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CULTURE
About Last Night
TERRY TEACHOUT on the arts in New York City
(with additional dialogue by OUR GIRL IN CHICAGO)
Just because: Clifford Curzon plays the "Trout" Quintet Clifford Curzon and the Amadeus Quartet play Schubert's "Trout" Quintet at the Aldeburgh Festival in 1977: (This is the latest...
Posted May 26, 2014
Almanac: Logan Pearsall Smith on grumpy old men "The denunciation of the young is a necessary part of the hygiene of older people, and greatly assists in the...
Posted May 26, 2014
Presto, change-o Assuming that all goes well, the blog that has occupied this space largely unaltered since 2003 will have undergone a...
Posted May 23, 2014
More magic to do In today's Wall Street Journal drama column I report on two important out-of-town productions, a staging by Teller (yes, that...
Posted May 23, 2014
High culture, movie-house style In today's Wall Street Journal "Sightings" column, I take note of the coming to YouTube of British Pathé's archival newsreel...
Posted May 23, 2014
The Artful Manager
Andrew Taylor on the business of Arts & Culture
A recurring chrysalis My colleague Paul Beard was telling me about the Smith Center for the Performing Arts now in development in Las Vegas, and remarked that it was actually two entirely different creatures living in the same space. The day before it...
Posted January 24, 2012
SOPA and PIPA untangled If you use the Internet, you likely have heard or read rumblings about legislation currently in Congress about Internet piracy. SOPA and PIPA were the inspiration for a blackout of several major web sites this week over concerns that the...
Posted January 20, 2012
The rise of the 'edge-pert' A recurring theme at this year's Arts Presenters conference in New York was boundary crossing. Artists and arts organizations were celebrated for dancing with unexpected partners -- city planners, farmers, inner-city kids, health professionals. Other speakers encouraged such new connections...
Posted January 18, 2012
Power, Influence, and Performing Arts I'm attending the Association of Performing Arts Presenters annual conference in New York this weekend, along with six of my MBA students from the Wisconsin School of Business. For the seventh year running, the student team has been commissioned by...
Posted January 6, 2012
Sustaining, breakout, and disruptive innovation 'Innovation' is the buzz word at many arts conferences these days, and among many funders. With so many things changing in our environment -- all of the STEEP variables at once (Sociological, Technological, Economic, Environmental, Political) -- innovation in programming,...
Posted January 5, 2012
blog riley
rock culture approximately
INFOGRAPHIC SWALLOWS ONLINE MUSIC Click graphic for larger version, via grovo.com...
Posted December 21, 2011
Top 10 Untrue Facts About Robert Johnson: Greil Marcus 10. Like Huey Newton and Bobby Seale listening to Bob Dylan's "Mr. Tambourine Man" as they drew up the charter for the Black Panthers, Johnny Mercer and Harold Arlen were listening to "Hell Hound on My Trail" when in 1941...
Posted December 13, 2011
PATRICK MEIGHAN: FAMILY GUY WRITER'S ARREST Image by Getty Images via @daylifeREPRINTED FROM MARK CRISPIN MILLER'S News from Underground: http://myoccupylaarrest.blogspot.com/2011/12/my-occupy-la-arrest-by-p... *My Occupy LA Arrest, by Patrick Meighan* My name is Patrick Meighan, and I�m a husband, a father, a writer on the Fox animated sitcom "Family Guy" and a member of...
Posted December 12, 2011
PROG SLUT [photo: Jim Snyder, Summerfest, Milwaukee, 2011] A friend writes: Was Rundgren good? Hadn't seen him since college, long, long ago.... TR: I didn't realize until I got down there that it was a total UTOPIA gig (tour details, reviews here)....
Posted November 18, 2011
1.5B EMI/UNIVERSAL DEAL APPROACHES CLOSE Universal Music is close to sealing a $1.5 bn-plus deal to buy EMI Music, home to acts including the Beatles and Coldplay, with owner Citigrouppushing for negotiations to be concluded by the weekend. The company is the only bidder...
Posted November 11, 2011
critical difference
Laura Collins-Hughes on arts, culture and coverage
The Best Sign in the History of the World Or a contender, anyway. It's in the subway at 14th Street and Eighth Avenue, disguised as an official Metropolitan Transportation Authority notice -- except that the MTA generally doesn't do numbered screen prints. Artist Jason Shelowitz does.On this poster, evidently...
Posted April 19, 2010
'The Tyger' and the Tangerines It was the kind of spring day, sun-kissed and warm, when frigid winter seemed vanquished, yet the fetid New York City summer felt safely far off. Flowers were bursting out, early, all over town. As frequently happens when hibernation...
Posted April 1, 2010
Displaced Arts Journalists Strike Back "I don't want to sound self-important on behalf of my colleagues, but we feel that in the scheme of things -- coverage of the arts in the UK -- we are doing something of genuine value. We are aiming to...
Posted April 1, 2010
'Good News If You're a Nerd' The best lede I've read in a long time is from Christopher Borrelli's brainy, completely charming, strangely touching feature in today's Chicago Tribune:Quinn Dombrowski went to the University of Chicago because Quinn Dombrowski is a great big giant nerd. She...
Posted March 24, 2010
After a Major Paper Guts Its Arts Coverage Over on ARTicles, I have an interview with Anne Bothwell, director of the Art&Seek initiative in Dallas, which combines radio, television and online cultural coverage at KERA public media. The nearly two-year-old project began in the wake of significant staffing...
Posted March 24, 2010
Dewey21C
Richard Kessler on arts education
White House.Gov Showcases Videos on Arts Education Champions As part of the Obama Administration's Champions of Change, Winning the Future Across America initiative, a series of videos have been posted on Whitehouse.gov, featuring a number of arts and education leaders from across America.Here's my favorite: Ramon Gonzalez, Principal...
