Conductor (and Minnesotan) William Eddins has a little list. A few samples: “There is such a thing as bad publicity.” “Independent audits of a non-profit are essential. It’s much harder to agree on a direction for an organization if you can’t agree on the basic facts.” “Most people don’t know the difference between a lock-out and a strike.” “The easiest way to fulfill the prophecy that ‘the orchestra is going down the toilet’ is to flush it yourself.”
Cable Providers Start Including Netflix As A Channel (How Streaming Is Eating TV)
“The cable outfits involved in the deal are relatively small, covering only about 500,000 people across the country, according to The Washington Post. But they’re putting Netflix right alongside traditional cable channels.”
Dominic Dromgoole: Other Countries Understand Shakespeare Better Than We Do
“Belarus Free Theatre, for instance, understand more about political violence and how that can impact on emotions than we do. An Urdu Taming of the Shrew understands the idea of being told by your father that you’re going to be married newt Sunday better than we do.”
Just In Case You Wanted To Hide A Barn, These Architects Can Make It Invisible For You
“It’s a trippy optical illusion, particularly when you realize you can walk through the passageways like a door. By turning the building into an apparition, the focus is shifted from the man-made structure back to the natural world.”
Laptops Destroy Our Ability To Remember Our Notes
“The lightening-quick speed of typing encourages listeners to transcribe what they’re hearing without actually paying attention to what’s being said—a note-taking approach that has been proven ineffective.”
Spain Is Going On A Quest To Find The Remains Of ‘Don Quixote’ Author Cervantes
“Forensic scientists say the ground and walls of the oldest part of the convent would be the focus of the search, using ground-penetrating equipment to map objects under the earth.”
Hans Hollein, Architect Who Designed With A Sense Of Humor, Dies At 80
“It was entirely in character that Mr. Hollein made his worldwide reputation in the 1960s designing a shop, barely 12 feet wide, devoted to candles.”
Were Producers Just Toying With Artists In ‘A Night With Janis Joplin’?
“Assured by producers that their jobs were safe, actors skipped auditions for other musicals. Band members signed apartment leases. Investors wrote more checks for the show.” And then it all imploded.
A Few Artists Get A Lot Of The Money: Why?
“Artists who are good at getting funded are raising money for projects they want to do at least six months from now, not raising money to dig themselves out of the hole they’re in today.”
What Makes For A Good Popcorn Movie – And Why We Need Them In The Summer
“One summer craving at the top of my list is for something, anything fresh. It can take any number of forms, I’m not picky.”
The Backlash To The ‘Sharing Economy’ Doesn’t Bode Well For U.S. Innovation
“Established companies, aware of the precariousness of their franchises, are determined to maintain their position. … These rearguard actions assume a zero-sum economy where every gain for innovative entrants is a loss for incumbents.”
Nigerian Censors Delay Opening Of Film About Biafra
“A film board spokesman told AFP there were ‘regulatory issues’ with the film but that it wasn’t ‘officially banned.'”
San Diego Opera Puts Director Ian Campbell On Leave
“The Campbells will no longer be involved in the day-to-day operations of the organization, but they are still being paid and are technically still part of the company.”
Women Are (Bizarrely) Still Underrepresented In Media – Why?
“On the front page of The New York Times, the study noted, men were quoted three times more often than women. When women were writing the stories, the number of women quoted went up.”
Before The Corcoran Breaks Up, It’s Got To Answer These 22 Questions
“What about my wedding?? Your wedding will go on as planned—if it’s on the books now,” but “by all indications, the building could be going dark in 2015.”
Uproar After Pop Star Puts Out Call For Professional Dancers To Perform For Free
“There’s an assumption that people will work for nothing to get exposure and, of course, that undermines the profession. One would assume they would have enough money to pay dancers who were involved in a music video.”
Jazz At Lincoln Center, Success Story
“Today, ten years after moving into its new home (and against considerable odds), JALC has created a template for building a thriving cultural institution for jazz.”
Amsterdam’s Glorious Rijksmuseum Defaced By Banal Post-Its
Alain De Botton “thinks we’ve got art all wrong. He doesn’t like the way museums are organised and finds the usual little wall labels, with their dates and movements and snippets of art history, unhelpful. Ideally, he envisages museums reorganised according to therapeutic functions – with a basement of suffering, leading upwards to a gallery of self-knowledge on the top floor. It’s like Dante’s circles of hell.”
Censoring Books in Libraries? C’Mon…
“So…are the barbarians pounding down the doors of America’s libraries? Not hardly. A grand total of 307 challenges to the books on the Top 10 list and others like them were reported to the ALA last year. That’s chump change in a country of 318 million people.”
English As A Second Language: A New Wave Of Writers Melds Cultures
A new literary diaspora has taken shape, propelled, as Isabelle de Courtivron has written in “Lives in Translation: Bilingual Writers on Identity and Creativity,” by “immigration, technology, postcolonialism and globalization,” powerful forces that have “dissolved borders and increased cross-cultural mobility.”
The FCC Proposes To End Net Neutrality. So Is This The “End Of The Internet As We Know It”? Here’s What You Need To Know
“It’s a complicated topic, and one that is prone to a certain amount of hysteria and hyperbole. So what follows is a breakdown of what you need to know, and what some legal experts, technology insiders and advocacy groups are saying about it.”
Ben Heppner Talks About His Career
“I see myself now the same way I have since I walked into the Metropolitan Opera competition in New York in 1988. There were Renée Fleming and Susan Graham, both looking gorgeous. Everyone expected them to win. And all of a sudden, this lumpy guy from Toronto walks in.”
The Toronto Symphony Has A New Leader. But Two Of The City’s Other Major Arts Organizations Are In Need Of Extraordinary New Chiefs
“In each case, what’s needed is not just someone to do what the previous leadership did, but a wizard who can reinvent the place and persuade Toronto arts lovers there’s an exciting new creative energy at these venues, not just a rerun of the familiar and predictable.”
Video Games As Sport In Stadiums (China’s Building One)
“Live gaming competitions such as those to be be staged at the new arena on Hengqin periodically fill arenas and draw huge online audiences. A League of Legends competition last November attracted 32 million viewers, and a Call of Duty tournament last month included a $1 million prize purse.”
The Decline Of Rome (It’s Serious)
The Italian capital that is increasingly squalid and close to bankruptcy. Residents say the city barely functions anymore, crime is up and one of the world’s great cities has gone into serious decline.