Charlie Parker’s Yardbird may be the Apollo’s first opera, bur it won’t be its last. Next up, in fall 2017: We Shall Not Be Moved by composer Daniel Bernard Roumain and librettist Marc Bamuthi Joseph, with choreographer Bill T. Jones directing.
Archives for March 2016
Top Posts From AJBlogs 03.30.16
The platform problem
Apple, Inc. has done a(nother) clever thing. In the midst of helping its customers succeed in individual goals through its iPhone and iOS systems, the company has also built resources to help groups and individuals … read more
AJBlog: The Artful Manager Published 2016-03-30
Since We’re Voting, There’s This Artistic Conundrum
Lest you think I have no sense of fun from my last post, which chastised the Indianapolis Museum of Art for outsourcing its exhibition planning to the public, I thought I would mention an instance … read more
AJBlog: Real Clear Arts Published 2016-03-30
Orwell’s Typewriter, Meet Wold’s Bar Stool
Yesterday’s blogpost, The Strange Case of Orwell’s Typewriter, elicited some interesting remarks, only some of which were posted to it. One sent to me privately came from the California artist Kurt Wold. After posting … read more
AJBlog: Straight|Up Published 2016-03-30
Vacation Report And A Limerick
We spent our brief vacation in Santa Barbara, California, visiting our son. We slept, walked, hung out with friends and ate well. One of the walks was to the end of Stearns Wharf, a pier … read more
AJBlog: RiffTides Published 2016-03-30
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This Is How Much TV Millennials Watch
For this survey, Nielsen split up millennials into three categories to accurately capture how they operate: “Dependent Adults” (Stage 1), living in someone else’s home; “On Their Own” (Stage 2), living in their own home without kids; and “Starting a Family” (Stage 3), living in their own home with kids.
The Los Angeles Times Reimagines How It Will Cover Books
“With these 10 writers, we will investigate our culture through the conversations that books anchor, in deep dives and in real time. We will explore the mysteries of reading and writing; consider the achievements, acknowledged and under-acknowledged, of the writers who have come before; question the roles of race, heritage, class and gender in what we read; take on the vagaries of the publishing industry, and more.”
Watching ‘Batman V. Superman’ In 4D So You Don’t Have To (And It’s A Good Thing You Don’t)
“4DX purports to further immerse you in your film experience with these physical effects. Why simply watch Superman get rained on when you can get uncomfortably wet at the same time? Why just commiserate with Batman when he’s punched in the back by an evil henchman, when you can get punched in the back by your very own chair? Genius!”
Libraries Are In Decline. That’s Just Fine
“The BBC have just done a survey of library services in which they have found that 8000 library jobs have gone in the last five years and 340 libraries have been closed. On the face of it, that’s bad news. More signs of the pressure “austerity” is putting on council services? Actually no, not in this case. It’s a reflection of our habits.”
Why Batman *Versus* Superman? Why Do Fans Want To See Them Fight?
“We want to see them fight because, to an unusual degree even for comic books, the fights mean something. That is, they are about something – or some things. Namely: how to make a better world, with Superman operating through hope and inspiration, and Batman through fear and intimidation. As the villain Lex Luthor puts it in the new movie, it’s ‘god versus man, day versus night.'”
Do Grammar And Spelling Errors Drive You Nuts? Here’s What Such Pickiness Says About You
“Researchers found that introverts were more likely than extraverts to rate people as poor potential housemates if their spelling or grammar was bad. There were other findings – agreeable people, perhaps unsurprisingly, were easygoing when it came to grammos. Conscientious people tended to see typos as a problem.”
Embroiled In Messy Divorce, Toronto Symphony CEO Jeff Melanson Resigns
After revelations contained in a messy divorce filing earlier this month, Melanson was on the defensive. The TSO announced the move in a statement released Wednesday morning, thanking Mr. Melanson for his “many positive contributions” to the organization.
The Bolshoi’s Backstage Wizards
“Whereas 240 years ago the Bolshoi company consisted of just 43 members. Now the theater’s staff numbers more than three thousand. Not just performing artists, [Bolshoi director Vladimir] Urin says, but ‘a whole army of skilled technical staff – stagehands, makeup artists, costume designers, and lighting technicians.'”
All-Women Shows Are Popular Again
“While some artists are ambivalent about being viewed through the lens of gender, the all-women’s group show, which fell out of favor in the ’80s and ’90s, is flourishing again. At least a dozen galleries and museums are featuring women-themed surveys, a surge curators and gallerists say is shining a light on neglected artists, resuscitating some careers and raising the commercial potential of others.”
High Art Has Lost Its Allure For The Rich. What Does That Mean For Our Culture?
