There should be a book about all the changes orchestras went through in the last few decades. I’ll be doing posts on some of the things I think should be in this book, often things that aren’t revealed publicly. Here, to start, are a couple of examples. – Greg Sandow
Sontagian Revulsion: My Notes on “Camp” at the Metropolitan Museum
Camp: Notes on Fashion begins promisingly with a deep dive into the early history of camp, including the derivation of that designation as an aesthetic category (first known usage: Molière). But its sprawling, diffuse finale embodies the “camp” worldview at its worst, as it devolves into a parody of a museum exhibition. – Lee Rosenbaum
Then There’s This: Brecker With Holmquist And The UMO
We have been meaning to call to your attention to an instance in which – unlike, say, the trade talks between the US and China – international cooperation works beautifully. – Doug Ramsey
4 Musicians Chart 100 Years in the Life of a Man Who Ran Away From Slavery
“Esteban Montejo was over 100 before the world knew his story. Born a slave in Cuba in 1860, he escaped and lived for years in the jungle until slavery was abolished on the island in 1886. He fought in Cuba’s war for independence from Spain and lived through Castro’s communist revolution.” Composer Hans Werner Henze read a book about Montejo’s life and went to visit him, and the result was Henze’s “recital for four musicians,” El Cimarrón — which soprano Julia Bullock programmed as the finale of her residency at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Zachary Woolfe talks with Bullock, bass-baritone Davóne Tines, and director Zack Winokur about presenting and performing the piece. – The New York Times
Just How Enlightened Was The Age Of Enlightenment?
“It has been said, indeed, that the eighteenth century was less the Age of Reason than the Age of Feelings—because so many Enlightenment thinkers took pride in recognizing the importance of the sentiments, as their intellectual predecessors often had not. (In Hume’s famous line: “Reason is and ought only to be the slave of the Passions.”) The aim of building a rational society meant contending with the ways in which human beings are not creatures of sweet reason. And that meant, in turn, having some way of deciding what rationality demanded.” New York Review of Books