Posted July 26, 2011
What Does a Wired-In United States Department of Education Grant Application Look Like? Talk about jumping off the page. Not to mention jumping out of your seat. But rapidly, one realizes what is being circulated here as an "opportunity" is not quite what it seems to be. Read the guidelines.Last week, the USDOE...
Posted July 26, 2011
Waiting for Godot. If you test it they will come. (updated) With today's NY Daily News article about the New York City Department of Education's arts assessment program, I thought I would update and repost this entry from a few month's back.Let me start with some new thoughts and then segue...
Posted July 22, 2011
Steve Reich's New CD Cover: Is It An Outrage or Not? Last night a small thread emerged on Facebook about the cover for Steve Reich's new CD on Nonesuch Records. The cover is a graphic photo of 9/11, due to the fact the recording features Reich's work WTC 9/11.What do you think?...
Posted July 21, 2011
Programs for the Untalented and Ungifted Many, many times, I have been part of formal conversations that made their way around to the question of how we are identifying and supporting the talented and gifted children in the school systems.My response to the question in its...
Posted July 19, 2011
diacritical
Douglas McLennan's blog
Sorry, but I'll take experience over artistry Professional sports has more money than God, and they spend more to attract and entertain fans than anyone else. So how does the NFL sell itself? Not by touting the quality of its games. They sell the contest. They sell...
Posted July 30, 2010
The Lang Lang Experience, Live And In 3D Is the future of live classical music recitals to turn them into a multimedia experience that is somehow more "familiar" to a generation raised on video screens. Here's a report from Lang Lang's concert in London over the weekend:He is...
Posted May 24, 2010
How many True Fans do you have? How do you make a living as an artist? In the old mass-culture model you needed a distribution and marketing engine that could fire up on your behalf to reach as many people as possible. Sell a million albums and...
Posted April 18, 2010
Beware the mushy middle The NYT's Charles Isherwood writes about what he calls the "odd-man-out" syndrome: This can roughly be described as the experience of attending an event at which much of the audience appears to be having a rollicking good time, while you...
Posted April 16, 2010
We're All For Technology Except When... Nick Carr has a great post about the course of technology development. Progress doesn't always go the way we think it ought to (even if we're right).Progress may, for a time, intersect with one's own personal ideology, and during that...
Posted April 15, 2010
Dog Days
Dalouge Smith advocates for the Arts
The Blog Posting I Don't Need to Write My wife, son and I became fans of the band OK GO just after they left their record label EMI and it was covered on NPR's All Things Considered. Molly Sheridan wrote on her AJ blog about this high profile split...
Posted December 18, 2010
Orchestra Fun for a Lifetime Normal 0 0 1 405 2309 19 4 2835 11.517 0 0 0 On Sunday, I'm participating in University of Hartford's President's College Showcase 2010. Dean Aaron Flagg of the Hartt School is convening a panel to focus on...
Posted September 17, 2010
Chasing the Biggest Racers of the Year The race for California Governor is sure to be the highest profile, most expensive, and most media focused election in the country this year. This means it's also the most important race for arts advocates to engage. So we're doing...
Posted August 26, 2010
Have a Party to Put Advocacy in Action San Diego is hosting the first of a series of events across California to bring attention to the importance of the arts and arts education to candidates for elected office. If you are in San Diego for the day on...
Posted August 19, 2010
You'd Think the US' 4th Largest Industry Would Have More Clout I've had the good fortune to participate in a variety of state and national gatherings focused on the future of the arts, arts advocacy, and non-profit advocacy since May. This week, I attended a Nonprofit Advocacy Policy Roundtable organized by...
Posted July 26, 2010
Life's a Pitch
For immediate release: the arts are marketable
Pick-a-little Talk-a-little Today at noon ET, we have the second of our Spring for Music live chats, this time, with composer Steven Stucky. Here is his launch statement, pegged to his piece 'August 4, 1964' which will be performed with the Dallas...
Posted April 28, 2011
Happy talky talky happy talk Today at noon, Melinda Wagner, one of the Orpheus New Brandenburgs composers, will host a chat on behalf of Spring for Music, a festival I'm working on this year. Oh actually: this is double client-plugging (which somehow sounds dirty?), since...
Posted April 25, 2011
You heard it here first: creativity is dead. I was watching some Family Guy on Hulu last night after the tragically disappointing New York City Opera Stephen Schwartz concert thing (if Raúl Esparza bores me--me, who has Loved Him Forever--everyone's in trouble), and saw a preview for this...
Posted April 22, 2011
I might have gone with "Best," but... Available for the bargain price of $4.50 on Etsy:...
Posted April 19, 2011
A voice at the end of the line The New York Times reports that good old group sales still reign supreme on the Great White Way:If Facebooking Broadway is all the rage for shows, the real economic engine remains the sales agents wearing old-fashioned headsets and tapping through...
Posted April 18, 2011
Mind the Gap
No Genre Is the New Genre
The Sound That Fills the World For the past couple of weeks, I've been focused on the music of John Luther Adams as I prepared for and edited together an interview presentation covering his work. Following Adams around New York City, chatting about all manner...
Posted March 1, 2011
W.W.T.E.D.? For years now, whenever my mother would lament my dismal church attendance record, I would point to my religious reading of Randy Cohen's The Ethicist column. Though there was no eternal salvation on offer, I always felt that its...
Posted February 27, 2011
The Index: What To Read Next After a long weekend of travel, the number of "unread items" I had racked up in my blog reader was inducing panic attacks every time I checked in to put a dent in the ominously ever-growing pile. In the...
