David McVicar, in town to rehearse a new staging of Don Giovanni: “I think they thought about the outside before they thought about the inside. The problems of the Joan Sutherland [Opera Theatre] are extreme. It’s a very quirky space, it is inadequate for opera, it just simply is.”
Larry McMurtry On Downsizing His Bookstore, His Favorite Books, And The Biggest Threat To Bookstores Today
“The worst: crazies, meth-heads. Anyone can walk into our bookstore in the age of meth — it’s a constant worry.”
So When Cardinal Wolsey And Henry VIII Fell Out, These Angels Got Lost – And Now The V&A Really Wants Them For Britain
“It is rather extraordinary that the four angels should turn up. Having these angels associated with two of the most famous names of English history, never mind 16th-century English history, is really rather astonishing.”
What (Musical) Kids Compose Over The Summer, And Why
“This is a piece that reflects the life of a G, F, or A type star. This pulls together two major interests of mine: astronomy and composition. This piece is for a middle-sized orchestra with the addition of saxophones, but a few future projects I had in mind would be smaller chamber works. Specifically, I wanted to write a piece about the western United States.”
How Dolly Parton – And Dollywood – *Are* America
“Parton’s skill at being many things to many people accounts for the diversity of her fan base, capacious enough to hold drag queens and the sorts of hard-core emotional supplicants depicted in the documentary For the Love of Dolly, as well as the more mainstream country fans who surrounded us at her parade, which kept going long after Parton had fled the scene.”
Scientists Are Trying To Build A Model Of The Human Brain. Here’s Why That Might Not Be Very Smart
“Models and imaging provide the veneer of precision; they appear to be objective, quantifiable measures of the brain. Pictures of brain activity: You can’t get more scientific than that! We just look at where the brain lights up, and that tells us … what, exactly? And that’s the problem.”
Why ’78 Records Aren’t Like Any Other Recording
“The way that 78s are nothing like LPs has to do with the music recorded on them. 78s are often the only remaining example of a recorded song. Since metal masters were usually not made of 78 recordings, as Petrusich puts it, “if the records themselves break, or are crammed into a flood-prone basement, or tossed into a dumpster, then that particular song is gone, forever.” It took a couple of chapters to really sink in for me. But think about that for a second: There are amazing songs out there that no one living today has ever heard, or will ever hear.”
Why Are Popular Songs More Or Less The Same Length?
“Since 1990, it seems that the average song length has sort of stabilized around 250 seconds (over 4 minutes). Maybe that’s because humans prefer 4 minute songs. Clearly there is no technological limit to song length anymore, right? So, did new technologies influence song length?”
We Could Honor Artists By Selling Detroit’s Art?
“A good deal of the outrage directed at the idea of selling off art from Detroit’s museum is a backlash against the vague idea that doing so would mean rejecting art as a whole, or would amount to a declaration that the residents of Detroit do not deserve to enjoy art. On the contrary. I can think of no higher expression of Van Gogh’s artistic worth than the fact that Detroit could—with the sale of a single one of his paintings—provide water to all of its citizens.”
Is Naming a Luxury Hotel After Him The Best Way To Honor One Of Italy’s Legendary Marxists?
“Enraged by a report that, as well as occupying Gramsci’s old home in Piazza Carlina, the hotel would bear his name, the academics, historians and architects have mobilised against the plan.”
Why Has Hollywood Box Office Plunged This Summer? Maybe Because…
“Familiarity also breeds contempt. Contempt breeds indifference. And when audiences feel like they’ve seen something, or someone, once too often, they start consulting their iPhones to check the weather and put off the movies for another week.”
Ryuichi Sakamoto Has Throat Cancer
The keyboardist/composer made the revelation on his website, announcing that he would be unable to attend the Sapporo International Art Festival, of which he is the guest director.
Convincing People To Come See Your Show, Even If It’s Free
“That the majority of people don’t go to the theatre is fine: it’s a free choice. But when too many people think it’s not for them, that’s a problem. They would have an amazing time if they just rocked up one night.” So this artistic director went to a supermarket parking lot to talk people into coming, one at a time.
Amazon’s Proposal To Hachette Authors Is An Offer They Can’t NOT Refuse
“Whether or not Jeff Bezos knew it – and any educated guess is that he did – Hachette was going to decline that proposal. And as Amazon knew well, the authors and agents themselves had no power to take it up on the deal.”
England’s Publicly-Funded Venues Aren’t Reaching New Audiences: Report
“Venues funded by Arts Council England are failing to attract new theatregoers and are instead relying on a core regular audience, the findings of a new report have shown.” Who is pulling in new people? The West End.
BBC To Let Its Producers Make Shows For Other Networks
“BBC director general Tony Hall has unveiled plans to allow the Corporation’s in-house production teams to make content for rival broadcasters, as part of a shake-up he has described as a ‘competition revolution’.”
Top Posts From AJBlogs 07.10.14
Timken Intrigue, Part 2: The Power Play
AJBlog: Real Clear Arts | Published 2014-07-11
More on Expanded Clark Art Institute: Added Art, Hidden Entrance, Unintended Water Feature
AJBlog: CultureGrrl | Published 2014-07-10
Like they used to
AJBlog: About Last Night | Published 2014-07-10
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British Dance Council Seeks To Ban Same Sex Ballroom Dance
“The British Dance Council is to consider proposals that would define a dance partnership as having to consist between a man and “a lady” on 21 July, just before a major competition in Bournemouth. If it is passed, it will ban same-sex couples from mainstream contests, regulating them to same-sex-only categories.”
Scholarly Journal Retracts 60 Articles In Review Scandal
“The reason for the mass retraction is mind-blowing: A “peer review and citation ring” was apparently rigging the review process to get articles published. You’ve heard of prostitution rings, gambling rings and extortion rings. Now there’s a “peer review ring.”
Pressure On Local UK Governments To Turn Art Into Cash To Fix Budgets
“A 4,000-year-old Egyptian statue has been sold by Northampton Borough Council for nearly £16m – and there are calls for more local authorities to cash in on their art and artefacts as councils come under financial strain.”
Report: French Museums Are Badly Run
“The preliminary document, released Wednesday after eight months of research and ahead of a full report due at the end of the year, cites several shocking oversights; for example, the Louvre is critiqued for storing Classical sculptures in a subterranean chamber that could not be properly evacuated in the event of an overflow of the Seine river.”
Is Arts Council England Penalizing The English National Opera For Being Adventurous?
“We are told that ENO is being penalised for failing to meet audience targets. But a theatre devoted to artistic adventure is bound to risk occasional box-office failure: it was precisely to buttress such eventualities that the subsidy-principle was established. If we are back to measuring artistic success by the old bums-on-seats philosophy, then we are truly heading back to the dark ages.”
Emmy Scorecard: By Show And Network
Here’s the complete list of Emmy nominees for 2014.
Sales Of Tablets Have Stalled. Has Our Imagination Run Dry?
“Tablets have become as mundane as the PCs whose decline they hastened. Instead of radical hardware innovations, the maxed-out market is racing toward as many screen sizes as shoe sizes.”
These Days We Map Everything. Here’s What We Lose By Doing That
“We are all cartographic obsessives these days. It’s great in some ways, but it also feeds into the unhealthy situation in which if we don’t know exactly where we are and where everything else is in relationship to us, we start prodding our screens and thinking something is amiss. This is profoundly disempowering, for it suggests that without constant expert advice, we would all be driving in circles or off cliffs.”