In Canada, she brought Baroque music played on period instruments into the modern era. "Under her guidance — and with her often leading from the first-violin chair — the group developed an international reputation, performing all over the world in major concert halls, at universities, in churches, even in pubs" — not to mention the recordings. - The New...
Rome was hardly white, whether in architecture or demographics. But historically, Europeans and white Americans - and especially Mussolini and his followers - have thought, and represented in art, otherwise. Why it matters today: "Cultural practitioners have an unprecedented chance to help the wider public engage with an idea of Rome that’s more diverse, realistic and interesting than the...
There are issues: "Many educators of color find themselves entering or working at predominantly white institutions (PWIs) with little guidance on how to push for change and support their students, while managing to take care of themselves. And there are still cases in which an institution makes a new hire as a Band-Aid solution when they’re called out for problematic...
Anne Enright on The Green Road on having a plan for her plot, her idea to write a new King Lear: "The children had other needs. I followed them, let them grow up and, really, given the circumstances – the mother’s vanity, the father’s silence – there was a limit to how far and whether they could get away."...
For one thing, "action games in particular—games where reflexes, reaction time, and hand-eye coordination are challenged, like in the now-retro classics Doom and Team Fortress Classic—provided tangible cognitive advantages that help us in everyday life." - Wired
Italy was the first to lock down, and one of the hardest lockdowns. "Now most of Italy is in a 'white zone,' and museums can operate at their full summer schedule. Still, on a Saturday, I counted four other visitors to the most anticipated show of the year in Rome: 'The Torlonia Marbles: Collecting Masterpieces,' at the Capitoline, showcasing...
The move is the latest in a series led by Recording Academy chief Harvey Mason, jr. that reflect an effort to at least calm some of the multiple controversies that have arisen around it over the past few years, ranging from Dugan’s extremely hostile termination to her predecessor Neil Portnow’s 2018 comment that females in the music industry need...
They are imbued with grandeur precisely because of their superb indifference to mundane human concerns. Having knowledge is practically useful, but why would we also need the concept of knowledge? - Aeon
It feels as if there has been a dendrocentric turn in culture recently; a new sensitivity to the arboreal and, more broadly, the botanical. - The Guardian
Why do people pronounce words differently, why does pronunciation change, and why does so-called mispronunciation upset some people to the point of making it possible (and interesting) to compile a top ten list? - The Conversation
"Today, artists like Toor, 31, are changing the way that bhangra and other Indian dance genres are seen, creating dances meant to be consumed online in productions that resemble professional music videos. … reflects a new wave of Indian diaspora dance, a wave that has been enabled by platforms like YouTube and TikTok, and intensified during the pandemic...
Gay Angelenos like to remind their counterparts to the north and east that L.A. played a crucial, perhaps decisive, role in gay-rights history. Five men sat together on the hillside in the late afternoon, imagining a world in which they did not have to hide. - The New Yorker
"Desert In is an operatic experiment. Co-produced by Long Beach Opera and by Boston Lyric Opera, which commissioned the work, the eight-episode streaming miniseries is the brainchild of LBO Artistic Director … James Darrah, composer Ellen Reid and peña. … Episodes," each with a different composer and scriptwriters, "are just 15 to 20 minutes long, but each packs...
In reality neoliberalism has depended on huge levels of government support for its entire existence. The global neoliberal economic order could easily have collapsed into a 1930s-level Great Depression multiple times over in the absence of massive government interventions. - Boston Review
