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What Was Remarkable About Conductor Carlos Kleiber

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

Spotify’s Stock Is Tanking This Week. Why?

Spotify said recent price increases are expected to have “minimal impact” on the company’s total revenue in the third quarter. - CNBC

The First Lady Of Brazilian Jazz, Leny Andrade, Is Dead At 80

"(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

Construction Of Philadelphia’s Long-Awaited Calder Museum Has Finally Begun

"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)

Ezra Klein’s New York Times Podcast Is Coming To Public Radio

"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

Booksellers And Authors Sue To Block Texas Law Requiring Sexual-Content Ratings For Books

"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

A New(ish) Artistic Director At Smuin Contemporary Ballet

"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

World’s Largest Audiobook Publisher Is Being Sold For $1 Billion

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

English National Opera Gets An Extra £24 Million And More Time To Leave London

"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

The Mindfulness Industrial Complex Can’t Do For You What Art Does

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

What AI Writing Reveals About Good Writing

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

Is Today’s Pop Music Getting Too Simplistic?

"I think the average listeners ears are becoming more attuned to ever-greater simplicity and every-greater economy in music." - Music Radar

Hollywood Needs To Reinvent Or It Will Die

How do you decide that the content you’re producing is actually generating value? That goes back to the question that we have about how to get the residual because if you can’t figure out what the value is going be, then how do you decide how to distribute the value downstream?” - The Guardian

America’s Theatre Crisis – Why Now?

So why has our theatre field contracted so precipitously in the past few months, with casualties recorded at every kind of theatre while at the same time many theatres, and not just on Broadway, continue to post encouraging box-office numbers and seem to be carrying on more or less as before? - American Theatre

Seattle Art Museum Director Steps Down

Amanda Cruz oversaw some of the most turbulent years in SAM’s 90-year history. - Seattle Times

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