For the past several decades, Greg Sikora has tuned and voiced pianos for the biggest musical artists to play this region, from Frank Sinatra to Lady Gaga and everyone in between. He also served as the chief concert piano technician for the Philadelphia Orchestra for many years. - Philadelphia Inquirer (MSN)
“In this excerpt, adapted from Seller’s memoir, Theater Kid (out on May 6 from Simon & Schuster), the producer lays out the musical’s long road from dispiriting workshop to its simultaneously triumphant and tragic first preview performance.” - Vulture
Our brains are these amazingly predictive organs trying to constantly explain the world, because that’s our way to survive. We have to have a reliable model of reality so that we can know what to expect—for example, when there’s going to be a confrontation with someone we’re in a relationship with. - Nautilus
One can only imagine what the value of music would look like if copyright protections were to disappear altogether. It would not be a stretch to imagine that its value would fall close to zero, along with the value of other commercialized cultural products, and the value of labor carried out by artists and other creators. - Music Business...
“Six,” which runs a sleek 85 minutes as an unruly concert where performers are explicitly competing for the audience’s sympathy, might ultimately be less interesting for its girl-power reframing of history than for its reconsideration of some of musical theater’s basic structural assumptions. - San Francisco Chronicle
“Recent reports of celebrity pushback against the profession, intimacy coordinators say, have created skewed narratives that breed misconceptions about their role and impact on sets. The most prominent criticism frames intimacy coordinators as a disruption to the artistic process.” - Vulture (MSN)
If the museum experience is now more stylistically bifurcated — the Beaux Arts past on one side of the complex, a sympathetic but unapologetic contemporary aesthetic on the other — they unite in enhancing the museum experience. - Bloomberg
The plan is to request that Congress rescind $1.1 billion in federal funding for the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. If Congress agrees, that will amount to about two years of the organization’s funding, nearly all of which goes to public broadcasters including NPR, PBS and their local member stations. - The New York Times
Parker Ramsay: “Could you conceive of a world in which a harp work occupies your attention like an opera or a violin concerto? That might be a stretch, but I’ve been able to commission music that makes me think it’s possible.” - The New York Times
Effectively killing the NEH in its current form and then reallocating its money to build the National Garden of American Heroes—the centerpiece of Trump’s plans to celebrate the 250th anniversary of the United States (thus, 250 sculptures)—is yet one more missile launched in his administration’s ongoing culture war. - The Atlantic
In fact, neither one of these labels names a particularly coherent group of fields. STEM covers endeavors as different in their workings and aims as heart surgery is from number theory, while humanities disciplines have little in common beyond an (often) qualitative interest in (usually) human concerns. - Slate
Like every other sector of cultural life, classical music has been roiled over the past decade by intense debates about the field’s ongoing lack of diversity, among performing artists, composers, and leaders of musical organizations. - The Atlantic
“(A) task force … will convene monthly to eventually put forth recommendations ... The news comes after the dance company reached a settlement for over $560,000 with the National Labor Relations Board in December to compensate 10 fired dancers and three whose offers of employment were rescinded.” - KERA (Dallas)
Ryan Miller of the band Guster: “We wanted to support the staff who were caught in this political crossfire; the fans who had bought tickets, flights, and hotel rooms; the musicians we would be performing with. … We had been given a microphone and we intended to use it.” - The Atlantic (MSN)
“The architect behind the Sagrada Familia church in Barcelona has been declared ‘Venerable’ by Pope Francis, the second step in the path to canonisation. Gaudí was recognised by the Vatican for his ‘heroic virtues’.” - Dezeen