Posted February 23, 2011
Get Lost Last fall I was captivated by the Google Chrome/HTML5 personalized movie making that was The Arcade Fire's video for their track "The Wilderness Downtown". Using a childhood street address and footage pulled from Google maps, the project draws on...
Posted February 17, 2011
The Art of the Switch [via] This creative little clip, posted by the Royal Opera House in support of the premiere run of Mark-Anthony Turnage's opera Anna Nicole, plays up exactly the kind of trashy, can't-look-away vibe you expect from the subject matter, but...
Posted February 15, 2011
Performance Monkey
David Jays on theatre and dance
Dystopia, my old friend Can you stage the internet? I'm just back from the sweetest, saddest performance I've seen in ages - and also the first that, in barely more than an hour, tells the story of the web's utopia turning to dystopia. Chris...
Posted November 4, 2009
Only here for the ecstasy It has been a while since the performance monkey put paw to keyboard, but he has still been, y'know, seeing stuff in theatres. Some of these things have been terribly cool, and have involved magical oracles, properly good nervous breakdowns...
Posted October 30, 2009
No half measures There was no halfway house with Pina Bausch. As my editor remarked earlier today, you were either a devotee or sceptic, and if a devotee you were very devoted. There will be many tributes to Pina Bausch in the next...
Posted June 30, 2009
'Pick up the gun and shoot the bastard!' I was much tickled this afternoon to read the performance artist and lecturer Lois Weaver recalling a visit to David Hare's play The Secret Rapture. Her colleague Peggy Phelan, a reluctant co-attendee at the matinee performance ('this sea of the...
Posted June 28, 2009
Swan in a neck brace We critics - dressed in our usual dowdy - were discombobulated when we arrived at Sadler's Wells last week for English National Ballet's tribute to Diaghilev's Ballets Russes. There was a red (actually black) carpet, and a healthy jostle of...
Posted June 25, 2009
Plain English
Paul Levy measures the Angles
Bats in the Coliseum's Belfry Once in a while you come across a production that makes you scratch your head - why did the company do this? How could anyone ever have thought this worked? But it is rare that you see something...
Posted October 2, 2013
What's Inside Wagner's Head? There have been some ups and some downs among the events of this Wagner bicentenary year. There was the reportedly naff new Ring at Bayreuth - so bad, some of the press said, that the German state must now...
Posted September 7, 2013
Don Impeccable (mostly) Donizetti's Don Pasquale has a dramaturgical problem. The 70-something Pasquale wants to marry and produce heirs, as his young heir-apparent nephew, Ernesto, has refused the arranged marriage proposed for him by his uncle. Pasquale's doctor, Malatesta has nominated himself...
Posted July 19, 2013
Open Minds about Closed Borders Very recently the UK Border Agency refused visas to visit Britain to one of the curators of the Shubbak festival, an annual celebration in London of modern Arab arts. Also vetoed were visas for two authors from Gaza. Earlier this...
Posted July 1, 2013
Dazzled by "Gloriana" Have you ever been assaulted by the stage lighting of a production? In the sixty-plus years since I saw my first play and opera (Carmen at the Cincinnati Zoo!), this is the first time I have felt physically threatened by...
Posted June 25, 2013
Real Clear Arts
Judith H. Dobrzynski on Culture
Boston Patrons Shell Out: Two New Endowed Directorships As I've said before, two's company -- so once again I'll mention something because there've been two instances in a very short time. On Tuesday came the news from the Institute of Contemporary Art in Boston that, for the first...
Posted January 26, 2012
Hidden Masterpieces: Science Takes Us Underneath The Paint Out of the Shadows, a film by Kevin Sullivan about the use of advanced technology to discover the way artists work, made its debut in New York yesterday -- a showing at the Winter Antiques Show at the Park Avenue Armory....
Posted January 25, 2012
Since When Does The Departure Of A Museum's Education Director Make News? It's not very often that the departure of a museum's education director merits an article in a city's newspaper. But that is what happened last week, when Williams College announced that it had picked Christina Olsen to head its museum...
Posted January 24, 2012
Rembrandt And The Face of Jesus: A Potent Combination Alexander McQueen isn't the only guy capable of drawing crowds so big that hours must be extended at a museum. Or Leonardo, for that matter. I'm happy to report that the Detroit Institute of Art recently added hours to accommodate...
Posted January 23, 2012
What's In A Name? How An Ivory Sculpture Gained Value This is Old Masters week in New York, and to mark it I have written a short article about an ivory, estimated by Sotheby's in January, 2010, at $120,000 to $150,000.It sold, after much bidding from the trade, for more than...
Posted January 22, 2012
Rockwell Matters
John Rockwell on the arts
Knowing the Plot The other night I was at the Maly Drama Theatre of St. Petersburg's production of "Life and Fate -- I'll post my roundup of the Lincoln Center Festival's Eastern European theater early next week, after I've seen Pushkin's "Boris Godunov" on Sunday --...
Posted July 24, 2009
Dance That Isn't Ballet But Is Still Dance OK, here's part two of my recent dance roundup, devoted to dance that isn't ballet and as such is usually ignored or dismissed by ballet-oriented critics but is still dance, darn it! As the noted dance critic Stuart Smalley might...
Posted July 19, 2009
The failings of arts journalism, in print and on the internet My latest posting to ARTicles, the blog of the National Arts Journalism Program, in which I bloviate on some phrases in a Doug McLennan commentary on the decline of traditional arts journalism....
Posted July 19, 2009
One Kind of Dance Late spring and early summer are considered by some to be the high point of the New York dance season, and the reason is simple: New York City Ballet is having its spring season at the New York State Theater...
