“[Ira] Aldridge’s career as an actor was exceptional, and not just for a black actor at that time. He traveled farther, was seen by audiences in more countries, and won more medals, decorations, and awards than any other actor of his century.”
Unknown Bootlegs From Bob Dylan’s 1965 Tour Surface – And They Were Made By Allen Ginsberg
“With some interruptions, they document two Dylan shows from 1965, near the beginning of that fateful tour: one in San Francisco on September 11, 1965, and the other in San Jose from the following evening. As you might expect, the performances are enough to knock you out, but the sound quality is up and down.” (Alas, they’ve been removed from YouTube.) Andy Cush tells the story.
Former Director Of The V&A Martin Roth, 62
When he retired as director of the London’s Victoria and Albert Museum (V&A) last October he was in good health, but cancer was diagnosed immediately after he left.
Did They Just Discover The House Of Jesus’s Disciples? (Not Yet)
The headlines got ahead of the actual news in this case, but here’s what the archaeologists did find: the site of an ancient city on the north shore of the Sea of Galilee that they believe was Bethsaida, named in the Gospel of John as the hometown of the apostles Peter, Andrew, and Philip.
When Art Of The Present Tries To Compete With Art Of The Past – It’s An Act Of Blindness
“Modern Painters, Old Masters argues persuasively that artists have succeeded in reimagining earlier work without engaging in aggressive competition—the kind that Édouard Manet, for example, appears to have relished when he transformed the softly modeled nude in Titian’s Venus of Urbino (1538) into the flat planes of a defiantly naked Olympia (1863)… Like the nineteenth century, our own moment is one at which the expansion of museums and new technologies for the dissemination of images have combined to make the history of art-making open to view as never before.”
The Santa Monica Symphony Invited A Conservative Talk Radio Host To Conduct A Fundraiser. Cue Protests
The “decision caused immediate outrage among some members of the symphony, and a number of them are refusing to play the fund-raiser, saying that allowing the orchestra to be conducted by Mr. Prager, who has suggested that same-sex marriage would lead to polygamy and incest, among other contentious statements, would be tantamount to endorsing and normalizing bigotry. Some are even encouraging others not to attend the concert.”
New Music Festival In Dublin Is A Great Example Of Conflicted Vision
Behind the scenes its experience has been like that of a child of warring parents, and its development has been pulled this way and that by the vested interests of its steering group.
The New College Minority: Men
This fall, women will comprise more than 56 percent of students on campuses nationwide, according to the U.S. Department of Education. Some 2.2 million fewer men than women will be enrolled in college this year. And the trend shows no sign of abating. By 2026, the department estimates, 57 percent of college students will be women.
Twitter Vigilantes Poison Social Media Discussion Of Young Adult Novels
“Led by a group of influential authors who pull no punches when it comes to calling out their colleagues’ work, and amplified by tens of thousands of teen and young-adult followers for whom online activism is second nature, the campaigns to keep offensive books off shelves” – often waged by people who haven’t read the novel they’re condemning – “are a regular feature in a community that’s as passionate about social justice as it is about reading.”
Public Broadcaster Sues LaVar Burton Over “Reading Rainbow”
The suit alleges “copyright infringement, conversion, cybersquatting, violations of the Lanham Act, breach of contract and interference with customer relations,” and seeks profits from LeVar Burton Reads, which Burton did describe on the podcast itself as “a Reading Rainbow for adults.”
Are Dancers’ Brains Wired Differently? Evidently So
Recent studies “reveal that dancers use multiple areas of their brains simultaneously while dancing: one part controls movement without expressive intention, another part imagines movement qualities and these parts work to execute movement while also making higher-level decisions.”
Peter Martins’s And Darci Kistler’s Daughter Arrested For Felony Burglary
Talicia Martins, a 21-year-old undergraduate at Bard College, and a friend allegedly broke into three storefront businesses in Camden, Maine and stole more than $1,000. Both have been charged with burglary and felony theft.
$78,000 Of Debt For A Harvard Theater Degree That’s Not A Real MFA – And Alumni Blame Diane Paulus
“Despite being at the world’s wealthiest university, institute students receive modest financial aid and leave with a median of $78,000 in debt in exchange for a master of liberal arts degree from the Harvard Extension School.” Said one alum, “Getting this degree basically guaranteed that I wasn’t able to pursue it as a career because I immediately had to get a job to pay for the education I received.”
Shakespeare & Company’s Tina Packer Has Now Directed All 37 Of Shakespeare’s Plays
“I never thought consciously, ‘Oh, I’m going to do them all.’ But I started noticing a progression in his writing of the women. In the beginning they’re either shrews or sweet young things, but by the time he gets to his late plays, he says: ‘Guys, you have to go with what the women say. Otherwise we’re all lost.’ That really made me want to keep going.”
