“The 250-year history of circus would have been very different if a man from Newcastle-under-Lyme had got on better with his father, and been happy to become an apprentice cabinet maker. … Philip Astley … in 1768 drew a 13 metre (42ft) diameter ring on the ground and filled it with men and women standing on the backs of cantering horses plus clowns, jugglers and other marvels – [and thus] the modern circus was born.
He Gave Up A Strad For A 27-Year-Old Violin, And He’s Very Happy About It
“There are violinists who talk about Strads, which are old, and Zygs, which are less old. The violinist Chad Hoopes, who used to play a Strad, now plays the other. The word ‘newer’ would have been tidier in that first sentence. But ‘less old’ seemed appropriate after Mr. Hoopes, who went from playing a Strad made in 1713 to playing a Zyg made in 1991, said that the Zyg is ‘not a new violin.’
‘It’s older than I am,’ he added, quickly.”
Michael Tree, Founding Violist Of Guarneri Quartet, Dead At 84
“‘Michael set a new standard for the viola,’ [violinist Arnold] Steinhardt, [Tree’s Guarneri colleague,] said. ‘Now orchestras are not filled with failed violinists playing the viola, but with sensational violists,’ performers whom Mr. Tree encouraged to treat the viola as an integral part of an ensemble, rather than a backing voice supporting a violin’s melody or cello’s ostinato.”
Lost Verdi Opera Found In Berlin Basement
Verdi set the opera, entitled Die Macht des Schicksas, to a German-language libretto by Bläuel Wittling, a poet who ran a women-only writers commune on the banks of the Spree river north of Berlin. Verdi seems to have composed this music around 1882, making it an important missing link is his late career: He wrote Aïda (1871) and the Requiem (1874), but then it was thought he turned away from composing until Arrigo Boito inspired him to write Otello (1887) and Falstaff (1893). [Note the date of the story before believing]
Steven Bochco, Creator Of ‘Hill Street Blues’ And Perhaps Modern TV Itself, Has Died At 74
Bochco also created “LA Law” and “NYPD Blue.” His “boundary-pushing methods as a producer could make some network executives skittish. But they often deferred to him and were ultimately rewarded with strong ratings and critical kudos, a combination that was less common in the pre-Peak TV era of the 1980s and ’90s.”
Instagram Has Become A Playground For Artists Like Cindy Sherman And Damien Hirst
But what does that mean for their art – and who owns it? “Astute artists are using Instagram to connect with their fanbase in ways they couldn’t before. Earlier this year, it became clear that Damien Hirst’s people were no longer writing his Instagram posts, but rather the artist was. Suddenly it became worth following – Hirst was disarmingly explaining how he got the diamonds for his skull, why he was wrong about minimalism, and how sausages are ‘stupid.'”
Elizabeth Ebert, ‘Grande Dame Of Cowboy Poetry,’ Has Died At 93
The poet, who wrote for many years in obscurity, “kept small stacks of paper in every room of the farmhouse — just in case. She wrote whenever the rhymes blossomed: sometimes in the middle of the night, sometimes at the chirp of dawn, sometimes in the summer fallow tractor, where she’d draw a finger across the dusty windshield. She started with a single line, a single rhyme, and ‘then you have to fill in all this other garbage,’ she once said, with the sort of dry, self-deprecating humor that often infused her verse.”
Has Drawing Made A Return?
The British Museum is planning to offer pencils and sketchpads to those who come to the new blockbuster Rodin exhibit. “Curators hope to encourage the visiting public to look more closely at its objects, swapping a quick photograph, often uploaded onto social media, with the time it takes to sketch by hand.”
An Andrew Lloyd Webber Show About Coney Island Leaves Out The Disabled ‘Freaks’ Who Started It All
A disabled theatre critic is none too happy with Webber and his touring show. “Love Never Dies takes place in 1907, three years into the freakshow’s East Coast rise in popularity. For a musical owing its location to the disabled community, Love Never Dies is decidedly remiss in incorporating the community. We are offered mere tokens: a few musical numbers briefly mention oddities, and only ‘The Beauty Underneath’ uses freak attractions in its staging.”
How Good Can The Job Of Ambassador For Hollywood Be Right Now, Considering?
