how...
"Were you to lay this thing out by the sentence, it’d be as close as an array of words could get to strands of pearls. 'The cab stopped at one slice in a long white cake of apartment-houses'? That line alone is almost enough to make me quit typing for the rest of my life." - Paris Review
"A Promised Land, the first volume of Barack Obama’s presidential memoirs, was the top print title in 2020, moving nearly 2.6 million copies at outlets that report to NPD BookScan. That number is lower, however, than the 3.4 million copies of Michelle Obama’s Becoming sold in 2018, and the former first lady’s book hit the top 25 overall list...
On January 17, 1921, in a north London theatre, "an English magician called Percy Thomas Tibbles literally and laboriously sawed through a sealed wooden box that contained a woman. It was a sensation and has since become one of the best known magic tricks, performed with all manner of tools and varying degrees of blood – always involving someone...
Although glamorous plans were unveiled in 2019 , the new hall is looking more and more like a fantasy. And now it is losing Rattle, its champion: it’s a kick in the teeth for London, a negation of that proud homecoming. - The Guardian
In the book, La familia grande, prominent attorney Camille Kouchner, the daughter of Bernard Kouchner, former foreign minister and co-founder of Doctors Without Borders, says that her stepfather — political scientist and well-known pundit Olivier Duhamel, chairman (until last week) of the body that oversees the renowned Paris university Sciences Po — sexually abused her twin brother for two...
How much of the telly you watch this year will be on a live, linear channel, at the scheduled hour, with millions of others tuning in at exactly the same time? For many of us, the answer is getting dangerously close to none. - The Guardian
Last week the former prima ballerina of the Bolshoi, ABT, and the Houston Ballet told the Georgian-language service of Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty that she had accepted the directorship of the ballet company at the Novosibirsk Opera and Ballet Theater in Russia's third-largest city. However, she wasn't even scheduled to meet the dancers until late January, and telling the...
Political developments have revealed a nation split more fiercely than most people ever imagined. Many of the civic institutions that have sustained American life — both for good and for ill — are beginning to teeter. - San Francisco Chronicle
"Casual of gesture but deeply focused in demeanor, had an understated style that could nonetheless hold the spotlight in trio settings, or fit slyly into Schneider's 18-piece big band. In many ways, his playing reflected the Romantic, floating manner of his first jazz influence, Bill Evans. But his off-kilter style as both a player and a composer...
