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To Understand The Problems With Big Tech Platforms We Need To Understand What’s At Risk

Harvesting data at scale makes us collectively vulnerable in ways that go beyond breaches of individual privacy. This is a new and nasty problem: even when individual rights are formally considered (e.g., via privacy consent forms), the consequences for society may be very harmful. - 3 Quarks Daily

‘A Thunderclap”, Says Publisher: Unknown Work By Proust Coming This Spring

"The texts in The Seventy-Five Pages were written in 1908, around the time Proust began working on In Search of Lost Time, which was published between 1913 and 1927. The papers were part of a collection of documents held by the late publisher Bernard de Fallois, who died in 2018." Gallimard will release the book in France on...

Music Critic Peter G. Davis, 84

He was longtime critic for New York Magazine. Peter was best known as an authority on opera — his 1997 book The American Opera Singer is an essential work — but he covered every form of music-making with expertise and panache. - The Rest is Noise

‘Drenching Richness’: Alex Ross Revisits The Films Of Andrei Tarkovsky

Ross fell under the director's spell upon seeing Andrei Rublev in college. "The long pandemic months seemed a good time to burrow back into Tarkovsky's world. Life was moving at a neo-medieval pace, and the aesthetic of slowness was all the more welcome in an age of frantic digital scissoring. I watched the films again … I emerged...

Black Dancers And Dance Companies Worry They Won’t Be Able To Survive Pandemic

Broadway dancer NaTonia Monét says that, even when theaters finally start up again, "you have your few Black shows that come along, but other than that, you're fighting for the one or two token roles in the cast." And (with the sole exception of Ailey) Black dance troupes, from small regional companies right up to Dance Theater of Harlem,...

Keeping Up Live Performance As The World Goes Virtual

"We have a total commitment to live performance. That's what we do. We're not a film company," says the director of the Annenberg Center in Philadelphia. What's more, "we really wanted to maintain work for artists as much as possible, as well as our staff, … at a time when they really didn't have a lot of options." And...

Santa Fe Opera Hires New Boss With New Title

With the previous artistic director, Alexander Neef (who was shared with the Canadian Opera Co.), having left for the Paris Opera, Santa Fe decided to combine his position with that of director of artistic administration and call the resulting job "chief artistic officer." The company has now filled that job with David Lomelí, a former tenor who also has...

Johnny Pacheco, Giant Of Latin Jazz And Salsa, Dead At 85

"Pacheco, a Juilliard-trained multi-instrumentalist who'd found success recording with his band, Pacheco y Su Charanga, sparked a musical revolution when, in 1964, he met Jerry Masucci and together, they founded Fania Records. The two started the label with $5,000, selling albums in Spanish Harlem from the trunks of their cars. Fania soon became known as the Latin Motown, home...

Here’s What A British Musician Now Has To Go Through To Work In Europe

While the UK was in the EU, a British musician could pretty much just accept a gig and go. Now she has to apply to each member country for a separate short-term work permit, with all the embassy visits, surrendering of passports, processing fees, and delays the process requires. Pianist Joseph Middleton, one of Britain's top specialists in art...

Italy’s Art Museums Emerge From Lockdown, And They Have Lessons For The Rest Of Us

"'We are now where you will be in a few days,' wrote novelist Francesca Melandri in a piece for the Guardian newspaper in late March 2020. Her moving 'letter from your future' coincided with the beginning of the first pandemic wave in Italy. One year on, her words can be repeated – only this time with a more optimistic...

How A Young Pianist Learns About The Liszt Sonata From Historic Recordings

“I almost feel like you should know the notable recordings of a work like this,” Benjamin Grosvenor said of the sonata in a recent interview. “More than anything, it helps you understand what works and what doesn’t work. You react to some things positively and you react to some things negatively, and that fuels your imagination.” - The New...

The Line Between Audiobook And Theatrical Play

"When different narrators take on chapters devoted to different characters’ points of view, the listener’s engagement with the book can be heightened. On the other hand, when narrators join in together, in what are often referred to as ensemble productions, the text is usurped by performance, the book disappearing into thespian clamor." - Washington Post

Was Some Of Ravel’s Best Music The Product Of A Brain Disorder?

“Think of it like traffic. There’s the language road, there’s the music road, there’s the seeing road, there’s the images road. Language is like a superhighway; it makes the other things wait for it. It puts a stoplight on the others. But when language deteriorates a little bit — which happens at the beginning of this disease — it...

The Problem With Museums

"If the postmodernism of the 1980s considered the museum to be in crisis and contemplated its “ruins,” today many see these same institutions as frustratingly intact, as bulwarks against change, citadels to be stormed. (Even ten years ago, the Left’s critique of museums was simply that they had transformed from civic sites to experiential fun houses. “The late-capitalist museum”...

Are American Progressive Ideas A Threat To France’s Identity?

French politicians, high-profile intellectuals and journalists are warning that progressive American ideas — specifically on race, gender, post-colonialism — are undermining their society. “There’s a battle to wage against an intellectual matrix from American universities,’’ warned Mr. Macron’s education minister. - The New York Times

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