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So What Will The Financiers Who Bought Second City Do With It (Or To) It?

"Though private-equity firms are notorious for ruthlessly wringing efficiencies out of the properties they pick up, the investors who just bought one of Chicago's most treasured cultural institutions contend a growth strategy is the only play that makes sense." - Crain's Chicago Business

I Miss Theatre. I Didn’t Know I’d Miss The Audience Too

"What it has taken me a year to realize is how much I also miss the community of the audience — the strangers surrounding me, obscured by the dark, who have tacitly agreed to escape and exalt and squirm together." - Washington Post

Marie Antoinette’s Private Theatre Has Been Restored

The queen had the little playhouse built as part of her pretend village at Le Petit Trianon; she and her friends attended plays and operas there and even performed themselves. (Her Majesty once played Rosine in Beaumarchais's The Barber of Seville.) The theatre is now so fragile (much of the interior is made of papier-mâché over wire mesh, just...

What People Regret On Their Deathbed

"Broadly, people seem to wish for a more meaningful life. They wished they’d been more authentic in their activities (1; 3). They wished they’d prioritised friends and themselves, rather than work (2; 4; 5). They wished, in short, that they’d stopped and smelled the roses." - Aeon

Jazz Drummer And Bandleader Ralph Peterson Jr., 58

"The sheer, onrushing force of Peterson's beat, paired with his alert ear and agile dynamism, made him one of the standout jazz musicians to emerge in the 1980s. Part of a striving peer group known as the Young Lions, which coalesced around the resurgence of acoustic hard bop, he distinguished himself early on as a powerful steward of that...

Why Music Schools Like Juilliard Have To Change

Classical purists clutch their hearts in disgust at the mere suggestion of their holy shrines teaching business skills like freelancing or contemporary styles like pop, rock, or electronic music. But consider that the geniuses we hold in high regard from ages past — the very ones we teach in classical schools now — were trail-blazing innovators in their time....

Putting Together The Pieces Of A Lost Florence Price Score

The pioneering Black composer's Fantasie Nègre No. 3 in F minor was thought to be incomplete: only the first two pages were known to have survived. Here's how musicologist Samantha Ege found the rest of the piece tucked away in the archive of music discovered in Price's old summer house in 2009. - BBC

Murdoch Admits It Out Loud: Fox News Is The ‘Opposition’ To Democrats And Biden

Fox Corp. CEO Lachlan Murdoch, Rupert's elder son, told a group of investors that Biden's presidency would be good for Fox News (which, of course, used the slogan "Fair and Balanced" for decades): "The main beneficiary of the Trump administration from a ratings point of view was MSNBC … and that's because they were the loyal opposition, That's what...

Brown Paper Tickets Will Pay $9 Million To Stiffed Customers

Following a consent decree from the Washington Sstate Attorney General's office, Seattle ticketing company Brown Paper Tickets has agreed to pay $9 million in restitution to an estimated 45,000 customers at both ends of the company's business model: ticket buyers owed refunds and event organizers owed box-office revenue." - The Seattle Times

Aspen Santa Fe Ballet To Cease Performing

"The 25-year-old will eliminate its centerpiece: the professional performing arm of the company. The ballet schools and youth Folklórico programs in Santa Fe and Aspen, Colo., will continue to operate, but Aspen Santa Fe Ballet will shift its post-pandemic focus to creating and producing, as well as consulting other companies on their strategies for successful touring." - Santa...

New Bill In U.S. Congress Would Provide $5 Billion or Libraries

"The Build America's Libraries Act was introduced by in the House of Representatives by Reps. Andy Levin (D-MI-9) and Don Young (R-AK-at large) along with 52 cosponsors. The bill seeks to provide funds to address decades of needed repairs, updates, as well as the construction of modern library facilities in underserved and disadvantaged communities. The bill's Senate counterpart (S....

Milwaukee Symphony’s New Principal Tuba Is 19 Years Old

Robert Black comes from a family of brass players in suburban Chicago; his mother is a high school band teacher. He's currently finishing his sophomore year at Rice University in Houston remotely and says he's committed to finishing his B.A., though he may transfer to a Wisconsin school. - Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

Lauren Lovette, Only 29, Will Retire From New York City Ballet

"I spent a lot of last year feeling like I didn't make a difference. were saying some sweet things to me about different ways that I impacted their lives and how I could never leave. I sat there and I felt so embraced and comforted by everything that I was hearing, and loved — really, genuinely loved. …...

NY’s Iconic Metro Pictures Gallery Announces It Will Close

It wasn't "because of declining sales, co-founder Helene Winer said in an interview, but with a sense that reopening the gallery once the pandemic subsides would require more energy than she had to give at age 75. “We just feel like we did our thing,” she added. “I don’t think at my present age that I want to be...

“Queen’s Gambit” To Be Made Into Theatre

Level Forward, a company whose founders include Abigail Disney, a grandniece of Walt Disney, said on Monday that it has won the rights to adapt Walter Tevis’s 1983 novel, which has become newly noteworthy thanks to the enormous success of last year’s streaming series adaptation on Netflix. - The New York Times

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