In a six-week pilot collaboration between New England Conservatory and Massachusetts General Hospital this fall, the Boston Hope Music Teaching Project connected teaching fellows from NEC with frontline health care workers for weekly private music lessons. The goal wasn’t to teach them skill or technique, but to provide a refuge from day-to-day life on the COVID ward. - Boston Globe
"The decision by Luigi Brugnaro, the mayor of Venice, to extend the closure of the city's 11 civic museums — including the Doge's Palace, the Museo Correr, Ca' Rezzonico, Ca' Pesaro and Palazzo Fortuny — until 1 April, the beginning of the tourist season, has provoked a culture war in Venice and beyond. Italy's museums have been closed since 5 November under national government restrictions, which are currently due to lift on 15 January" — unless, of course, COVID cases spike yet again. - The Art Newspaper
"Prime Minister Jean Castex confirmed … museums, cinemas, theaters, concert halls and gyms 'will not in the weeks to come'." Venues had opened in the late summer with safety measures but closed again on Oct. 30 as COVID's second wave swelled; planned reopenings announced for Dec. 15 and then Jan. 7 were called off as new cases of the disease kept rising. - Variety
"Sedition — Merriam-Webster defines it as 'incitement of resistance to or insurrection against lawful authority' — is a word that echoes across American history, archaic yet familiar. Historically, charges of sedition have just as often been used to quash dissent … as they have to punish actual threats to government stability or functioning. But to many scholars and historians, the use of the word on Wednesday — and the force of condemnation it conjured — was not misplaced." - The New York Times
From the company's announcement: "We did not come to this decision lightly. As a publisher it will always be our mission to amplify a variety of voices and viewpoints: at the same time we take seriously our larger public responsibility as citizens, and cannot support Senator Hawley after his role in what became a dangerous threat to our democracy and freedom." - AP
A graduate of Venezuela's El Sistema, the 40-year-old music director of the San Diego Symphony begins a five-year term at the Maison symphonique in the fall of 2022. Payare's San Diego contract currently runs through 2025-26; he says he plans to keep both jobs, with 14 to 16 weeks per season in Montreal and 10 per season in San Diego. - AP
Once one of the biggest stars at both the Bolshoi and ABT, she returned to her native Georgia in 2004 (at President Saakashvili's personal invitation) to take charge of the national ballet company. On the condition that she can remain in that job as well, Ananiashvili has now accepted the dance directorship at the opera and ballet theater in Novosibirsk, Russia's third-largest city. - Agenda.ge
Andris Nelsons, who has been in Europe since before the pandemic started, returned to Symphony Hall to record three programs pairing Beethoven symphonies with contemporary music for the BSO's season of streamed concerts. - The Boston Globe
The year 2020 ended up setting a streaming record in America, increasing 17% for the year to end with an unprecedented 872.6 billion streams. - Variety
“The way we move has changed in the past year, indoor spaces seeming claustrophobic and our outdoor spaces not vast enough, backyards and gardens reinvented into havens. We’ve become resourceful and grateful for the places we occupy and with whom.” - The New York Times
The yearly Celluloid Ceiling report by San Diego State University found that women accounted for 16 per cent of directors working on the 100 highest-grossing films in 2020, up from 12 per cent in 2019 and only 4 per cent in 2018. - Irish Times
"When we restrict ourselves to Western art music, we forgo the opportunity to speak about basic yet essential musical elements such as groove, timbre, improvisation, and post-production in styles where these are powerfully foregrounded. Today’s leading theory texts cover more or less the same material as those we used as students. Why then do we as a discipline remain so averse to change?" - NewMusicBox
The entire population of the earth could live in a giant sustainable city occupying a fraction of the earth's surface, freeing the rest of the world for rewilding and the return of stolen lands, according to a new movie by architect Liam Young. - Dezeen
The overproduction of Ph.D.s has been an issue for years in the U.S., which has a higher rate of doctorate holders than almost any other rich country. - Bloomberg
"In Paris, its success was almost entirely predicated on lecherous social contracts. Sex work was a part of a ballerina's reality, and the city's grand opera house, the Palais Garnier, was designed with this in mind. A luxuriously appointed room located behind the stage, called the foyer de la danse, was a place where the dancers would warm up before performances. But it also served as a kind of men's club, where abonnés — wealthy male subscribers to the opera — could conduct business, socialize and proposition the ballerinas." - CNN