Opera Director Lee Blakeley Dies Suddenly At 45
He first got himself noticed with a provocative staging of Handel’s Clori, Tirsi e Fileno in London’s leading gay nightclub. He worked extensively at Covent Garden, San Francisco and Los Angeles Operas, Opera Theater of St. Louis, and especially Santa Fe Opera; his highest-profile project in Europe was directing a series of American musicals (in English) at the Théâtre du Châtelet in Paris.
These Folks Won’t Let Tourism And Pricey Real Estate Chase Them Out Of Venice – They’re Squatting
With houses in the city selling for a million euros or so as vacation homes, working- and middle-class Venetians have been getting priced out of their hometown. “Now an organized movement of illegal squatters is laying claim to abandoned, dilapidated housing.”
Netflix Buys Itself A Comic-Book Company
“Netflix has made its first acquisition, buying the Glasgow-based comic book company behind Kick-Ass and Kingsman, as it looks to imitate Marvel-owner Disney’s superhero strategy.”
Philadelphia Orchestra Gets $5 Million To Spotlight Its Concert Hall’s Organ
The program, “which is to begin this coming season, will make the orchestra and the Kimmel [Center] even more organcentric: commissioning new works; programming additional organ concertos and orchestral works that weave organ in and out of the overall texture; holding community concerts, recitals, and postlude concerts; and providing real-time program notes that explain the way the organ works.”
Top Posts From AJBlogs 08.07.17
Sunrise, Sunset and Subjective Connections
Can we name a universal aesthetic experience, one that all peoples around the globe have encountered from the beginning of humanity to the present? Probably not. But if we wanted to come close, we could … read more
AJBlog: Infinite Curves Published 2017-08-07
The Artist in His Studio – Matisse: and These are a Few of His Favourite Things
The artist’s studio is different things to different people. I’ve been in quite a few of these (often magical) spaces. The first I can remember is Barbara Hepworth’s in Cornwall, and most of what … read more
AJBlog: Plain English Published 2017-08-07
Backenroth And Fischer, Stenmark & Piatruba
Swedish bassist Hans Backenroth and Danish guitarist Jacob Fischer played in the 11th century Klosterkyrkan, not far from Ystad’s center. Among the most experienced European jazz … read more
AJBlog: RiffTides Published 2017-08-07
Milstein vs. Szigeti
My frustrations with a recent performance of Brahms’ Violin Concerto sent me to youtube in search of something different: an act of therapy. … read more
AJBlog: Unanswered Question Published 2017-08-06
Some Existential Questions About Music And Artificial Intelligence
“Whether businesses or researchers, these teams are trying to answer the same question: can machines create music, using AI technologies like neural networks to be trained up on a catalogue of human-made music before producing their own? But these companies’ work poses another question too: if machines can create music, what does that mean for professional human musicians?”
Veteran Arts Admin Bob Booker Has Some Words Of Advice As He Retires
“In regards to arts advocacy in general, we need to take a new approach that places the arts as a vital, engaging activity of tremendous value to Americans. Too often we approach advocacy and communication with our heads bowed and our hands out: “Please sir, can you save the arts? Can you save my organization that has been in the red for years and would you maybe consider following your state’s policy that requires arts programming in schools?” We are too timid, too afraid of offending and are perceived as impotent, ineffectual and incompetent.”
Chuck Close, Marina Abramovic, Kara Walker And Others Condemn Calls To Cancel Dana Schutz Show In Boston
The National Academy artists wrote in response to Boston protesters asking the ICA to cancel the Schutz show because of her painting Open Casket, which is of the open casket and broken face of Emmett Till and was roundly criticized at the Whitney Biennial. The painting is not in the ICA show. The artists wrote, “It is also of the utmost importance to us that artists not perpetrate upon each other the same kind of intolerance and tyranny that we criticise in others.”
Aphra Behn, Playwright And First British Woman To Make A Living Through Writing, Was Also A Spy
The playwright was wildly successful, but “beyond her successes on the stage and in fiction, Aphra Behn was a Royalist spy in the Netherlands and probably South America. She also served as a political propagandist for the courts of Charles II and his unpopular brother James II.”
Britons Will Get The Right To Be Forgotten Online Just In Time For Brexit
In addition to the right to having any site, including Facebook, delete all trace of personal data, people will find that “companies will also have to ask people for permission to collect personal data rather than rely on pre-selected tick boxes.”
Two Members Of The Band Pussy Riot Have Been Detained (Again)
The Russian feminist punk band members had been protesting another artist’s prison sentence in Siberia when they were detained by police. One of those detained, Maria Alyokhina, was convicted of “religious hooliganism” and sentenced to two years in prison for performing a “punk prayer” in Moscow in 2012.