Jennifer Dautermann, director of the Classical:NEXT festival in Berlin: “Exactly this – listening to and learning from each other, is what I and my team are trying to help the art music world to do. What similarities can be found? Who is doing what? Which initiatives are working? Which are not? If not, why? There is no one answer, no one solution or strategy for engaging and reflecting the artistic and listening population in any given community. There are, however, basic, universally applicable key questions to ask oneself when setting off on the quest.” – NewMusicBox
Air Guitar Has Now Become A Genuine Competitive Sport
“Beyond the humorous, ironic façade of these performances is a sincere craft that has exploded in popularity over the past couple of decades.” Ethnomusicologist Byrd McDaniel explains how it came to be. – The Conversation
Digital Life Is Changing Our Brains. How You Read Turns Out To Be Important
There are old rules in the brain’s design that do not change: Use it or lose it. I would add, Choose it. A great deal hangs on how we work as a society to choose who we want to be—whether we choose to preserve the use of deep reading processes across every medium in our young and in ourselves as we expand our technologies. The stakes are multiple for our next generation: the capacity to discern truth; to appreciate and create beauty; and to be transported outside themselves—to encounter the thoughts and feelings of others so as to contemplate their own novel thoughts, the basis of our shared future. – Pacific Standard
Confederate Statues In Charlottesville Are Protected As War Memorials, Rules Judge
In 2016, the Charlottesville City Council voted to remove statues of Robert E. Lee and “Stonewall” Jackson that were erected in the 1920s. (It was this vote that the notorious 2017 Unite the Right rally was protesting.) A group called the Monument Fund sued to have the vote reversed, arguing that Virginia law forbids cities to remove war memorials; the city maintains the statues are, in effect, monuments to white supremacy. The state judge wrote in his ruling, “the statues to [Lee and Jackson] under the undisputed facts of this case still are monuments and memorials to them, as veterans of the Civil War. … It does no good pretending they are something other than what they actually are.” – The Daily Progress (Charlottesville)
$4.7 Million Artemisia Gentileschi Painting Greets Patients In Doctor’s Waiting Room
The self-portrait of Gentileschi as St. Catherine of Alexandria, purchased by the UK’s National Gallery last year, is currently in a GP’s office in East Yorkshire; before that, it was at Glasgow Women’s Library. The painting is touring “as part of a scheme reminding people that the National Gallery’s collection belongs to the nation.” (How are they keeping it from getting stolen?) – The Telegraph (UK)
Stanford University Cuts Off Funding To Stanford University Press
“Provost Persis Drell told the Faculty Senate Thursday that the university was ending that funding. She cited a tight budget ahead, due to a smaller than anticipated payout coming from the endowment. (The endowment is worth more than $26 billion and is the fourth largest in American higher education.)” – Inside Higher Ed
Using Chickens, Kate Winslet, And Theatre To Help Fight Climate Change
Australian theatre artist David Finnigan’s first piece on the subject was, perhaps imprudently, titled Kill Climate Deniers. (It was about an attack by, er, highly motivated environmental activists on the parliament in Canberra.) Reporter Steve Dow has a look at Finnigan’s new show, You’re Safe Til 2024, which, yes, involves chickens and Kate Winslet (Titanic version). – The Guardian
Author Who Withdrew YA Fantasy Novel After Accusations Of Racism Decides To Release It After All
In January, as advance readers were getting a look at Amélie Wen Zhao’s first novel, Blood Heir, she received some furious attacks on social media saying that the depiction of slavery in the book’s alternate world was “anti-black.” So Zhao asked her publisher to cancel the book’s release. Now, a few months and a few revisions later, she’s changed her mind. – The New York Times
Spotify Passes 100 Million Subscriber Mark
“The number of users willing to pay for the [music streaming] service soared 32% in the first three months of 2019 compared with a year earlier, Spotify said on Monday.” – The Guardian
Mark Richter, Who Founded Two Opera Companies In San Antonio, Dead At 51
The former tenor founded San Antonio Pocket Opera in 1995, and over 16 years he developed the company into what is now San Antonio Opera, presenting full main-stage works. He left that company in 2011 as it began what became a financial crisis, and the following year he founded a chamber opera company now known as Alamo City Opera. – San Antonio Express-News
Protesters Have Banana Eat-In At Poland’s National Museum After Culture Ministry Pulls Video Of Woman Eating Banana
“The 1973 video Consumer Art, by prominent artist Natalia LL, showing a young woman eating a banana with great pleasure, was removed from the National Museum in Warsaw last week after the new museum head, Jerzy Miziolek, was summoned to the Ministry of Culture.” And once word got around, scornful protesters did what we’d expect them to do. – Yahoo! (AP)