“Classics and antiquity have lost cultural cache in the age of disruption, and there is no longer an aristocratic imperative to support noble projects of lofty ambition. Today we’ve neither dutiful Kings, Vaticans, or robber barons to seduce the hoi polloi into complicity with visions of the transplendent. Nor do the experiments in democracy we deem “states” seem to be doing much better, having withdrawn much of the already measly funding available for highbrow cultural endeavors.”
Ten Surprising Facts About The Bolshoi Theater
For instance, it was once owned by an Oxford mathematics professor, and at one point Stalin had to talk Lenin out of tearing it down.
Artist Draws Picture Of Trump And His Penis. Swift Backlash Follows
“The backlash was quick and fierce. Within two days of its posting, Facebook took down the picture and banned Gore from posting on the site. Around the same time, someone claiming to represent Trump called her and threatened legal action. Days later, she received a notice from Facebook that reported her for infringement of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA). And then there’s the constant threats online.”
Palmyra Has Been Liberated From ISIS. Now To Tally The Destruction
“There are thousands of archaeological sites across Iraq and Syria, and although the Islamic State seems to be more efficient at moving antiquities, it is operating within a large, established system of looters.”
Ten Times The Arts Influenced Politics
This could be a much longer list – and it doesn’t even mention art’s role in AIDS awareness. But art has often help change our politics…
A Brief History Of Ventriloquism (It Freaked Out The Ancient Greeks)
“You might not think of Lamb Chop, the adorable hand puppet that graced the appendage of world-famous ventriloquist Shari Lewis, or the impertinent wooden dummies operated by Edgar Bergan as having ancestors, but they do. One of them is a snake in a human mask. But let’s back up.”
Could Animals Experience Spirituality?
“If we encountered a group of humans who returned to the same trees over and over and performed the same inexplicable action near them and didn’t seem to have any practical reason to do so, there would be lots of people who would interpret it through the prism of religion.”
Our Algorithm Will Find Which Manuscripts Will Be Bestsellers, We Promise
“Inkitt is marketed as ‘the world’s first data-driven publisher’. The company has built an artificially intelligent algorithm that analyses users’ reading patterns to predict future bestsellers. Once a future bestseller is found, Inkitt works with publishing houses to get these novels to print.”
How The Metropolitan Opera Puts Together A New Production
“It is grand opera done grandly in an era of budget pressures and challenges in attracting new audiences. To capture the work that goes into a staging that will be performed just eight times this season – an expensive, labor-intensive undertaking that helps explain why the Met’s budget will be almost $300 million this year – James Estrin, a photographer for The New York Times, observed weeks of rehearsals.” (photo journal)
An Oral History Of The World’s Most Important Comedy Club
“Booker Estee Adoram is still formidable, the bathrooms are still awkwardly placed, and the ‘family table’ is still terrifying. Even as much as the Comedy Cellar hasn’t changed over three decades, the talents who got their starts there have transformed the comedy world. Jon Stewart, Colin Quinn, Judy Gold, and more comedians share memories of the cramped basement venue that made their careers, and that they still call home.”
Women-Only Art Shows Are Back
“While some artists are ambivalent about being viewed through the lens of gender, the all-women’s group show, which fell out of favor in the ’80s and ’90s, is flourishing again. At least a dozen galleries and museums are featuring women-themed surveys, a surge curators and gallerists say is shining a light on neglected artists, resuscitating some careers and raising the commercial potential of others.”
Crystal Bridges Museum To Turn Kraft Cheese Plant Into Contemporary Art Center
“The 63,000-square-foot space is intended to function somewhat in the way that MoMA PS1 in Long Island City, Queens, serves as an edgier, more experimental affiliate of the Museum of Modern Art. It is expected to open in 2018, … and the location, in downtown Bentonville, [Arkansas,] would not only provide a place to show more contemporary art but would also continue a transformation of the small city.”
The Anti-Celebrity Of Great Pianists
“[He] turns out to have been a poor (and uninterested) self-promoter. … He never entered a major competition. He was uninterested in late Romantic concertos. … His book Piano Notes (2002) remained conspicuously silent about his own career. A mind of insatiable curiosity produced one of the greatest writers about music from any era. No surprise that his pianism was both misunderstood and undervalued.”
When Meryl Streep Got Slapped By Dustin Hoffman (And Won Her First Oscar For It)
“Benton heard the slap and saw Meryl charge into the hallway. We’re dead, he thought. The picture’s dead. She’s going to bring us up with the Screen Actors Guild. Instead, Meryl went on and acted the scene. … As far as she was concerned, she could conjure Joanna’s distress without taking a smack to the face, but Dustin had taken extra measures. And he wasn’t done.”