Music scholars insist that if we listened to music the way a musician would, understanding how notes trigger feelings, how tones take on their own textures and meanings, then we might experience something more visceral and expansive. We could push deeper into every song. – The Paris Review
In America, art is helping prisoners adapt to life outside
“Those leaving prison face daunting obstacles, from barriers to employment to stigma and isolation. It became evident, [says Gregory Sale, an artist based in Arizona who focuses on prison in America and works in the growing field of ‘social practice’ art], that achieving acceptance in society is ‘a cultural problem. So the question became, how can we find cultural solutions to that?’ With his help, more than 100 people have done so by illustrating their own transformations — and their determination to make the most of their second chance.” – The Economist
Small Colorado Public Radio Station Takes Over Two Festivals
KSUT in Ignacio, Colorado was given the Folk N’ Bluegrass festival, which brings in about 2,000 attendees per day and the Four Corners Folk Festival, which draws nearly double that. – Current
Ivo Pogorelich Releases His First Recording In 21 Years. So How Did It Go?
“With such a long hiatus — and Pogorelich’s track record — the release demands a certain critical wrestling to the ground, in terms of his once-lauded genius, and of broader questions, including where performers draw the line between artistic freedom and obligation to the composer.” – NPR
Canadian Service Dogs Watch Live Theatre As Part Of Their Training
A polite crowd of about a dozen future service dogs attended an August performance at Ontario’s Stratford Festival as part of their training. While a silent curtain call might disappoint actors, the dogs’ spellbound stillness is a great sign for their future handlers. – CNN
Director Of Napa’s Di Rosa Collection: Sadly, But We Have No Choice But To Sell
“Unfortunately the simple reality is that the organization was never set up with sufficient funds to properly care for the collection and the physical plant long-term much less offer meaningful contributions to our community.” – Artforum
Do Our Brains Know The Difference Between Print Books And Audiobooks?
No. “The subject’s brains were creating meaning from the words in the same way, regardless if they were listening or reading. In fact, the brain maps for both auditory and visual input they created from the data looked nearly identical.” – Discover
Remaking – And Getting Rid Of – The Top Ten List
Emily Nussbaum, TV critic for The New Yorker, is over the “false hierarchy” of TV shows, especially when they center men behaving badly. “It’s not about creating a new hierarchy. It’s about exploding the false status anxiety and, to a certain extent, the gender bias that’s basically kept all of those [female-centered] shows categorized as ‘optional’ shows that girls and teenagers watch. It’s like: topple the top 10 list, the anxious hierarchy. Look across the universe at different kinds of creativity.” – The Millions
Cassette Tapes Make An Indie Return In France
Yes, in terms of numbers, “the cassette is a needle in a haystack. … Nevertheless, it is there, flag of a community of aficionados in revolt against modernity and the music industry.” – Le Monde
College Bureaucrats Are (Successfully) Trying To Kill The College Newspaper
School newspapers usually aren’t independent from the schools they’re trying to cover. And that’s a big, big problem. “When professional pundits talk about dangers to free expression on campus, they typically refer to a handful of incidents in which colleges have revoked invitations for controversial speakers. This, however, is a fringe issue, confined to a small number of universities. The real crisis of campus speech lies elsewhere—in the erosion of student newspapers.” – The Atlantic
Being An Instagram Influencer Isn’t As Easy As It Used To Be
There’s a brand of young straight men who are “relying on the gifts of biology to flesh out a personality. It works for a while, because viewers like to be complimented and to watch an attractive, familiar talking head give them a pixelated smile on a lonely day.” But to be truly successful – i.e. to make money as an influencer – the young dudes need a lot more. That’s where agents come in. – Hyperallergic
Apple Hired Hundreds Of Contractors To Listen To Siri Recordings – And Has Now Laid Them Off
This is how the recently revealed program worked in Ireland: “Fixed-term workers in Cork were hired to listen to and ‘grade’ Siri recordings. …Staff then transcribed and ‘graded’ these recordings based on a number of different factors.” Now those contractors – around 300 people – have been laid off by Apple. – The Irish Examiner
The New Streaming Reality Is Looking More And More Like The Bad Old Days Of TV
The rise of digital video is bringing back more than just bloated bundles and bills. Many companies are returning to TV’s original business model: selling you anything and everything but the television show in front of you. – The New York Times
How “Sesame Street” Revolutionized Teaching Using Music
Since its inception in 1969, the public television show has redefined what it means to teach children through TV, with music as its resounding voice. Before “Sesame Street,” it wasn’t even clear that you could do that; once the series began, as a radical experiment that joined educational research and social idealism with the lunacy of puppets and the buoyancy of advertising jingles, it proved that kids are very receptive to a grammar lesson wrapped in a song. – The New York Times
