"The latest effort to breathe life into San Francisco’s struggling Mid-Market neighborhood involves bringing amateur musicians to the streets. The nonprofit Mid-Market Business Association unveiled a new initiative, Busk It!, on Thursday. The project aims to attract local musicians for weekly live performances on the sidewalks." - San Francisco Chronicle (MSN)
Nutcracker in Havana, performed by Acosta's Cuba-based company, Acosta Danza, "will weave traditional Cuban rhythms and dances together with classical ballet, all set to a revised version of Tchaikovsky’s famous musical score by Cuban composer Pepe Gavilondo." - The Guardian
"How is what's happening in the Middle East - and the tensions being driven here by war and violence there — impacting the UK's arts and entertainment sphere? What role does culture have to heal political divides — or foment them? They're questions I wanted to explore with figures working in that world." - BBC
"The country’s most famous drag star … (is) one of three business partners behind Allstora, which will ... provide writers with a greater share of profits than other online booksellers do. … (Allstora) will send a rainbow school bus from the West Coast to the South to distribute books targeted by bans." - The New York Times
"A luminous singer who performed with jazz legends including Dizzy Gillespie and Oscar Peterson, Ms. Collins spent her entire career in Canada. … (Said one jazz scholar), Eleanor Collins, if she was American, would be mentioned in the same breath as Sarah Vaughan and Ella Fitzgerald.'" - The Washington Post (MSN)
Activists from the group This Is Rigged poured porridge and jam on a bust of Victoria at the Kelvingrove Art Gallery in Glasgow on Sunday. The following day they sprayed soup on statues of Victoria and Prince Albert in the city's George Square. They were protesting the high cost of food. - ARTnews
There are few artists whose signature styles have been so widely, unashamedly capitalized by big brands (with the help of estates and foundations). But in some ways, the condition is hardly a new one—Haring himself sold... - ARTnews
The establishment of a new, all-Ireland dance company has been described as “a new dawn” for the art form in Ireland by the Arts Council which will provide €2 million in funding for the initiative this year. - Irish Times
Why isn’t there an Oscar for best choreography? It’s a question people in the dance world have been asking for decades. And there’s no satisfying answer. - The New York Times
We spend hundreds of thousands of dollars a year on writers, then on editing and fact-checking their findings. Perplexity gets it all for free. When newsrooms die, what will be left to search? What will answer engines do when the people who spent time and money figuring out all those answers are gone? - The Walrus
Works of literature and art, for example, can teach us to challenge dominant visions of sleep, allowing us to see sleep as a place where values are formed and cultural debates are shaped. - The Conversation
The reason I’m screwed is that Spotify listeners’ ability to access their collection in the far-out future will be contingent on the company maintaining its software, renewing its agreements with rights holders, and, well, not going out of business when something else inevitably supplants the current paradigm of music listening. - The Atlantic
The algorithm ends up being a centralizing force; although the viewing options on TikTok can feel limitless, the reality is that you are being fed content from a small pool of creators relative to the app’s overall size. - The Atlantic
"I’m feeling very energized by California. There is clearly a rich universe of creative forces at work — not to mention good food and a varied physical landscape, including ocean and mountains." - The New York Times
