"We say we need new audiences, but the reality is we're really churning through the new audiences we do get." In the arts world, this problem is severe: Ninety percent of first-time orchestra attendees at the largest orchestras in the U.S. never return. - Inc
How did a show that Team Sondheim suggested was incomplete at the time of his death get to a point where it was ready for public consumption? - The New York Times
"For a start, the boundary between the emperor and his acting parts was a significantly blurry one. … The awful black hole at the centre of Roman autocracy was that it was always as hard to tell an emperor from an actor as it can sometimes be for us." - The Guardian
Both Southern Methodist University and the University of North Texas have long and notable histories of training organists who’ve gone on to major church, academic and concert careers. This fall, both universities have major organ projects underway, or recently completed. - Dallas Morning News
"Unlike its streamlined, efficient former self, Google Search is now bloated and overmonetized. It's harder now to find answers that feel authoritative or uncompromised. … Using Google once felt like magic, and now it’s more like rifling through junk mail, dodging scams and generic mailers." - MSN (The Atlantic)
Perhaps chopping prose into tokens is not how I would like to be read. But then, who am I to say what my work is good for, how it might benefit someone—even a near-trillion-dollar company? - The Atlantic
"'I just don’t have any more choreographic ideas,' she said. She went on to describe dancing Trio A in her 80s, when getting up off the ground had become more difficult, and wondering to herself, 'Why isn’t this way of getting up just as good as the original?'" - Art in America
The building represents Wright’s decades-long fascination with a concept he called the “New Theatre.” It involved eschewing the traditional setup, with a proscenium stage—in which audiences stare straight ahead with a single, framed view—and instead creating a circular, revolving stage that joined the actors and audience in a more unified space. - Texas Monthly
How the Barter Theatre in rural southwestern Virginia, Signature Theatre in metro DC, Milwaukee Repertory Theater, and TheatreSquared in Fayetteville, Arkansas kept up contact and engagement with their communities through the lockdowns and afterward. - AP
"LaFontaine Oliver, New York Public Radio's president and chief executive, said in a memo to employees that a 'free fall in the advertising market' had led to the decision to cut staff." - The New York Times
"A sacred tablet that was stolen by British troops during the 1868 Battle of Maqdala in Ethiopia was restituted in a service at a church in London on Monday. Also known as a tabot, the object is a symbolic representation of the Ark of the Covenant for the Ethiopian church." - ARTnews
Fred Kaplan, defense columnist for Slate: "When pressed with an even mildly confounding question, the machine just makes stuff up. Which makes me wonder: how will it learn how to write good literature, useful technical manuals, entertaining joke books, or anything else that anyone might want to read?" - MSN (Slate)
Alex Reisner has put together a searchable database of the volumes that Mark Zuckerberg's tech colossus used, without permission, to train LLaMA, its generative AI program — the subject of three different copyright lawsuits (so far) by authors. - MSN (The Atlantic)
The answer: not everything the writers wanted, but a lot more than anyone thought would be there six months ago — "a deal far richer and more comprehensive than most industry observers would have predicted last spring when the fitful negotiations began." - Variety
"The governing boards of the eastern and western branches of the Writers Guild of America and their joint negotiating committee all voted to accept the deal, two days after the tentative agreement was reached with a coalition of Hollywood’s biggest studios, streaming services and production companies." - AP
