Here’s what three hypothetical artists of different sizes might be pulling down for each album they make, based on musician interviews and industry gossip.
How Architecture Gets Off Track: Focusing On Trivial Details
“In a context hugely dominated by specialization, the generalist gets very strange opportunities. There are very few people left to connect the dots. Being a laymen with curiosity, which both of them often are, becomes a virtue.”
Pricing For Tickets To Live Events Has Gotten Crazy. So…
“Simply put, nobody wants to pay prices in the middle anymore… So the arts have figured out how to play the upmarket game. But what about the other end? Where is the Dollar Tree of the arts?”
Dreams Delivered to Your Door Daily
“The poet Mathias Svalina is offering an unusual take on the subscription service model. Throughout the month of June, he will write and deliver dreams to everyone that subscribes to his Dream Delivery Service.” (Available only within delivery area.)
Eve Ensler Shakes You Up
The playwright-impresario-activist who created The Vagina Monologues starts out an interview talking about her One Billion Rising movement to combat violence against women – and ends up, by discussing her near-deadly bout with cancer, affecting her interviewer’s relationship with her own body. (includes video)
How The Internet Has Impacted Our Lives
“Whether we like it or not we are caught up in these flows of technology and as we are carried along by the flows, some barely visible to us, it becomes increasingly difficult to stand back and distinguish between what is good about these innovations and what is not.”
Turning Brainwaves Into Music (Literally)
Put an electrode at the back of your head, and watch a cellist play your thoughts. [VIDEO]
The British Love Fussy Architecture, Says Guy Who Headed Up The Stonehenge Visitors Center Debacle
“The English, he maintains, have what he calls ‘a sweet-tooth aesthetic’, a taste for ornamentation. That taste, he suggests, explains why each square metre of Lincoln Cathedral cost 10 times more than its French equivalents.”
A Life Utterly Devoted To Ballet
“‘Janet Sassoon gave her life to dance like the maiden to the volcano,” says choreographer Alonzo King, who has known Sassoon for decades. ‘Complete, total, unequivocally committed, as a performer, teacher and coach.'”
Our Audio And Video History Is Disappearing. Can We Save It?
“Video tape and audiotape is not a stable format. After 40 or 50 years, they are disintegrating. And the information—pictures, sounds on that physical medium—is disappearing. Unlike a piece of paper or a photograph that might last 100 years, media formats are extremely fragile.”
Sure, She Won A Pulitzer, But What Was Maxine Kumin Like In The Classroom?
“The thing that’s depressing is teaching graduate students today and discovering that they don’t know simple elemental facts of grammar. They really do not know how to scan a line; they’ve never been taught to scan a line. Many of them don’t know the difference between lie and lay, let alone its and it’s.”
How Can Jazz And Classical Get Some Attention On Streaming Services?
“Services such as Spotify and iTunes don’t handle the more complicated metadata very well, often rendering music in these genres harder to discover and sort. But building a tailor-made private playground cut off from huge pools of listeners is an even worse attempt at a solution.”
Maxine Kumin, Pulitzer Prize-Winning Poet Who Loved The Sound Of Poetry, Dead At 88
“If there was a thematic constant in Ms. Kumin’s work, it was the fragile yet reassuringly durable balance in which connection, rupture and continuity find themselves arranged. All poems are elegies at their core, she often said.”
Magicians Buy Into The Mirror Theory Of Vermeer’s Paintings
Penn Jillette (of Penn & Teller): “It’s a big, big hairy deal … as time goes on, it will change the way everybody sees 17th-century art.”
When Is The Right Time To Make Movies About A War?
During WWII, for instance, filmmakers in the West never showed the complexity and cruelty of war, but “today, it does seem to be possible for film-makers to be brutal and realistic before the conflict is over.”
UK Regional Theatre Bosses Warn Of A Tough Year Ahead
“The economic climate is still tough, particularly in the regions, which is a major part of our business. I think it’s going to be little by little that we see these things turn around and audiences coming back.”
Why Charles Dickens’ Dying Wishes Are Being Ignored
Dickens stipulated that when he died there should be no memorial to his life, save his writings.
Visual Art – Prices Up, Value Down?
“Going back as far as the Renaissance, artists have had an uneasy relationship to patrons and the money they offer. And the fear of mass commercialization has been a perennial theme of art at least since the days of the pop artists a half century ago. But something different is in the air today.”
Trafalgar Square Gets A Thumbs Up For Its Fourth Plinth
David Shrigley’s Really Good is a 10-metre high hand with an elongated thumb, crafted from bronze. Shrigley, who was shortlisted for last year’s Turner Prize, said his work was “slightly satirical but also serious at the same time”.
Pops Conductor Richard Hayman, 93
“Mr. Hayman was the St. Louis Symphony’s pops conductor from 1976 until the pops concerts were discontinued in 2002. He was also the chief arranger for the Boston Pops Orchestra for more than 50 years, under both Arthur Fiedler and John Williams, and conducted pops concerts in Detroit, Hartford and other cities in the United States and Canada.”
The Thieves Who Stole The Strad (What Were They Thinking?)
“It appears we had a local criminal who had an interest in art theft and was smart enough to develop a plan for a robbery. Beyond that, we don’t know what his motive was.”
Removal Of A Picasso From A Historic Building Is A Tragedy
“In view of its exceptional attributes, its importance in Picasso’s development, and its close association with the Seagram Building almost from the moment of the tower’s completion, it seems astonishing that the painting is unprotected by the landmark status accorded the Four Seasons interior in 1990.”
CBC President Predicts Hard Times For Canadian Network
“We are projecting significant financial challenges: a weak advertising market across the industry, lower-than-expected schedule performance in the key 25-54 year-old demographic on CBC Television, lower than expected ad revenues from Espace Musique and CBC Radio 2, and the loss of the NHL contract.”
Six Canadian Museums Start Project To ID Nazi-Looted Art
“It’s unclear how many so-called “spoliated” cultural objects – paintings, sculptures, drawings, graphics, prints and decorative works obtained illegally or by force from European institutions and private collectors by Nazi German authorities between 1932 and 1945 – may be housed in Canadian art museums.”
The Real Fraud In The Japanese Ghost Composer Case
“It’s one thing to paint or write or compose something and pass it off as the work of an established, famous artist, like the fake Jackson Pollocks the Knoedler gallery sold to well-heeled buyers. That’s fraud. It’s another thing to create a work of art that is destined to enter the world under false premises, like the Mozart Requiem.”