As amanuenses, copyists, assistants, rehearsal pianists, and performers, Vally Lasker, Jane Joseph and Nora Day did the countless necessary parts of the work of composition which Holst, who suffered from neuritis in his hands, was physically unable to do. - The New York Times
The 99-acre West Kowloon Cultural District was given a start-up fund (called an "endowment" there) of HK$21.6bn (US$2.8bn) by the enclave's government in 2008. That fund is projected to run out one year from now, potential rental income is limited, and no further state funding has been announced. - The Art Newspaper
He was the first Black man to win a Best Supporting Actor Oscar (in 1983 for playing the drill sergeant in An Officer and a Gentleman), and won an Emmy for his role as Fiddler in the 1977 series Roots. His last screen role was in the 2023 remake of The Color Purple. - AP
"Bedford Media, the holding company founded by model and entrepreneur Karlie Kloss and her husband, investor Josh Kushner, has acquired the publishing rights to Life from Dotdash Meredith. Bedford says that Life will be relaunched as a print magazine, with a 'vibrant' digital and video presence." - The Hollywood Reporter
"Beginning in the late 1970s, (he) began painting the Empire State Building, the Flatiron Building and, most indelibly, the World Trade Center. Those three buildings appear over and over through the decades, … (with) the shimmering, self-contained quality of letters or numbers." - The New York Times
"Hundreds of employees from the Art Gallery of Ontario gathered on the picket line as they began strike action Tuesday. After months of negotiations, union members ... voted to reject the gallery's latest contract offer, saying it doesn't address wage increases, protections for part-time workers and contracting out positions." - CBC
Senior management at GBH, which under the call letters WGBH operates both an NPR affiliate and a TV station which produces a number of national PBS shows, says it is "facing financial headwinds. … While final decisions have not yet been made, layoffs are not off the table." - The Boston Globe (MSN)
The loss of the bridge is first a human tragedy. Then it is an economic shock, with a radiating toll that won’t be fully understood for years. But it’s also a powerful symbolic shock, given the metaphorical power of bridges as a form of connection. - Washington Post (MSN)
In short: There can be no history of operatic modernity that is not also a memorial, no production of new opera that does not account for generic death, no opera written that does not, in its own way, undertake the work of mourning. - Van
Yes, Hulu is just a tile. But that tile also seems to represent something bigger inside of Disney: the full Disney Plus-ification of everything, as the tech and strategy it built over the last few years percolates out to everything else Disney does. - The Verge
“I think some bowls should be full,” he said, suggesting that flooding the land would amount to little more than a natural evolution of a man-made system, not unlike the way skyscrapers transformed cities a century ago. “It’s just an update to the machine.” - The New Yorker
Carl St.Clair is currently the longest-serving music director of a major American orchestra, and under his baton the ensemble has flourished: It’s now the largest U.S. orchestra founded in the last 50 years. - CultureOC
Flippant references to China’s military, like those to top leaders, are considered off limits in official life, and such taboos have been codified under Xi, with a new criminal code outlawing the slander of political “heroes and martyrs.” - The New Yorker
But not too much — just "a moderate level of syncopation to the point where our brain can still extract the periodic beat from the melodies. (These researchers) contend that the brain is essentially trying to anticipate upcoming beats amid a melody’s syncopation. The result is the impulse to dance." - Scientific American
The conceit of a vanity museum’s design being dubbed “the veil and the vault,” with a perforated exterior draped over a treasury for a private collection being made public, was always more pretentious than meaningful. It’s good to see it go. - Los Angeles Times