The New Black Market For Fakes? Instagram
Selling counterfeit goods is illegal on Instagram, but according to a recently released report by data analysis firm Ghost Data, Instagram has become “the top showcase platform for counterfeiters” on the web, and anyone with an Instagram account has a doorway to a “multibillion-dollar underground economy.” – Fast Company
Back To The Future: A Short Film Of Montreal’s EXPO 67, One Of The Most Successful World’s Fairs Ever
Originally assembled as ‘an invitation’ to the fair during its six-month run, this short features artfully captured shots of Expo 67’s many attractions – including a still-standing geodesic dome designed by Buckminster Fuller, breezy monorail rides, avant-garde art and architecture, and a curious number of clowns. – Aeon
Analyst: Ads On Netflix Are Inevitable
“I think there will become a tipping point where ads come back. Netflix is ad-free now. I can’t imagine a world where Netflix will be ad-free forever. If you look at their content costs … that’s where addressable advertising and new ad formats will come in.” – CNBC
Counting Costs Of The Chicago Symphony Strike
The relationship between musicians and management stands foremost in need of repair, with pointed words having been exchanged in both directions. Is there any positive feeling left? – Chicago Tribune
TheatreWorks Silicon Valley Wins 2019 Regional Tony Award
“The award recognizes the influence TheatreWorks has had on the art form locally and nationwide, as an incubator for scores of artists, developing and premiering countless new works, many of which have gone on to long life elsewhere.” – San Francisco Chronicle
Filmmaker John Singleton Dead At 51 Following Stroke
“[He] was the first African American and the youngest-ever Academy Award nominee for best director [for Boyz N the Hood]. He wrote [that film’s] screenplay, which was also an Oscar contender, as a student at the University of Southern California.” His career later became more commercial, with such films as 2 Fast 2 Furious, Four Brothers, and a remake of Shaft starring Samuel L. Jackson. – The Washington Post
Philadelphia Museum Of Art To Lend Works To Smaller Museums Around Pennsylvania
“Dozens of works of art from the Philadelphia Museum of Art will be lent over the next three years to a network of … eight regional museums, from Allentown to Erie, in an initiative art officials say is one of the largest in-state sharing programs in the nation.” – The Philadelphia Inquirer
Washington Ballet Finds Its Next Executive Director At Florida Orchestra
Michael Pastreich served as CEO of the Tampa Bay-based Florida Orchestra, the state’s largest, for 11 years. He steps in at the Washington Ballet for outgoing executive director Michael Mael. – The Washington Post
1,000 Experts Beg Macron: Don’t Rush The Rebuilding Of Notre-Dame!
“[1,169] leading conservators, curators, academics, architects and engineers” — among them former Met Museum director Philippe de Montebello and Delphine Christophe, chief conservator at France’s Centre des Monuments Nationaux — “have signed an open letter urging the French president Emmanuel Macron not to bypass experts in his rush to rebuild Nôtre-Dame-de-Paris after it was ravaged by fire on 15 April.” – The Art Newspaper
Is Bollywood In The Tank For Indian Prime Minister Modi?
In the lead-up to India’s current elections, a recent Modi biopic, a film about a 2016 military raid against Pakistan, and a high-profile trip of two dozen stars to take selfies with the PM all have critics wondering if India’s film industry is trying to campaign for the incumbent. Reporter Amrit Dhillon suggests that it’s not that simple — or, rather, that it’s simple in a different way. – The Guardian
Les Murray, Australia’s Leading Poet, Dead At 80
“One of Australia’s most successful and renowned contemporary poets, Murray’s career spanned more than 40 years. He published close to 30 books. … In 2016, he was named by The Atlantic as one of the greatest English language poets of his time.” – The Guardian
The Split Personality Of Trying To Make A Venice Biennale That Reflects Where We Are Now
Curator Ralph Rugoff: “Now that we live in a world in which you can go online and find out in two minutes that there never was a curse brings up interesting issues that seem relevant to this time.” – The Art Newspaper
Change the dance, change the world
Bob Fosse and Jerome Robbins: two artists whose choreography is tightly locked into the DNA of the silver-plated shows they helped create. New choreography for those shows? It’s about ever mother-lovin’ time. – David Jays
The Pro Ballet Dancer Who Rose From The Refugee Camps
Ahmed Joudah began life in a Palestinian refugee camp in Syria, auditioned for the main ballet company in Damascus as a completely self-taught dancer when he was 16, then had to flee Syria when the civil war broke out. Now, he says, “I’m a dancer and dance is my passport. But when it comes to the official papers, I have no passport. I’m a stateless refugee, so I have no home. I have no place to go back home, to build a life.” – Deutsche Welle