Conductor Leo Driehuys, 87 – He Built The Modern Charlotte Symphony
“He was a very strong face for the Charlotte Symphony, but he worked his butt off behind the scenes with the power players in Charlotte. He got people to realize that this was something important to put money into because it was good for the city.” – Charlotte Observer
Fascinating Rights Issue: After Dispute, Taylor Swift Says She’ll Re-Record Her Early Albums
The singer reached an impass with her recording label, which owns masters of the original songs. So Swift says she’ll simply re-record them all so she has control. Travis Andrews untangles the copyright implications. – Washington Post
Comfort Reading: In Defense Of Returning To The Same Book Over And Over
Rebecca Jennings — who confesses to having read each of the Harry Potter books at least ten times and insists she’s “not advocating for laziness” — points to research on “repeated hedonic experiences” that explains why those repeated experiences are hedonic (that means pleasurable) and, in fact, good for you. – Vox
Cruising For Art – The Bizarro World Of Cruise Ship Art Auctions
One gimmick in particular stood out: A pair of works presented turned away from the audience, and sold as one lot, without any idea of what they looked like. “They are going to be two of the most gorgeous works of art that anyone has ever seen,” Borotescu promised the audience. “Once you turn it around, if it’s something you don’t like, you don’t have to keep it.” – artnet
Anish Kapoor’s ‘Orbit’ — AKA Boris Johnson’s Giant Erector-Set/Sliding Board — Is Millions In Debt
The 376-foot sculpture was commissioned by Johnson, then London’s Mayor, for the 2012 Olympics, and he had hoped that it would become London’s answer to the Eiffel Tower (7 million annual visitors) or the Statue of Liberty (over 4 million). But Orbit never even cracked the 200,000-visitor mark — not even after it was bailed out by tycoon Lakshmi Mittal (which is why it’s now named ArcelorMittal Orbit) and Johnson had Carsten Höller add a sliding tube for which admission is now £17.50 ($21). (Maybe that’s why visitorship is down more than 20% from its peak.) Total debt on the contraption is now £13 million ($15.7 million). – Artnet
UK Entertainment Unions Lament Decline In Arts Journalism
The letter states that recent job losses for arts critics at the Guardian and the Evening Standard highlight this issue. It goes on to quote figures from the List magazine that reveal the number of reviews in eight major national and arts titles dropped from 5,134 in 2012 to 3,169 in 2017. – The Stage
Are We Reaching The Point Where Dancers Need Big Social Media Followings Just To Get Hired?
“New York City-based choreographer and director Jennifer Weber once worked on a project with a strict social media policy: ”Hire no one with less than 10K, period’ — and that was a few years ago,’ she says. ‘Ten thousand is a very small number now, especially on Instagram.’ … It’s unsurprising that profit-driven dance enterprises lead the pack when it comes to leveraging artists’ exposure; policies at nonprofit dance organizations are generally less defined or even in place. (Multiple major ballet companies declined to speak with us on the record for this story.)” – Dance Magazine
L.A.’s Flagship Arts Complex Was Built As A Shining, And Remote, City-On-A-Hill. Will Its Redesigned Central Plaza Make It More Welcoming?
“We shouldn’t be a white castle on the hill. Our new vision is about deepening the cultural life of every resident in the county. That is a very outward vision,” says Los Angeles Music Center CEO Rachel Moore. Carolina Miranda looks at the Music Center plaza’s new redesign — “less a full-blown re-do than a careful surgical intervention” — and whether it will serve that vision. – Los Angeles Times
Saying He No Longer Feels Welcome As A Refugee, Ai Weiwei Is Leaving Germany For Britain
“[The dissident artist] said he initially chose Germany after leaving China as it had worked so hard for his freedom, but now felt that Germany had changed and he was once again an exile. ‘Today, due to the political conditions in China, I have again been forced out,’ he said, accusing Europe of pandering to Beijing on human rights so as to win more business.” – Thomson Reuters
The “Times Change” Excuse for Past Antiquities Misdeeds: Kapoor/Metropolitan Museum Edition
“Times change” is a time-dishonored argument for justifying moral lapses, whether they’re #MeToo transgressions (Plácido Domingo) or retention of antiquities that were likely looted (Philippe de Montebello). Those accustomed to the old rules need to get with the new program: The operative slogan has changed from “Times change” to “Time’s up!” – Lee Rosenbaum
Drag In Paris, Nouvelle Vs. Old-School
There are still transformiste cabarets, with what might be called female impersonators (talk about old-school) lip-synching impressions of famous chanteuses for an audience little different from the one at the Moulin Rouge. There’s also a booming new RuPaul’s Drag Race-influenced scene of drag queens (and kings) who invent their own characters — and, writes Laura Cappelle, “the joie de vivre at most events I attended was practically un-Parisian, with no neutral colors or existential gloom in sight.” – The New York Times