"At the darkest hour, with concert halls shuttered and musicians facing visa hell, Rattle’s defection is being regarded, rightly or wrongly, as a loss of faith. I have heard the word ‘betrayal’ muttered by senior figures. His appearance last week at the head of a petition for renegotiating EU access for British musicians was greeted with hollow laughs. Not...
In fact, outside North America and Europe, 78s were the standard record format well into the 1960s, and they hold an enormous variety of music from the days before globalization. A new anthology titled An Alternate History of the World's Music presents old recordings from places as disparate as Myanmar, Zanzibar, Ecuador, Albania, and Okinawa. - The Guardian
“I do not consent to being part of an arts community that engages in witch hunts of people who don’t think like me,” Carmen Aguirre says in the nearly 30-minute video, which she posted to YouTube. “If I am to argue with someone because I oppose their views or even find their views harmful, then I’d like the argument...
"I've done about 18 of these virtual shows, and I've learned things from them that I thought I had long understood after 20 years of being a professional comedian. People need comedy. At very least, they need to laugh — particularly when life is most burdensome and unwieldy. People need to laugh to be reminded what laughter feels like...
"At a moment of rampant disinformation and conspiracy theories juiced by algorithms, we can no longer turn a blind eye to a theory of technology that says all engagement is good engagement — the longer the better — and all with the goal of collecting as much data as possible. Too many are still asking the question, 'how much...
"Mary-Kay Wilmers … was one of the founders of the literary magazine in 1979, along with Karl Miller and Susannah Clapp, became co-editor in 1988, and has been its sole editor since 1992. In 2019, when the LRB celebrated its 40th anniversary, she was dubbed 'Britain's most influential editor' by the New York Times." - The Guardian
"So, uh, how — and why — did all of this happen? Here is the oral history of The Emperor’s New Groove, an irreverent, pratfall-heavy, non sequitur of an animated movie that so defied Disney’s painstakingly deliberate traditions, it’s hard to believe it actually exists today." - New York Magazine
The Vertical Theatre, as it's called, will be modular, with a capacity of 1,200 to 2,400, seated in small groups separated (if necessary) by clear screens. The structure has a roof, but the sides are open to allow airflow. The UK-based creators hope to have at least one Vertical Theatre hosting shows later this year. - WhatsOnStage (London)
"The workforce of broadcast engineers — those who know to fix broadcast transmitters, tubes and wires — is reaching retirement age. … Far fewer skilled young people are waiting in the wings to take on their roles. The apprenticeships that provided training to the engineers who are now approaching retirement are increasingly rare." And perpetually strapped public broadcasting stations...
"In addition to being creative thinkers and makers, many artists, designers and architects are also researchers whose work reveals new insights and approaches to solving some of the most complex challenges facing our world. … It is vital that our federal government includes art researchers so that their unique perspectives and voices can help catalyse change for a better...
Or, if not the entire movie-theater business, at least AMC. The pandemic had made the already-difficult financial situation of the world's largest cinema chain disastrous. But the same amateur stock-traders on the subreddit r/wallstreetbets who put GameStop in the news this week bought lots of stock in AMC as well. As a Bloomberg columnist put it, "Six hundred million...
"The collection" — which, the museum says, has "insufficient reliable provenance" — "includes manuscripts and papyrus fragments with texts written in Coptic, hieratic and demotic scripts, and Greek. Some of the papyri feature Christian prayers written in Arabic and Coptic or Arabic only." - Hyperallergic
"A sterling 550-year-old portrait by the Renaissance master Sandro Botticelli that was the star lot of Sotheby's Old Masters sale has sold for $92.2 million, making it the second-most-expensive Old Master artwork to sell at auction, according to the company. The artwork, Young Man Holding a Roundel (circa 1444/5–1510), is one of only three portraits by Botticelli left in...
"Having started her career with Harmonia Mundi in 1972 as a press officer, she went on to produce more than 800 recordings with artists including Philippe Herreweghe, , Jean-Guihen Queyras, Isabelle Faust and Paul Lewis. She retired from the classical music label in 2016 following a career spanning nearly 30 years. When her husband Bernard Coutaz, Harmonia Mundi's founder,...
"Regal in bearing, with willowy beauty and delicately chiseled features, Ms. Tyson was known for embodying women of great poise striving under great pressure. … electrifying portrayals of resilient Black women — foremost in the 1974 TV movie The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman but also as Coretta Scott King and Harriet Tubman — brought some of the...
