In the financial crash of ten years ago, the S&P 500 lost almost 60 percent of its value. Millions of people lost their houses and jobs. Entire industries – banking, cars, airlines, housing -- were on the verge of collapse. And yet, if you had wealth, you probably did fine. More than fine actually. For some the crash was a huge opportunity. The auto and banking industries got bailouts, and … [Read more...]
How Technology is Shaping Opera
Opera America had asked me to speak at their annual conference this year, but of course the conference was canceled and moved online. So I made this video for the online conference, talking about the influence of technology on opera and how audience expectations evolve as they use technology. We've marveled at the speed of change in our lives over the past twenty years because of technology, but … [Read more...]
Parlez-Vous Screen? (online arts and other considerations)
So your workplace has shut down (your theatre, concert hall museum, stage, whatever). Now what? Moving online is the obvious play. And in the weeks since lockdown there has been a flood of artists going online, making content for the web or repackaging performances that have already taken place. Early efforts were encouraging. The Rotterdam Philharmonic did a "stay-at-home" "Ode to Joy" and … [Read more...]
Arts: Rebuild What? And Why?
I've been staring at this screen for several days (weeks, actually, if I'm being honest) trying to write about what the pandemic and the lockdown means for the arts. It's not that I don't have anything to say -- it's the opposite. Anything I begin to write seems reductive. There's too much to say and where to start? So this is maybe the start of a series of pieces on the topic. When everything … [Read more...]
Are The Arts To Blame For Donald Trump?
A few months ago I was at a conference of administrators of large arts institutions when a leading researcher in cultural trends made a bold claim: The election of Donald Trump is a result of the failure of the arts and culture sector. The point, he said, was that values expressed by the arts sector seem so at odds with the populist nationalist Trump wave that one could view the election not … [Read more...]
What If Disruption Was Just A Tech Con Game?
The tide has turned on the tech revolution. Over the past year the breathless articles that used to accompany new tech innovations have dried up, replaced with dystopian concerns about the Dark Web, privacy, hacking, fake news, and the deadening and manipulative effects of social media addiction. Tech was going to disrupt everything: Even after the word lost its meaning from overuse, it … [Read more...]
Classical Music’s #MeToo Stories Are Just A First Step
This week Washington Post arts journalists Anne Midgette and Peggy McGlone published results of their six-month investigation of sexual harassment in the classical music business. Some of the stories they put on the record were new; others have been open secrets for years. One of the latter stories - about Cleveland Orchestra concertmaster William Preucil is not new at all. Back in 2007, the … [Read more...]
How a Beethoven Tweet Broke Our Twitter Feed (And Other Lessons About Social Media Today)
A few weeks ago we posted a link in ArtsJournal to a piece in the Toronto Star under the admittedly provocative headline: "Time To Retire Beethoven's Ninth?" In the piece, John Terauds, who used to be the Star's staff classical music critic, suggested it might be time to put away the Ninth Symphony for a while. Why? In his words: We have the 19th-century ideal of strength in unity — … [Read more...]
Five Story Highlights From The Past Week 02.19.17: Trapped By PACs, New WTC As Cautionary Tale, Exploiting Humanities Workers
Last Week: Have performing arts centers led us to a dead end?... The new World Trade Center in New York demonstrates much of what is wrong with building today's cities... The humanities only exist on the exploitation of its workers... Here's the structure that makes the Grammys racist... A pocket history of fake news. In case you missed it, ArtsJournal published Joe Horowitz's essay on the … [Read more...]
Join Us Today For A Livestream: Artistic Leadership In A Border City
Following on Joe Horowitz's essay Lincoln Center Snapshot: Bing, Bernstein, and Balanchine Fifty Years Later and the five responses to his provocation, we're in El Paso, Texas today for a conversation about artistic leadership in a city literally divided in two - El Paso, Texas on one side of a border fence and Juarez, Mexico on the other side. The University of Texas, El Paso and the El Paso … [Read more...]