Posted July 18, 2009
Pina Bausch and the Definition of Dance I hesitated to write about Pina Bausch immediately after her death. First, I had long had reservations about her work, though mine were a little different from those of some others. Then second, I decided I should watch Pedro Almodovar's "Talk to...
Posted July 5, 2009
Straight Up |
Jan Herman - Arts, Media & Culture News with 'tude
Edition of 'Death in Paris' Is Now in Print This is not a sales pitch. I'm only kvelling. The printed edition is stunningly handsome, a magnificent artifact in memory of its author, the late Carl Weissner, dear friend and co-conspirator from the '60s. If you would like to read...
Posted May 18, 2012
Mustill's Message on a Postcard (2) © 1997 by Norman O. Mustill. From a postcard series of eight....
Posted March 8, 2012
A Long Shot for Carl the Survivor "Death, the last cut, always leaves a bitter feeling mixed with pain & loss . . . and because of its finality gives you no choice but to look back." -- Jurgen Ploog...
Posted February 18, 2012
Portrait of the Writer Broadcast after his death....
Posted February 15, 2012
Ave Atque Vale 1940-2012. Carl Weissner died on Jan. 24, in Mannheim. Carl wrote his first book, The Braille Film, in English. I published it in 1970, under the Nova Broadcast imprint. Although his native language was German, he had an incomparable ear...
Posted February 4, 2012
DANCE
Foot in Mouth
Apollinaire Scherr and guests talk about dance
Mutant remakes street dance On the occasion of Jonah Weiner's in-depth profile in The New Yorker on Brooklyn's most eccentric (and mesmerizing) street dancer, Storyboard P, I offer a review I wrote on his BEAT Brooklyn outing. Here are the first couple paragraphs:Almost everything...
Posted December 30, 2013
Theatre of the Unjust If crimes against humanity were theatre, what form would they take? That is the question African dance-theatre artists Panaibra Canda and Boyze Cekwana raise in "The Inkomati (dis)cord," at New York Live Arts as part of the Crossing the...
Posted November 26, 2013
Ballet Bug In art as in life, there is no such thing as being faithful enough. Fidelity is an absolute. It cannot be measured in numbers of steps or scenes preserved any more than a romantic betrayal can be calibrated by the...
Posted October 8, 2013
Purgatory at the New York City Ballet About a week ago, New York City Ballet announced its annual promotions. For those dancers moved up from the corps, it is impossible not to add worry to the elation. The problem this year is not what it sometimes is--that...
Posted March 3, 2013
Uptown, Downtown Dance in January is dizzying and divided even by New York standards. Uptown, New York City Ballet gets back to mixed programmes, almost always with a blast of Balanchine in the first week or two. This year, it's two weeks...
Posted January 18, 2013
Seeing Things
Tobi Tobias on Dance et al.
Ave Atque Vale Merce Cunningham Dance Company / BAM Howard Gilman Opera House, Brooklyn, NY / December 7-10, 2011 In addition to showing us wonders we'd never even dreamed of, Merce Cunningham (1919-2009), that inscrutable genius of modern dance, taught us a tough,...
Posted December 14, 2011
Veiled in Darkness Angel Reapers, by Martha Clarke and Alfred Uhry / Joyce Theater, NYC / November 29 - December 11, 2011 The oddest thing about Martha Clarke and Alfred Uhry's Angel Reapers is that it has no plot. This despite the fact...
Posted December 1, 2011
By George! New York City Ballet: The Nutcracker / David H. Koch Theater, Lincoln Center, NYC / November 25 - December 31, 2010 God Is in the Details: George Balanchine, creator of the New York City Ballet's The Nutcracker, coaching the smallest...
Posted November 28, 2011
The Other Face of ABT American Ballet Theatre / City Center, NYC / November 8-13, 2011 This season's gala-event costumes for women of a certain income emphasize cascading ruffles in weak-willed pastels or glowing jewel tones. The men continue to sport black-tie mufti with almost...
Posted November 20, 2011
Promises, promises Duŝan Týnek Dance Theatre / Tribeca PAC, NYC / October 27-29; November 3-5, 2011 Duŝan Týnek Dance Theatre Photo: Julieta Cervantes Seeing the Dušan Týnek Dance Theatre, recently at Tribeca PAC, in the second of the two programs it offered,...
Posted November 7, 2011
MEDIA
Out There
Jeff Weinstein's Cultural Mixology
George Lang Had an Answer An extremely pleasant and perfectly bright acquaintance surprised me by stating with his usual attractive confidence that food is a frivolity and cooking not part of our cultural life. His spouse, whose every meal gives the lie to such silliness,...
Posted July 11, 2011
I Never Cooked for My Father "I learned about cooking and flavor as a child." Maybe I'm worried that it's too easy, or dislike the part of me that's a permanent boy, but I've become increasingly shy of drawing from the same family well to recount my...
Posted July 2, 2011
Newspaper Fate Do you want to pay for your news with dead trees or the predation of oil? In this case, the form of payment itself makes news. The news corpus above is part of a new artwork by Gustav Metzger shown in...
Posted June 3, 2011
Applause! Applause? Normally, my single question to you at the end of this post would be posed via Twitter or Facebook. But so many smart classical-music mavens are my Artsjournal neighbors that I thought I might borrow some of your tidewrack readers for...
Posted April 29, 2011
Getting Pickled: My Brine Cocktail Comeuppance I was taken aback by my failure to find a worthy pickle cocktail.I love pickles to an extent that should embarrass me. I could eat pickles every day of my life -- especially classic kosher half-sours. I can't explain that,...
Posted April 21, 2011
Serious Popcorn
Martha Bayles on Film...