Charles Rivkin, former Ambassador to France and assistant Secretary of State, is the new chair of the Motion Picture Association of America (and the representative for the six “old-line” studios). He has to deal with being the ratings guru and championing movie theaters in an era where Netflix and other streaming services are stomping the movies. But hey, he’s into it: “Reinvigorated at every level,” he says about his plans for the MPAA. (Um, can he fix the sex bad, violence fine ratings issue too?)
The New Netflix Show About A Cult Really Gets At The Heart Of Religious Freedom In The U.S., And Maybe The Current President As Well
Sure, the First Amendment prohibits the government from making a law “respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof,” but current case law on religious freedom is deeply mixed. Why? Well, ask Netflix’s Wild Wild Country, a new documentary about a cult community in Oregon that is “a staggeringly improbable mélange of religion, New Age psychology, land-use and constitutional law, group sex, credit-card scams, xenophobia and immigration terrors, fundamentalism, election fraud, germ warfare, terror bombing, assassination squads, and Putin-style poisoning, all enacted against the haunting background of the Oregon high desert.”
That Time, Long Before ‘Footloose’, When Irish Priests Tried To Get Dancing Outlawed
This is the history of how the Catholic Church in Ireland influenced the law in the 1930s – and made it possible for any parish priest to stop any dance he didn’t like, for any reason, with the full cooperation of the Irish government and police. One priest “was wary, in particular, of outsiders – ‘devils’, as he saw them. ‘Persons who came to these dances from outside towns in motor cars were scoundrels of the lowest type, and were devils incarnate,’ he said.”
Bulgaria Calls Julia Kristeva, French Philosopher And Intellectual, A Bulgarian Spy
She denies this firmly, but … wow. “Her more than 30 books have covered topics including linguistics, psychoanalysis, literary theory and feminism. Her many prestigious honors include the Vaclav Havel Prize, the Hannah Arendt Prize and France’s Commander of the Legion of Honor.”(Every single humanities grad student for the past 30 years is saying, “I KNEW IT.”)
Top AJBlogs From The Weekend Of 04.01.18
Sultanof Arrangements, Part 2
Today, Rifftides offers the second installment of scholar, teacher and historian Jeff Sultanof’s essay on pleasures and challenges in the craft of correcting arrangements. Exploring Buried Treasure in Plain Sight, Part 2 … read more
AJBlog: RiffTidesPublished 2018-03-31
Jeff Sultanof On The Archeology Of Arrangements
Rifftides is delighted that Jeff Sultanof has agreed to contribute another piece. A distinguished expert on arrangers and arranging, Mr. Sultanof is the author of the invaluable book Experiencing Big Band Jazz: A … read more
AJBlog: RiffTidesPublished 2018-03-30
Replay: Angels in America on Broadway in 1993
Excerpts from a live performance of the original 1993 Broadway production of Tony Kushner’s Angels in America, shot for use by the press. The cast included Ron Leibman as Roy Cohn, Joe Mantello as Louis, … read more
AJBlog: About Last NightPublished 2018-03-30
Almanac: Steve Gadd on art and craftsmanship
“I don’t consider myself an artist. I go out there and I try to play what’s right for the music. It seems to be a much more open approach and it would seem to allow … read more
AJBlog: About Last NightPublished 2018-03-30
How Live Nation Rules The Music World, Including, Some Say, With Threats
Want to know how the merger of Live Nation and Ticketmaster affected the entire music industry, from management to tours to sponsorship and owning venues? The NYT explains, and explains the fees (as far as they’re explicable) as well. “At many concerts Live Nation is not just the ticket seller, but also the promoter, the venue operator or even the artist’s manager, with an opportunity to collect at every juncture.”
London’s Hamilton Explains Why He Loves ‘Black Panther,’ And Gives Book Recs As Well
Jamael Westman says that “Wakanda forever” is part of what he says when parting from friends now – “It becomes a state of mind” – and talks about why he likes playwriting podcasts: “Amazing playwrights like these can feel unreachable. You can’t imagine them as normal people because all you see is their name in shiny lights under an amazing play. But this humanises them – it’s like chilling in a writer’s room.”