Their names were Sister Föben, Sister Katura, and Sister Hanna, and they were members of the Ephrata Cloister, a radical commune of Pennsylvania Dutch Evangelicals in the mid-1700s. Baritone and musicologist Chris Herbert (of New York Polyphony) has digitized and transcribed the manuscript in which these composers’ hymns (“just devotional, simple music,” he says) were found, rounded up four singers, and recorded the works in the Ephrata Cloister Meetinghouse. – NPR
Indianapolis Symphony Cancels 2020-21 Season
A statement released jointly by the musicians and management said, “We recognize the challenges presented to the ISO by the pandemic and unforeseen economic. For those reasons, the 2020-21 indoor season will not go as planned.” Next summer’s outdoor concert series, Symphony on the Prairie, remains on the schedule. – Indianapolis Star
Richmond Symphony To Return To The Concert Hall
The new season will include in-person Masterworks concerts at the Carpenter Theatre at the Dominion Energy Center in September, October and November. The capacity of the Carpenter Theatre will be reduced from 1,800 to fewer than 400 to allow 6 feet of distance between seats. – Richmond Times-Dispatch
What Do You Do To Thank Brooklyn Hospital Workers During The Pandemic?
If you’re Los Angeles artist Michael Gittes, you paint 1800 small pieces of work, one for each worker, and deliver them to Brooklyn. The artist: “I decided to paint flowers because even though these people are all part of a big beautiful garden, I wanted them to know they were all individual flowers, and without them, there would be no garden. I wanted it to have a ‘secret admirer’ kind of vibe.” – Washington Post
Lotty Rosenfeld, Artist Who Protested The Chilean Dictatorship With Her Art, Has Died At 77
Rosenfeld, “through the simple act of creating a line on a street in Chile, mounted an important artistic and political intervention against an oppressive government.” – ARTNews
Blockbuster Movies Are Delayed Again, Indefinitely
With fresh spikes in the virus in the U.S., studios delay releases again, and “hopes for a speedy substantial resurgence at the global box office were dashed.” – The Guardian (UK)
Writer Walter Mosley Has Some Thoughts On How The Pandemic Will Change Humanity
The mystery and TV writer says maybe we’ll be better at responding to dangerous events in the future – or at least some of us will be. – LitHub
For A Musician At The Intersection Of Art, Community, And Activism, Awards Seem Superfluous
Martha Gonzalez sings with the band Quetzal and has a new memoir out as well. When the band was nominated for (and won) a Grammy, “Quetzal never showed up to the pre-Grammy gala. Instead, they did the most Quetzal thing ever: They opened the doors to the Breed Street Shul in Boyle Heights, invited every band from East L.A. that had ever been nominated for a Grammy and threw a concert. Who needs a Grammy when you have community?” – Los Angeles Times
Why Did Much Of Human Communication Move From Gestures To Oral Language?
Hands convey meaning, and they have for eons, but they’re not our primary means of communicating to each other. “People gesture, but their gesture is clearly a secondary supplement. People also sign but, outside of deaf communities, they favour speech. So, if language did get its start in the hands, then at some later stage it decamped to the mouth. The vexing question is: why?” – Aeon
Jane Austen’s Politics Of Walking
Since quarantine, a lot of us have been doing a lot more walking in our neighborhoods or wherever we can find to go outside without a bunch of people nearby. Austen would understand. “A special awareness flows through a body as it propels itself through the world—the motion, whatever form it takes, is habitual and characteristic for us as we move, but in a way that seems at the same time to make us more able to notice a bug on the sidewalk, the hat of someone approaching. Walking, we draw ourselves and our world together.” – LitHub
San Francisco Art Institute Can Eke Out At Least One More Year
The school said in March that it was likely to close, but after more than $4 million in donations, the 149-year-old institution says it can open in the fall for one more full year. But it will need to raise money, specifically from the sale of art by faculty and alumni, to keep afloat after years of declining enrollment. – Hyperallergic
Getting Through Quarantine With New Sherlock Material
Sure, sure, Arthur Conan Doyle died long ago, and both the BBC and CBS versions of modern Holmes have hung up their deerstalkers, but there’s always new Holmes material out there. Except … where is the movie, or better yet, a multi-year series, for Mary Russell? – Los Angeles Times
American Theatre Was Slowly Moving Toward Gender Equity, And Then The Virus Struck
The Kilroys list this year goes beyond what should be in the future to commemorate what we lost this year. It’s “a heartbreaking timeline of lost art, necessary art, groundbreaking art, unconventional art, art created by voices aching to be heard.” – Los Angeles Times
New Orleans Without Live Music Is A Weird, And Economically Devastated, Place
New Orleans has more than 130 live music venues, most of them smaller (some far smaller) than the average size venue in the country. The city’s restaurants and tourist industry rely on the live music, of course. And “until there’s a vaccine, an entire musical ecosystem is in suspended animation—and with it, the rest of the city.” – Slate
A Filmmaker In The Grip Of An Endless Quest For Perfection
The Avatar sequels are delayed – again. That’s the seventh delay, in case you’re counting. Will they ever happen? And what’s going on with James Cameron? – Vulture
Kennedy Center Makes Additional Deep Cuts
The cuts are needed to address the financial challenges of the pandemic-related shutdown, Kennedy Center president and chief executive Deborah Rutter said in an interview. The arts center projects a $23 million budget shortfall for the 2020-2021 season. – Washington Post
You Can’t Social Distance Dance. So…
Dancers, unlike baseball players, may not be known for virus-spreading habits like spitting, but their job poses multiple risks. They work in studio spaces with varying degrees of ventilation, they share dressing rooms, they touch, they are prone to heavy breathing. Under what conditions should dance companies consider getting back into the studio during the pandemic? The protocols to be put in place are dizzying. – The New York Times
‘The Robert Caro Of Hawaii’
“As the decades passed, [David W.] Forbes [has] painstakingly tracked down archival portraits of people alive in that era, in libraries and private collections throughout the islands. That set him on a half-century hunt for clues about the dynastic line of Hawaiian royals. … [One eminent colleague] believes that Forbes’s life work — the four-volume Hawaiian Bibliography and The Diaries of Queen Lili’uokalani — will be used by scholars for decades to come.” – Literary Hub
Refugee Who Wrote Award-Winning Memoir Via Texts Sent From Internment Camp Granted Asylum
“Behrouz Boochani, the Kurdish Iranian exile and journalist who became the voice of those incarcerated on Manus Island” — an island off the coast of Papua New Guinea where Australia maintains a camp for refugees who try to reach the country by sea — “has had his refugee status formally recognised by New Zealand, and granted a visa to live there.” – The Guardian