Glass, responding to a question: “I’ve done quite a few operas, and probably close to a third to a half of them have political themes. It’s only really in the opera house, or in the theater, and sometimes in the dance hall, that the composer can initiate a discussion about social justice and politics. Mostly, we’re just writing. Symphony No. 11 doesn’t have any of that: It’s just about music.”
Archives for January 2017
Hamilton Is Doubling The Seats Available In Its Lottery
Good news, Hamilton lottery fans: “Beginning Tuesday, 46 seats per performance at the Richard Rodgers Theatre will be available on the day-of, through the musical’s digital lottery.”
Tania Bruguera Pulls Work From Bronx Museum, Claiming It’s Complicit In Cuban Censorship
The artist, who has been detained and also jailed in Cuba, says, “There is a long tradition of artists withdrawing art [from exhibits] for moral reasons.” Now she’s going to join them.
What Movies Sold At Sundance, And Why Some Of Them Might Actually Succeed
Well, this is cheery: “Judging by the totals in Park City this year, buyers are feeling optimistic. Very optimistic. Whether it’s traditional players like Searchlight and Sony Pictures Classics, newer movers-and-shakers such as Amazon and Netflix or even upstarts like Neon and FilmRise, wallets have been opening up over the last week at Sundance.”
Now, Conservatories Need To Train Students To Speak As Well As They Sing
As composers embrace a wide variety of vocal styles, “introducing budding opera singers to the experimental side of the genre isn’t necessarily a fool’s errand.”
Apps Have Made Contacting A Congress Member Easy, But Congress Is Not Ready
Members of Congress can only hire 18 staffers total, ever. But communication keeps on growing. “In many cases, it’s not that Congress can’t hear you. It’s that the flood of voices so overwhelms the bureaucratic machine that any one citizen becomes hard to hear.”
What Are Artists And Institutions Supposed To Do With Trump’s Executive Order Travel Bans?
The ban on travelers from seven countries affects just about every cultural institution and academic institution, especially in New York. A concert promoter who specializes in contemporary Persian music: “‘Tonight I have a concert in L.A.,’ she said, with an American-born Iranian artist, Fared Shafinury, whose band has some immigrant members. ‘I’m just so afraid that this is going to be my last concert.'”
Author Roxane Gay Pulls Her Book From Simon & Schuster, Citing Their Plan To Publish A Book By A Far-Right Favorite
Part of Gay’s statement: “I was supposed to turn the book in this month and I kept thinking about how egregious it is to give someone like Milo a platform for his blunt, inelegant hate and provocation. I just couldn’t bring myself to turn the book in.”
What Does A Conductor At Carnegie Hall See From The Podium?
NYT in 360 has the answer, or rather the view, as Daniel Barenboim conducts the Staatskapelle Berlin.
Some Upsets, And A Lot Of Political Speeches, At The SAG Awards
The response to Friday’s immigration and refugee orders came fast at the awards show in LA: They “kicked off with Ashton Kutcher welcoming viewers and ‘everyone in airports that belong in my America. You are a part of the fabric of who we are. And we love you and we welcome you.'”
The Black Women Who Made New York – And Reshaped The World
Women like Audre Lorde and Clara Hale didn’t just affect New York; they “likewise reshaped the ways in which nearly all members of society think about our relationships to one another. The legacy of these pioneers was on display last weekend all over the world, where humans of every gender, age and persuasion took to the streets.”
Top AJBlogs Posts For The Weekend 01.29.17
Glittering Athletes
AJBlog: DancebeatPublished 2017-01-28
Magazines Submitted Little Fiction To The Contest, So A Prize Fades Away
Author Anthony Marra: “Writing, editing, and publishing short stories in literary magazines is a labor of love for all involved. … They aren’t clickbait. They don’t make much noise or much money. And yet the best of them long outlast the paper on which they were first printed.”
Mary Zimmerman Tries A Fourth Time At The Met With ‘Rusalka’
This opera might be the one that works for her: “If she never quite found her footing in the rigid conventions of bel canto, there is more in common with her theater work in the later, dreamier, more epic ‘Rusalka.'”
You Thought Sundance Might Be An Escape From Politics? Ha!
Founder Robert Redford: “We try to stay away from politics, per se. We stay focused on what are the stories being told by artists.” The stories being told, though, could easily be seen as political.
What’s Going Down At The Ballet World’s Youth Grand Prix?
Raw ambition wrapped in hoodies and pearl earrings, of course.
Emmanuelle Riva, Star Of ‘Hiroshima mon amour’ And ‘Amour,’ Has Died At 89
Riva received an Oscar nomination for her work on Amour. “‘[Amour] is such a wonderful, marvellous, extraordinary gift,’ she said in 2012. ‘I cannot tell you how happy I am. Completely happy. The whole thing is like a fairytale.'”
How The Los Angeles Art World Has Dealt With The Inauguration And First Days Of Trump
“Many gestures were modest, but in sum they revealed that the advent of the Trump presidency is no ordinary moment in American cultural life.”
Anthony Goldstone, Pianist Who Recorded CDs At A Record Pace, Dies At 72
Goldstone recorded prolifically – and, with his wife Caroline Clemmow, produced recordings of hundreds of works for four hands. “He also delighted in excavating unpublished or unfinished pieces which he would complete himself and record. A disc of Mozart, for example, featured a number of works left unfinished at the composer’s death – including a D minor Fantasy and a Präludium in C – fragments which were reconstructed and completed with skill and sensitivity.”
This 1956 Opera About Courageous And Doomed French Nuns Could Not Be More Relevant
To draw the connection between Poulenc’s “Dialogues des Carmélites” and this very moment: “When mosques have been burned in Florida and Washington State, when a Muslim can be removed from a plane for reading or speaking in Arabic, when a registry for U.S. Muslims is being discussed as a real possibility, it’s worth looking back at the anti-religious hysterias of earlier times. The intolerance is the same; only the clothes and the book are different.”
These People Built A Ponzi Scheme Around ‘Hamilton’ Tickets – And Got Caught
They “raised about $81 million from at least 125 investors in 13 states who were told their money was being pooled to buy large blocks of tickets to be resold for a profit.” Instead, the guys spent the money on private school tuition, jewelry, and casinos.
The Rather Long History Of Robots In Western Art
For instance: “Religious art from the 16th and 17th centuries includes gorily realistic sculptures of the dead Christ covered with blood and faces of the Virgin apparently shedding wet tears: to animate such statues was just another way to awe and move the Catholic pious.”
If Physical Books Endure – As They Surely Will – Let’s Make Sure They Do It For The Right Reason
It’s not about money. It’s about the senses. “As an empirical matter, reading on a tablet cannot remotely approach the sensual literary experience offered by an old-fashioned book. The latter is, I’d venture, intrinsically more pleasurable than the former, not unlike the intrinsic difference between high quality toilet paper and the sandpaper stuff used in bus stations.”
Yes, 1984 Relates To Us *Right Now*
Oh heck, let’s read a few pages: “Where did that knowledge exist? Only in his own consciousness, which in any case must soon be annihilated. And if all others accepted the lie which the Party imposed — if all records told the same tale — then the lie passed into history and became truth.”
Why 1984 Keeps Needing New Print Runs And Everyone Is Tagging Margaret Atwood On Twitter
Because we’re suddenly living in a dystopian novel, or something like it, we keep wanting to read more and more of them.