“Every other major orchestra has been compensated since the very beginning of the pandemic. Met management is using the pandemic opportunistically. They are not seeking a short-term crisis-plan to balance out pandemic circumstances. They are seeking permanent cuts. The cuts they seek are so deep that the orchestra would need unrealistic salary gains over the next quarter-century just to get back to current salaries,” says the statement. – OperaWire
In Many Countries, Losing Restaurants Means Losing Community
Diego Salazar, former chair of the World’s 50 Best Restaurants, has had a longer quarantine than many people. Sure, he and his wife order takeout – and it tastes great, but “I’d realize I was still missing everything about what once made me love food: the people who create it and the ‘sobremesa’ — the limitless chat after desserts, the reluctance to leave the table, the delight in shared experience.” – The New York Times
The Louis Kahn Dorms Threatened For Destruction In India
To continue the Threatened Buildings theme: “A world-class architectural-preservation controversy is brewing in India, where the administration at the Indian Institute of Management in Ahmedabad had announced plans to raze 14 of 18 student dormitory buildings designed by the architect Louis Kahn and built in the 1960s and 1970s.” – The New York Times
The Fate Of The Media-Puffed, Free-Credit-Flowing, Neoliberal Restaurant After Covid
Is food over? Is dining? How can restaurant owners, especially empty, corporate ownership groups, justify their whining while treating low-paid workers like absolute crap? And is there any way through? – nplus1
American Television Simply Can’t Deal With Aging And Death
TV execs might say the reason is that audiences don’t like to see death (which seems a little odd after the successes of Six Feet Under, but … sure, network TV). A closer look reveals the driving force: “The real reason there was so little exploration of death in prime-time programming was that advertisers did not want their products associated with it, a connection that still drives some advertisers to pull their ads from news programs covering disasters and mass fatalities.” – Baltimore Sun
The Law Professor Who Did More Than Dream Of Being A Novelist Later In Life
Pam Jenoff – you may know her from The Diplomat’s Wife, The Lost Girls of Paris, and many other novels – started taking writing classes just as soon as she began practicing law. “She has learned to be a tireless reviser — a skill acquired in the legal world, where ‘people are always marking up your work.’ She says, ‘The only thing that separates me from the folks I started with in writing workshops — many of them were better writers — is that I just kept going.'”- The New York Times
Australia’s National Anthem Gets An Anti-Racist Tweak
The anthem – which replaced “God Save the Queen” only in 1984, though it had been written in the late 19th century – previously had a tweak from “Australia’s sons” to “Australians all,” and now it’s from “young and free” to “one and free” – including the peoples who have been on the continent for 60,000 years. – The New York Times
TV Production Stays On Holiday Hiatus In Los Angeles As Covid Numbers Rise And Rise
Positive cases have been identified – in one case described as a cluster of infections – in several of the studios where production won’t return for an extra week or two. – Los Angeles Times
Hollywood Had Rules, And In 2020, It Busted Them All
A lot happened to the moviemaking business in 2020, but not a lot of it by choice. “Since March, the industry has, in effect, attempted to defibrillate its own heart attack while also reattaching its severed limbs and recover from a grand mal seizure, all at the same time. We’re lucky to have Croods 2.” Yikes. (And here’s a list of all the former norms that are gone.) – Vulture
Claude Bolling, Jazz And Classical Pianist, 90
Bolling’s fusion of jazz and classical made him the most popular pianist, composer, and bandleader in Europe for a time. “A devotee since childhood of Duke Ellington, Fats Waller and other eminences of American jazz, Mr. Bolling grew up listening to their music on the radio until World War II intervened. ‘Jazz was all but banned by the Nazis in my country,’ he told the Hartford Courant. ‘So I got most of my jazz from 78 rpm recordings.’ Mr. Bolling said Ellington took him in ‘as part of his family’ when they met in the 1960s, by which time the Frenchman had embarked on his career as a bandleader.” – Washington Post