"Vaccine" was the choice because of repeated spikes in traffic: searches of the word this year are up 601% from 2020 and 1,048% over 2019. Also, because of the new mRNA vaccines, the word's definition was expanded. (The runner-up Word of the Year was "insurrection.") - CNN
Sales are down by a third from 2019, and research indicates that many audience members remain wary of attending while COVID case numbers are high. As with Nutcracker for American ballet companies, English theatres depend on panto income to help finance the rest of their seasons. - BBC
Claudia Roth, one of the Green Party's top leaders and vice president of the federal parliament, started her career as a theater worker and later managed a German rock band. The left-leaning three-party coalition now in charge plans to make culture a high priority. - Deutsche Welle
As Art Basel returns to the Miami Beach Convention Center from Thursday through Saturday with 253 galleries from 36 countries and territories, it meets a pent-up demand — you could say that the supply chain for a certain kind of prestige fair has been unclogged. - The New York Times
The goal of restoring a building, preserving its character while also updating it to suit today's needs, was a monumental task done under the scrutiny of heritage departments and building inspectors, and many of Canada's top musicians and music historians. - CBC
Returning that much money has been a tricky process, though. Backers have to manually request refunds, so even a week later, tens of millions of dollars are still sitting in ConstitutionDAO’s pockets. - The Verge
Parallel shifts in culture and technology are forging a new paradigm. The rules around how we create and capture economic value are being rewritten, opening up new roads to the kind of wealth creation previously limited to a select few. - The Atlantic
On Tuesday, a coffin carrying soils from the U.S., France and Monaco — places where Baker made her mark — will be deposited inside the domed Pantheon monument overlooking the Left Bank of Paris. Her body will stay in Monaco, at the request of her family. - Baltimore Sun
The piano is the instrument of expressive individualism; the harpsichord is the instrument of a vibrant, discursive life of the mind. It is the glorious vestige of an era when music was free from the impossible burdens that Romantics placed upon it. - First Things
Sondheim deserves a spot on playwriting’s Mt. Rushmore, for his contribution to the theater is as significant from a literary as it is from a musical standpoint. - Los Angeles Times
A decade on from uncovering the remains of King Richard III under a car park, the university’s archaeological team have unearthed a Roman mosaic featuring the great Greek hero of Achilles in battle with brave Hector during the Trojan War. - AP
With so many projects in production, “there’s an enormous amount of jobs in editing, in visual effects, in makeup and hair, that we can, that we should, be able to access. Why not access it with all of this young talent that we have in our own backyard? - The Hollywood Reporter
Before the pandemic, his songs permeated U.S. media. "His primacy within wider culture came from the widest possible acknowledgement that not only had Sondheim created a succession of groundbreaking hits, but that in the mostly reactionary world of the American musical, he was a revolutionary." - The Guardian (UK)
It's all about "reward prediction errors" and "the sweet spot between rote and nonsensical." Once you've learned the Swedish for "a clean reindeer" or the Yiddish for "a zebra in a pyramid," you're less likely to forget them. - Slate
"How do you know if you’re watching a horror movie when there’s no killer or monster, exorcism or blood? It’s a decades-old question that’s being asked about new films that blur the line between a movie with horror and a horror movie." - The New York Times
