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Nicholas Kenyon’s New History Of Western Music

The book’s subtitle, New Adventures in the Western Classical Tradition, makes its soft boundaries clear. As managing director of London’s Barbican Centre, and former director of the Proms, controller of Radio 3 and music critic of the Observer – and therefore a colleague and friend to those of us in the business of classical – Kenyon has heard and...

Companies Are Struggling To Become Data-Driven. The Toughest Part? Culture

The goal is to "invite people who have not been thinking about this topic to really think about it in their day-to-day work. It really creates the culture of control, culture of responsibility and understanding." - Protocol

Inside The Art NFT Boom

No one quite agrees on what this gold rush means. If you ask hard-core champions of Bitcoin — the often-libertarian “crypto natives,” as they call themselves — NFTs presage the future of digital property. They’re a glimpse at a coming day when people spend their income on digital items they can trade, resell or hoard as an investment; when...

The Sounds Of Japan’s Ancient Music, Recorded More Than A Century Ago

"Let's set the scene. It's February 28, 1903, and 12 musicians from the Imperial Household Orchestra are seated in front of a gramophone horn in a Tokyo hotel room. The needle slowly lowers onto a spinning blank disc and the session begins. What follows is a recording of the sound of gagaku, the oldest continuously performed orchestral music in...

How A Dallas Choir Made $375,000 With An NFT “Crypto Music”

“2020 had all been about crypto art. We believe that Betty’s Notebook is the birth of crypto music. It makes music truly ‘crypto native’,” meaning the piece is designed and meant for consumption on the blockchain, instead of simply being added to it as a NFT. “You can’t have Betty’s Notebook without the blockchain.” - Dallas Morning News

A New York Times Critic Sees His First Play Since COVID — In The Central American City He Once Fled

Jose Solís: "Theater in my hometown? 'A lot has changed since you've been gone,' said Inma López, a producer and ensemble member at Casa del Teatro Memorias. … Theater in Tegucigalpa went from the didacticism of political plays that toured colleges and high schools in the 1980s, to becoming an essential part of city life." - The New York...

A Bitter New Orleans Graffiti War Over… Dan Marino?

To outsiders, street painters of all sorts might seem to be natural allies. But that’s not always the case. Rivalries and territorialism are always part of the picture. For some, street painting is meant as a gift to society; for others it’s pure rebellion; for most it’s somewhere in between. After two weeks of turf war, the wall at...

What Goodreads Has Done To My Reading, And Why I’m Giving It Up

"Quantifying, dissecting and broadcasting our most-loved hobbies sucks the joy out of them. I find myself glancing towards the corner of the page to see how much I've read. … Even when absorbed in the climax of a story, one eye is always on my proximity to the end, when I'll be able to post it all to Goodreads....

A Multi-Million-Dollar Trade In Fake Native American Art

We’re talking about everything from Navajo turquoise and silver to Zuni inlay. It’s a huge tourist draw and one of New Mexico’s most important industries. But today, con artists are flooding the Indian jewelry marketplace with cleverly disguised counterfeits, cheating consumers out of millions of dollars. - KRQE

Dancer StuartHodes @96 – How To Dance Through Life

"I think anything that you do with every particle of yourself can be wonderful, and it can make you forget the world. It’s magic. How the heck am I supposed to describe it? Something happens. It takes everything you have got. And, for that — for those brief moments that you’re dancing, you’re transported." - The News Hour (PBS)

Chicago’s Goodman Theatre Prepares To Live-Stream From Its Stage

"'The whole process here is to recreate the experience for the audience,' said Falls. 'The audience chooses which performance they want to see, they buy their ticket, they're instructed to get there early to make sure that the technology is working and at 7:30 in the evening, we're all set to go live.'" - Yahoo! (Chicago Tribune)

Can Los Angeles Re-Establish Itself As A Cultural Capital Post-Pandemic?

"In many ways the challenges here are more intense and complex, in no small part because the virus hit at a time when so many things were in flux. The next steps — by cultural institutions, wealthy philanthropists, government and audiences — could well determine whether COVID will have derailed, or merely delayed, the city's ascendance as a cultural...

Benin Bronzes Are Still Being Made Today (Who Knew?)

In Benin City, in what was historically the metalworkers' quarter on and around Igun Street, skilled artists continue to make figures with the traditional techniques used to make the famous Benin Bronzes now in museums in other parts of the world (and gradually being repatriated). - Artnet

In Egypt, 250 Ancient Tombs Discovered, Some More Than 4,000 Years Old

The burial places, all cut into rock, were found by accident in one part of a larger necropolis in Upper Egypt. Some date back to the end of the Old Period of ancient Egyptian history, about 4,000 years ago; the most recent are from the late Ptolemaic era, which ended with the defeat of Cleopatra VII by Octavian (who...

Metropolitan Opera Returns To Stage (But Not Its Own) For First Time Since COVID Arrived

"Members of the company's orchestra and chorus, joined by prominent soloists and led by its music director, Yannick Nézet-Séguin, will give two concerts at the Knockdown Center in Queens on Sunday. … The concerts will go on despite continuing labor tensions at the Met, which have threatened the intended reopening of its Lincoln Center home in September." - The...

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