The Ultimate Social Network NOH HAO, at 25 the social media's youngest - and first female - multibillionaire, explains her meteoric success in an exclusive interview with MARTHA BAYLES.Cambridge, MA, March 15, 2014 - "Meet me at the Harvard Square Peet's!" The suggestion evokes...
Posted May 25, 2011
A pinch of merriment If you need a few minutes of joy, open this link to a live performance by Straight No Chaser (after the ad) ....
Posted December 27, 2010
"Sex and the City" Redux "Later that night I got to thinking about safe sex. We talk about it as something physical. But what about the emotions? Is sex ever safe?" So writes Carrie Bradshaw, trendy newspaper columnist in Sex and the City. Played by...
Posted November 27, 2010
SUSPENDED ANIMATION If you are still checking Serious Popcorn, you are a true and loyal reader. You also may have noticed that SP has been estivating (the summer version of hibernating).Snails do it, frogs do it,Tortoises and salamanders do it,Let's do it,...
Posted August 15, 2010
Animation and Aspiration George Lucas, the creator of Star Wars, once quipped, "Creating a universe is daunting." This is true, as anyone can tell from a quick perusal of the book of Genesis. But for animators, being daunted does not pay. From the...
Posted April 2, 2010
MUSIC
Creative Destruction
Fresh ideas on building arts communities
"Must See" Streaming Internet This afternoon I watched as a great master passed on everything he could leave to the next generation of musicians. Robert Mann, at 91 years old, was teaching a master class in Miller Recital Hall at the Manhattan School of...
Posted January 5, 2012
Penny for your thoughts In a Q & A session at the end of a presentation I made to arts leaders not long ago, a question came up about getting feedback from audiences in real time. Many of the participants said that their audience...
Posted November 25, 2011
After the Last Kiss I met Julia Kurtyka in winter. She had worked to invite me to guest conduct an orchestra that she was involved with, the Birmingham Bloomfield Symphony Orchestra, just outside of Detroit, in a special concert that would feature her protégé,...
Posted October 3, 2011
What are we doing here? When I was little, my father used to tell a story of a little boy from long ago. He was walking among many people engaged in a flurry of activity. "What are you doing?" he asked one man with a...
Posted September 7, 2011
Discovering the Baroque Above a Torture Chamber On a narrow street in the Colonial City area of Santo Domingo, capital of the Dominican Republic, there is a building called Museo Memorial de la Resistencia Dominicana, the Memorial Museum of the Dominican Resistance. A converted home, with a...
Posted August 31, 2011
Jazz Beyond Jazz
Howard Mandel's Freelanc Urban Improvisation
House Appropriations Committee to NEA: Keep Jazz Masters The National Endowment for the Arts has been directed by the US House Appropriations Committee in its report to Interior to continue the American Jazz Masters Fellowships and dump its proposed American Artists of the Year honors. The report also supports continuation of...
Posted July 12, 2011
Urban Realism and Treme "Life is glorious and vibrant and joyous at points, but it is essentially tragic. That's not a unique David Simon perspective." So sayeth David Simon, (pictured left; right is a Mardi Gras Indian portrayed by Clarke Peters), executive producer with...
Posted July 5, 2011
Hurray for Treme "Do Watcha Wanna," the season finale of Treme, had everything I watch the series for: Compelling characters embodied by terrific actors; plausible and suspenseful quick-cutting across and interweaving of plot strands;confident command of realities afflicting post-Katrina/pre-Gulf oil spill New Orleans, andthe extraordinary depiction...
Posted July 4, 2011
Symphonic "jazz" compositions, big bands and holiday blasts The American Composers Orchestra readings of short symphonic works by jazz-oriented composers which I wrote of in my CityArts column and posted about here are now available to hear, thanks to Lara Pelligrinelli at NPR's A Blog Supreme. The 23rd...
Posted July 3, 2011
Jazz in Jordan: Yacoub Abu Ghosh explains and plays Jazz and its evolution goes on everywhere - as bass guitarist/bandleader/composer/producer Yacoub Abu Ghosh explained and demonstrated to me in Amman, Jordan last March. Ghosh and his Stage Heroes performed at their weekly gig at Canvas Cafe Restaurant Art Lounge....
Posted June 29, 2011
ListenGood
Focus on New Orleans. Jazz and Other Sounds
reasons to be cheerful (# 37) Brand-new Henry Threadgill CD, Tomorrow Sunny/The Revelry, Spp (Pi Recordings) landed in my mailbox today! Actually, the forecast in NY is for continued rain. But that should be easier to bear thanks to Threadgill, whose every release momentarily shoves aside...
Posted May 22, 2012
in praise of community organizers Remember four years ago, when Obama was running for president and Sarah Palin mocked the very notion of a community organizer? The Jazz Journalists Association has what they call a blogathon going on through April 30th, and the theme is community....
Posted April 16, 2012
jeremy lin scores! (um, this isn't about music...) During Jeremy Lin's dizzying rise from obscurity to fame, before the New York Knick's promotion department had even printed the fan posters, the point guard had been held up as poster boy for a variety of things. Christian faithful...
Posted February 17, 2012
remembering sam rivers Like so many music lovers, I'm mourning the death of Sam Rivers. I heard Sam play a few times, late in his life. Never back in the day, at the RivBea loft, though. But I do have a very clear memory of...
Posted December 28, 2011
my long story on trombone shorty JAZZIZ MagazineCover Story, Winter 2011Out of New Orleans The remarkable rise of Trombone ShortyBy Larry Blumenfeld Click on Winter Issue to PreviewHurricane Irene bore down on New York City in late August. The forecasts sounded dire. An email from a Long Island...
Posted December 20, 2011
On the Record
Exloring America's Orchestras with Henry Fogel
Farewell I remember a moment during the summer of 2002, when I looked at my wife and told her that I needed to make a change in my professional life. I had been managing the Chicago Symphony Orchestra for seventeen years--a...
