"Democracy, it's been said, isn't easy. Neither is examining its terrible fragility through the form of a deeply fun, fairly avant-garde song-and-dance show. … Does real democracy stand a chance, if old-school authoritarianism has a good beat and you can dance to it?" - Variety
With each musician guaranteed $200 for an hour-long set, “we’ve presented about 400 concerts featuring 500 musicians, reaching about 18,000 listeners." - San Francisco Classical Voice
"Barbie combines the rules of the movie musical ... with the investments of a Beckett or a Ionesco play. … (It's) a highly symbolic exercise where theoretical entities get to speak for themselves, and where real people get to tell anthropomorphized theoretical entities what effects they have on the human experience." - Literary Hub
Like Kleiber, Klaus Tennstedt and Leonard Bernstein seemed to harness everything they knew in the heat of the moment. But Kleiber also had structural rigour and brisk tempos that gave his performances an infectious buoyancy. - Gramophone
"(She) was a percussive, samba-driven improviser, an interpreter as worldly-wise as Edith Piaf and a consummate nightclub artist. With a thick, husky voice seasoned by cigarette smoke and late hours, Andrade sang torridly of love; she could also swing as hard as any American jazz singer." - NPR
"Calder Gardens, the long-awaited showcase for the art of native son Alexander Calder, is finally moving toward reality. The new museum will be located on Center City's Benjamin Franklin Parkway, between 21st and 22nd Streets across from the Barnes Foundation and near several major cultural institutions." - MSN (The Philadelphia Inquirer)
"The New York Times … has signed a deal with the public media organization PRX to repurpose (The Ezra Klein Show) into a weekly one-hour radio show. … Klein joined The New York Times two years ago and launched the podcast in January 2021." - Inside Radio
"A group of booksellers, publishers and authors filed a lawsuit on Tuesday to stop a new law in Texas that would require stores to rate books based on sexual content, arguing the measure would violate their First Amendment rights and be all but impossible to implement." - The New York Times
"Celia Fushille … is stepping down next year at the conclusion of the company's 30th season to hand her job to nationally acclaimed choreographer Amy Seiwert. … The news comes more than three months after Smuin Ballet hired Seiwert, a former company member and choreographer-in-residence, as associate artistic director." - San Francisco Chronicle
Private equity firm KKR is selling RBaudio, which it bought for a reported $500 million in 2018, to Miami investment firm H.I.G. Capital at an apparent 100% profit. Industry watchers consider KKR to be a leading candidate to buy Simon & Schuster. - Publishers Weekly
"The ENO will move to a base outside the capital by March 2029 – three years after originally envisaged. Before then, it will develop an artistic programme in its new city, while transitioning to a new business model that allows it to deliver a substantial season every year in (London)." - The Guardian
Modern mental wellness tools, like mindfulness apps and cognitive behavioral therapy, vary in approach but share a self-help strategy centered on self-surveillance. But encouraging inward focus for calm and understanding can lead to hypervigilance or excessive self-analysis. Art, on the other hand... - Aeon
As we explore new applications for large language models and consider how well they can optimize our communication, AI challenges us to reflect on the qualities we truly value in our prose. How do we measure the caliber of writing, and how well does AI perform? - Noema
