“For the moment, at least, paper remains the standard to which digital media can only aspire.”
By The Numbers: Classical Music’s Appalling Gender Gap
“It’s a shocking gender gap among classical music’s soloists and conductors, and talented women are being prevented from having the successful careers they deserve.”
What Alain de Botton Doesn’t Understand About Art
“If Alain ruled the world – let’s say he were one of Plato’s philosopher-kings (never mind that Plato distrusted art and wished to banish it) – museum captions would offer more than bland, neutral facts like name and date, but moral instructions ‘appropriate’ to the work of art, prompting us to, for example, ‘remember to be patient’.”
Dolora Zajick Gives Terry Gross a Singing Lesson
Okay, Terry doesn’t sing on the air, but the dramatic mezzo teaches the Fresh Air host about Italian pronunciation, head resonance, placing the voice to project, and the importance of the tongue. (audio)
Dreamworks To Invest $2.4 Billion In Shanghai Entertainment Center
“This will become the world’s third great urban center of entertainment and arts alongside New York’s Broadway and London’s West End,” said DreamWorks Animation CEO Jeffrey Katzenberg.
Barack Obama, Patent Troll Slayer?
“Even now, a perfect storm of patent reform is brewing in all three branches of government. Over time, it could reshape intellectual property law to turn the sue-and-settle troll mentality into a thing of the past.”
Art Taken From Museums By Ukraine’s Ousted President Is Returned
“Ukrainian museum officials and campaigners had complained for years that works were being taken from museums by government officials and not returned, or were being replaced by copies.”
San Diego Opera to Shut Down
Said executive director Ian Campbell, “Over the last several years, we have lost a number of prominent contributors, frequently because of death, but especially during the recent economic downturn … The demand for opera in this city isn’t high enough.”
One of Canadian Ballet’s Top Male Stars Moves On
After 23 years, National Ballet of Canada principal Aleksandar Antonijevic is retiring – to become a photographer.
Busby Berkeley Biopic in the Works
“Warner Bros. Pictures is giving Busby Berkeley the biopic treatment, with Ryan Gosling circling to play the famous director and choreographer of musicals from Hollywood’s golden age.”
UK to Offer Tax Breaks for Touring Stage Productions
“Touring plays, musicals, operas, ballets and dance productions will receive a tax credit, in the form of cash back, worth 25% of their costs, while all new non-touring shows will be entitled to a 20% credit.”
Why the Unplugging Movement Doesn’t Really Make Sense
“But how quickly the digital age turned into the age of technological anxiety, with our beloved devices becoming something to fear, not enjoy. What sex was for the Puritans, technology has become for us. We’ve focussed our collective anxiety on digital excess, and reconnecting with the ‘real’ world around us represents one effort to control it. … [Yet] is it any less real when we fall in love and break up over Gchat than when we get fired over e-mail and then find a new job on LinkedIn?”
Cinema Needs Short Films – And We Need More Places to See Them
Richard Brody: “The classic device for releasing short films – the compilation film, for which filmmakers are brought together to make new work on a unifying theme – is, despite its noble pedigree, almost dead. … Good short films don’t get the attention that they deserve, which is all the more grievous as there are some terrific short films being made.”
Sundance Institute Branches Into TV
“The nonprofit Sundance Institute on Wednesday said it would begin an episodic storytelling workshop (or ‘lab’ in Sundance parlance) for writers and creators of programs for television and online platforms.”
New L.A. MoCA Director’s Plan: Don’t Just Do Something, Sit There
“Philippe Vergne says his first task as the new director of L.A.’s Museum of Contemporary Art is not to act quickly but to think and plan deeply.”
J.R.R. Tolkien’s ‘Beowulf’ Translation Will Finally See Print
“Although the author completed his own translation in 1926, he ‘seems never to have considered its publication’, said Christopher Tolkien … The book, edited by Christopher Tolkien, will also include the series of lectures Tolkien gave at Oxford about the poem in the 1930s, as well as the author’s ‘marvellous tale’, Sellic Spell.”
Joseph Kerman, Musicologist and Critic, Dead at 89
Best known for his dismissal of Tosca as a “shabby little shocker” in his 1956 book Opera as Drama, Kerman “was a man of many parts: a scholar whose work on such topics as Beethoven and the Renaissance madrigal reflected deep research and study; a disciplinary gadfly who almost single-handedly changed the direction of academic musicology; a powerful and influential teacher; and a prolific public intellectual.”
Top Posts From AJBlogs 03.19.14
Deconstructing a Revelation
AJBlog: Engaging Matters | Published 2014-03-19
The Irreverent Genius of Jeremy Denk
AJBlog: CultureCrash | Published 2014-03-19
Concert star describes 7-hour ‘Orwellian’ ordeal in UK Immigration
AJBlog: Slipped Disc | Published 2014-03-19
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Music Industry Now Earns More From YouTube Fan Videos Than From “Official” Videos
“User-generated content, which includes mashups and fan-made music videos, are actually generating more money for record labels than the official music videos posted by record labels.”
That Downturn In Global Music Sales? Turns Out Japan Was Reason For The Big Drop
“The 16.7% slump in Japanese sales caused world figures to slide by 3.9%. But European music consumers had a buoyant year, registering their first growth for 13 years, while digital sales in the US rose by 3.4%.”
How Much Difference Does a Play’s Title Make?
Jon Robin Baitz’s first title for Other Desert Cities was Love and Mercy. Tennessee Williams initially gave Cat on a Hot Tin Roof the title A Place of Stone. And then there’s Urinetown – did that one hurt, help, or both?