Posted October 30, 2009
Declining Arts Participation: A Topic for Broad-Based National Dialogue Earlier this year the National Endowment for the Arts released its 2008 Arts Participation Survey, and the picture it paints is worrisome. The study was done in May, 2008, six months into the recession, and certainly we can draw a...
Posted October 23, 2009
The Case for Subsidizing Ticket Prices If you go to symphony concerts in Europe or South America, you see audiences that tend to be more diverse than ours in the United States--more young people, more ethnic diversity, more apparent diversity of economic and demographic background. Since...
Posted October 16, 2009
Artistic Authority in Orchestras: A Tricky Balance I appear to have caused some confusion in the past with my comments about orchestra board members who try to wield too much authority in programming decisions, and conversely about conductors who adopt an autocratic, almost dictatorial stance, saying, "I...
Posted October 9, 2009
The Music Director Search: Integrity and Commitment In last week's blog, I began a discussion of some of the questions I am most frequently asked by orchestras engaged in music director searches. This week, I am continuing that subject.What do we do when we start getting local...
Posted October 2, 2009
Overflow
Harvey Sachs on music, and various digressions
Trying to catch up Too much work, too much travel, preparations for the release of my new book, and a recurrent, annoying sinus infection are the main causes of my blog-negligence since early January. It's impossible even to summarize, at this point, all of...
Posted May 29, 2010
The Met's new Carmen Well, well... Imagine a production of Carmen with almost nothing in it that makes you cringe, at least stage-wise: no cutie-pie touches, no unlikely-looking protagonists flinging themselves unconvincingly around the stage, no over-the-top local color, no excessive pulling out of the Fate...
Posted January 9, 2010
Hark: Herald Angels and Hoffmann Phew! It's over for another ten months! Imagine an intergalactic visitor arriving on earth to study human beliefs and practices and entering a store, restaurant, train station, or airport in any U.S. city in December. The poor ET would undoubtedly conflate...
Posted January 3, 2010
Monsieur B. Love of Berlioz originates, I think, in wonder at and delight in his musical imagination. Of course, one wonders at and delights in the imagination of every creative artist whose work one loves, but there is something startling and forever...
Posted November 10, 2009
Episodic episodes I was in Chicago a week ago to discuss the subject of writing musical biography with some of Prof. Philip Gossett's excellent graduate students at the University of Chicago - a thoroughly enjoyable experience, at least for me. While I was there, I managed...
Posted October 25, 2009
PianoMorphosis
Bruce Brubaker on all things Piano
No fervor Hearing Liszt's "Feux follets" at Alice Tully Hall -- it crossed my mind that it was the most accomplished performance of the étude ever played! This solo recital was won by the pianist as part of a competition prize. Tully...
Posted August 22, 2011
Verismo During the recording sessions for Nico Muhly's Drones & Piano, sometimes the piano bench squeaked. "Bench was loud," I said, after a particularly squeaky take. Through my earbud, I heard the voice of engineer Paul Evans. "I rather like it,"...
Posted July 25, 2011
Quick Change Artist A distinguishing trait of Mozart's music is rapidly and frequently changing character, Affekt, or mood. He's a quick change artist. For the 21st-century listener, it's simplistic to hear only a single unvarying Affekt or character in an entire movement of...
Posted July 12, 2011
Padded Piano keys are made of wood that's weighted with metal, and faced with plastic in place of what used to be ivory. They are levers. How exactly a musician touches these sticks may or may not alter the physical sound...
Posted June 27, 2011
Repetition is a Form of Flattery Liking the smoked bluefish salad I had at an organically-sourced Brooklyn eatery, I made something like it at home. In preparation for shooting a video last week, I practiced again a piece that I practiced last year for summer concerts,...
Posted June 8, 2011
PostClassic
Kyle Gann on music after the fact
Language-Spinners and Image-Cutters I've been thinking about the style-and-narrative issue from a new angle, and as you know, my blog thinkpieces tend to come in groups of three anyway. During the semester I rain forth repertoire on my students, and sometimes when...
Posted January 6, 2011
Space Is the Place After a dry fall I have two big performances coming up within a week of each other. Steve Bodner, dynamic young conductor who gave the American premiere of my Sunken City, has his annual I/O Festival coming up Jan. 6-8 at Williams...
Posted January 5, 2011
Gambling Tips for Smart Performers I want to draw attention to Allan Kozinn's thinkpiece about the vagaries of new-music performance in yesterday's Times (tried to post then, got caught in a holding pattern involving site changes), which is pitch-perfect in talking about why, how, and with what expectations...
Posted January 3, 2011
Resisting the Narrative One of the things I love about Richard Taruskin's Oxford History of Western Music is its emphasis on how an evolving public narrative privileges some composers and marginalizes others. For instance, he writes about how when Ligeti came to...
Posted December 24, 2010
Doing the Wave Without a Sound OK, you really do have to watch the video of Cage Against the Machine recording 4'33". Its good-natured absurdity would have made a joyful climax to my book, had I not already finished it....
Posted December 20, 2010
Rifftides
Doug Ramsey on Jazz and other matters...
Frishberg, Wellstood And Sullivan, Restored The Rifftides staff discovered, by chance, that an essential element in a two-and-a-half-year-old entry about Dick Wellstood and two other pianists had suffered the slings and arrows of outrageous YouTube fortune. The video of Wellstood playing was removed by...
Posted March 4, 2011
Webb City I'm still tucking in the frayed ends of daily life after extended duty in the trenches of extracurricular writing. Soon, there will be a new batch of Doug's Picks as the blogging routine returns to normal, whatever that is. I...
