After the small queer women's publisher Labrisz released a book of fairytales, titled Wonderland Is For Everyone, that includes LGBTQ characters, the right-wing government of Viktor Orbán's Fidesz party ordered Labrisz to affix a sticker saying that the book depicts "behavior inconsistent with traditional gender roles" to every title it publishes to which that statement applies. - Reuters
Alex Ross: "The most valuable recordings of the Beethoven Year—Igor Levit’s survey of the sonatas and the Quatuor Ébène’s cycle of the quartets—bring out those contrarian tones of wit, weirdness, irony, understatement, frenzy, stasis, and bittersweet release. Having created the single most potent persona in the history of music, Beethoven proceeded to engender another, more elusive self, which was...
"With the collapse of live revenues, the issues in how streaming pays (or doesn’t) is being discussed. Ingham calculates that 1% of all artists receive 90% of the revenue from streaming. That’s about 43,000 artists. Of that 1%, many have been significantly impacted by COVID, as their streaming income has not replaced their live income. The other 99%, around...
The earlier order laid out a vision for a garden to "depict historically significant Americans" at a to-be-determined place with a target date for public access of July 4, 2026. The list of those Trump wants to honor is wide-ranging; it includes past politicians, musicians, artists, astronauts, movie stars, philosophers, athletes and other historical figures. Trump's order says the...
Reviewing is not just about giving a thumbs-up or down and handing out generalised star ratings. It’s using experience of the art form to encourage readers to a more engaged understanding. For me, it’s about connecting the best work with the widest possible audience. - The Stage
For years, an aesthetic mode of nothingness has been ascendant — a literally nihilistic attitude visible in all realms of culture, one intent on the destruction of extraneity in all its forms, up to and including noise, decoration, possessions, identities and face-to-face interaction. Over the past decade, American consumers have glamorized the pursuit of expensive nothing in the form...
"The complexity of the question "What qualifies as tokenism and what as representation?" rivals that of Blackness itself. There is often a conflation perhaps because representation is part and parcel of tokenism, making it difficult to discern one from the other, or at what point it shifts. What it looks like for the bystander may not be how it...
The Philadelphia new-music producer Bowerbird has planned a set of seven concerts, each timed for 10:00 or 11:00 pm, that aim to put listeners in that odd space between sleep and wakefulness — thus the series title, Liminal States. Says pianist Marilyn Nonken, who opens the set next Wednesday with Morton Feldman's Triadic Memories, "Everybody is so traumatized and...
"With more conventional classical music video where we watch musicians playing, I would argue that the visual experience actually constrains our mind’s eye and stultifies our creative imaginations. When we listen to a recording, our eyes can look anywhere and our imaginations are free to roam. True we are not watching the musicians, but we are not visually trapped...
Just a year ago, one of New Zealand's largest magazine publishers decided to shut itself off and sell off its titles (if it could), portending doom for the industry. Not only were all the titles sold (and they're still publishing), but a new wave of publications dedicated to New Zealand's tradition of long-form feature journalism. - The Guardian
They were installed by Ronald Rael and Virginia San Fratello at the Anapra zone in Ciudad Juarez in Mexico. Even though they were only in place for 20 minutes, video footage of people using them went viral. - BBC
"The Nijinsky name, however, does not belong to alone. In an era where static positions were the marrow of classical dance, Nijinska envisioned a modernist ballet, one which saw focus shift towards the movement which connected these positions. Ultimately, she believed it was not the final posture that encapsulated the beauty of ballet, but the spaces in...
Nate Chinen: "A disaster of this magnitude turns every critic into an advocate. For many of us, of course, that function was already part of the equation. But as I look back on our distorted timeline, I'm struck by how great a percentage of my energy was devoted to crisis response: detailing the collapse of an infrastructure; sounding the...
Charlotte Higgins: "What is happening in reality – and to a greater or lesser extent has been happening for years – is a reappraisal of what and who is celebrated in Britain’s public realm, as Britain gradually, painfully, and often inadequately, examines its colonial and imperial past. … What the Conservatives doggedly refuse to acknowledge is that a community...
"The legislation would require planning permission for any changes and a minister would be given the final veto. … The plans follow the toppling of a statue of slave trader Edward Colston last year and a wider discussion on the removal of controversial monuments." - BBC