Posted March 2, 2011
Sonny Rollins Among NEA Honorees Today at the White House, President Obama will present the National Medal of Arts to ten creative Americans, including Sonny Rollins and Quincy Jones. From the announcement by the National Endowment for the Arts, here is the complete list of...
Posted March 2, 2011
Progress Report In my Modern Jazz Quartet project, I'm roundin' third and headin' home (for mystified readers in Brussels or Bangkok, that's a baseball metaphor). I hope to be back to more or less regular blogging early this week. In the next...
Posted February 28, 2011
Ron Hudson, Photographer The fine jazz photographer Ron Hudson died at his Seattle home on Tuesday. He was 71. For more than 30 years, Hudson captured memorable images of Ella Fitzgerald, Miles Davis, Woody Herman, Milt Jackson, Bud Shank and dozens more of...
Posted February 25, 2011
Sandow
Greg Sandow on the future of classical music
Going fishing I'm going on vacation, and won't blog again till after Labor Day. Or, more evocatively, I'm going to treat myself to some time in my private art colony, aka my country home in Warwick, NY. Where I'll relaunch my book...
Posted August 17, 2011
One look at the future I'm delighted -- amazed, thrilled, just over the moon -- about next season's programs at the Brooklyn Philharmonic, the first season under the orchestra's new conductor, Alan Pierson. Talk about the future of classical music! Pierson, an indie classical musician...
Posted August 3, 2011
Arresting data I'm a little bemused at the debates that still seem to rage about whether classical music -- as an activity in our culture -- has declined. Seems to me that the only way you can think it hasn't is...
Posted August 1, 2011
Intermezzo As I've tweeted, and posted on Facebook -- here's a sound I just love. Is it an animal, singing? Is it music from some other culture? No, it's an escalator at the Archives stop on the Washington DC Metro. Somehow...
Posted July 26, 2011
The culture I've seen Orchestra culture, I mean. A few years ago, I was visiting a friend, who also had another visitor -- the concertmaster of a Group 1 orchestra (referring to the League of American Orchestras classification of orchestras by budget size, in which...
Posted July 20, 2011
PUBLISHING
book/daddy
Jerome Weeks on books
Or: Stanley Kowalski with a collection of first editions It's taken me awhile to get around to this -- busy, busy, busy -- but Katie Roiphe wrote an essay, "The Naked and Conflicted," for the cover of last Sunday's New York Times Book Review. It's an essay that's generated...
Posted January 7, 2010
Big-City Texas in the '80s: Black Water Rising Attica Locke is a bit of a rarity. She's an African-American, female novelist from Texas who's made her debut with a big-city crime novel. It's called Black Water Rising, and rarer still, Locke is getting compared to such master thriller...
Posted August 6, 2009
Fluxus in Texas Allison McElroy, 411 #2, rolled-up phonebook pages, wire, black frame, 2009 Anarchic and whimsical, Fluxus was a little-known art movement in the '60s -- little-known, even though Yoko Ono was an occasional and influential Fluxite. (John Lennon once quipped...
Posted July 15, 2009
All that glitters can be sold How to Sell: I love the title with its echoes of business advice books. It's easy to imagine someone picking up Clancy Martin's novel to get tips on closing a sale - only to get a shock. But I hope...
Posted June 10, 2009
Money for Art, Pt. 2: Replaying the '50s and '90s Justine Smith, Absolute Power, dollar bills, 2005Money for Art, Pt 1: Arts Funding in AmericaDavid A. Smith's Money for Art: The Tangled Web of Art and Politics in American Democracy recounts the history of federal funding of the arts...
Posted June 5, 2009
Quick Study
Scott McLemee on books, ideas, trash-culture ephemera
What He Said "... he, who has so little knowledge of human nature, as to seek happiness by changing any thing, but his...
Posted March 16, 2008
The End The final episode of The Wire (which I haven't seen yet) is called "-30-." Christopher Gabel at Grid Effect writes:...
Posted March 15, 2008
Almost Almost Famous As noted by Ralph Luker at Cliopatria, I have a piece in The New York Times Book Review. After a...
Posted March 15, 2008
Because It's Friday Afternoon ...seems like a good time for the MC5: The announcement at the end sure comes out of left field....
Posted March 14, 2008
The Conservative Crack-Up Tim Hall explains it all: I have my own theories about why the Republican party is experiencing a kind of...
Posted March 12, 2008
THEATRE
lies like truth
Chloe Veltman on how culture will save the world
On Skiving Off There's something enormously satisfying about experiencing impromptu art, whether it's coming across a flash mob performance in a shopping mall or shirking off an afternoon in the office to experience a matinee concert at the Symphony.I relished doing the latter...
Posted February 25, 2011
Two Kinds of Publicists There's nothing quite like a good PR manager. The best of my colleagues in public relations make my job so much easier. They inspire ideas for articles, help connect me with the people I need to speak to to do...
Posted February 24, 2011
Art & Age The way in which different arts events attract audiences of different age demographics occasionally strikes me as odd. It's no surprise that a gig at a club featuring several DJs, a couple of live bands, live painting displays, breakdancing demonstrations...
Posted February 22, 2011
Faith in Fables Collaborations between local youth choirs and established professional performing arts companies seem to be all the rage these days in the Bay Area, in part I'm guessing as a result of special funding opportunities for these kinds of projects. There...
Posted February 21, 2011
Eating Opaque As a person who enjoys food as a hobby and writes critically about the performing arts professionally, I love culinary experiences that are also dramatic.I experienced one of the most theatrical meals on Monday night at Opaque, a basement restaurant...
Posted February 16, 2011
VISUAL
Aesthetic Grounds
Public Art, Public Space
How to Think about Public Art How to think about public art? Do you just keep doing the same thing? Big art? Architectural intimacy? Site-specific narrative? Locally responsive? Internationally, public art has been institutionalized as the founder's dreamed in the 1960 and 1970s. Big -...
Posted September 7, 2008
Public Art as Science Project MOMA and PS1 prepare the public for the "Watersfalls" later this month in NYC. The the scaffolding has been constructed under the Brooklyn bridge. Photo taken on May 26. From the Bay Area and Boston emerge artworks that are mainly science projects overlaid with...
Posted June 1, 2008
Starting Over Again Returning to New York City after a 20-year journey in Seattle and South Florida. New York taught me how to think art. Psychologically, NYC has changed dramatically. Signs in the subway remind parents to keep baby carriages off the escalator. Street territory has been reapportioned for...
Posted May 17, 2008
Public Buyers of Public Art On April 11 in North Carolina, Glenn Harper, Editor of Sculpture Magazine and Bill Thompson, Editor of Landscape Architecture, and I meet to kick off the "Public Art 360" Conference. Click Here to Attend. In the next few weeks,...
Posted March 16, 2008
Knitters beat MGM Mirage in Public Art Media Blitz At the end of last week, two public art projects competed for media attention in the USA. In the small town of Yellow Springs, Ohio, a few local women knitted a sweater for ONE tree during a winter day....
Posted March 11, 2008
Another Bouncing Ball
Regina Hackett takes her Art to Go
Wrong is right - the shock of the flaw That old grade-school test question - Which of these does not belong? - offers a key to the aesthetics of the expressively hot, as opposed to the classically cool. The hint of crazy within the solid citizen, the blood in...
Posted February 9, 2011
Recently in Seattle If human history were underwater, Alwyn O'Brien's ceramic vessels could serve as the bleached bones of the Ancien Regime, the decorative drained and dead on a dark sea floor. 4 Descending Notes 2010 Manganese Clay and Glaze 9" x 7"...
Posted February 7, 2011
Picasso's flesh world Collectors who hire experts to solve problems that don't exist till help arrives are responsible for the equivalent of bad face lifts on old masters. What the artists intended too frequently recedes under an abrasive cleaning or a deadening layer...
Posted December 23, 2010
Welcome back, David Wojnarowicz Nice to see David Wojnarowicz (wana-row-vitch) back in the news, making the monkeys dance. It's no surprise that the usual people want to use their deliberate misunderstanding of his work to rally their frightened base. It's also no surprise that...
Posted December 10, 2010
Image Transfer - Remix Culture at the Henry Humans see, humans do: After the first horse drawn on the first cave and the first pot incised with a decorative line, everything became imitation. You don't need a weatherman to know which way that wind blows, or that in...
Posted December 7, 2010
Artopia
John Perreault's art diary
Summer Special: Art Cops Double Feature While John Perreault is enjoying the beach on Long Island, the art cops try their hand at art criticism, above...and then, in the second video below, solve an art-world mystery: Why does the art world leave New York City...
Posted August 14, 2011
The Art Cops: Art School Confidential On his Paris Biennial website, Jean-Baptiste Farkas claims over one trillion new artworks have been made since October 2009. And the clock keeps ticking: 1,685,740 new artworks per day. Click here for counter. What are we going to do...
Posted June 28, 2011
Gustav Metzger: The Remix Gustav Metzger: Historic Photograph No.1: Liquidation of the Warsaw Ghetto, April 19-28, 1943, 1995/2009/2011 Metzger Rescued from the Footnotes of Art History Gustav Metzger's first U.S. exhibition ever, the thought-provoking "Historic Photographs," is now at...
Posted June 6, 2011
The Art Cops: Return from L.A. --- The Writing on the Wall MOCA-LA Banksy Graffiti Art KEITH HARING Jeffrey Deitch ...
Posted May 24, 2011
Richard Serra, Drawing After Minimalism Richard...
Posted May 9, 2011
CultureGrrl
Lee Rosenbaum's Cultural Commentary
Antiquities Collecting in Spotlight at AAMD’s Midwinter Meeting Dallas Museum of Art director Max Anderson, chair of AAMD's Task Force on Archaeological Material & Ancient ArtI can't take any credit for this, but when it meets in Kansas City next week, the Association of Art Museum Directors...
Posted January 24, 2013
Coin Toss: Hispanic Society’s Contradictory Stances on Rights of Archer Huntington’s Heirs The far-flung, tortuous odyssey continues for the superlative collection of coins related to Spain and other Spanish-speaking countries that were once owned by collector/philanthropist Archer Huntington and were donated by him in 1946 to the Hispanic Society of America....
Posted January 23, 2013
BlogBack: More on AAMD’s (Mis)use of Its Object Registry for Antiquities Alyssa HagenIt seems to me that art museums' use, misuse and non-use of the Association of Art Museum's Object Registry should be ripe for review at AAMD's imminent midwinter meeting, Jan. 27-30 in Kansas City.In the meantime, perhaps the association's...
Posted January 21, 2013
What Would Ada Louise Say? NY Public Library Explains Why Building Won’t Collapse After Blowing Its Stacks Soon-to-be-removed: The New York Public Library's stacks, which support the weight of its Main Reading RoomWithout naming her newspaper's late architecture critic, the Wall Street Journal's Jennifer Maloney on Wednesday published the New York Public Library's rejoinder to one of...
Posted January 18, 2013
AAMD Has "Every Confidence" in Members’ Appropriate Use of Their Antiquities Object Registry In my Sunday post on recent cultural-property news and controversies, I argued (and demonstrated) that some members of the Association of Art Museum Directors appeared to be using the group's Object Registry "as a pretext to skirt the UNESCO guidelines...
Posted January 17, 2013