Succeeding longtime chief Nigel Redden in October is Egyptian-American musicologist Mena Mark Hanna, a teacher, composer, Coptic Orthodox cantor (!), and former administrator at Houston Grand Opera. He is currently dean at the Barenboim-Said Akademie in Berlin. - The Post and Courier (Charleston)
The company, which was having money troubles even before the pandemic, finally has agreements with the unions for onstage (AGMA) and backstage (IATSE) workers. But negotiations over pay cuts with Local 802 of the American Federation of Musicians, which represents the orchestra, drag on. - The New York Times
An announcement to this effect was made earlier this year, but the mammoth passenger boats turned up anyway. But now the national government, eager to avoid UNESCO "World Heritage in Danger" status, has made it feasible for the rule to take effect August 1. - Reuters
“I was struck and moved by the extraordinarily personal, cogent arguments that each officer made for their selection, which was so different from the intellectual and filtered approach that a trained curator would take.” - The Art Newspaper
What if, after 90 years, we took a diagnostic check on this venerable musical document to see whether it still works as intended? - San Francisco Chronicle
"Some more enterprising major-media columnists sometimes compare Substack to the broadsheets of journalism’s early decades in the 1800s, though they do this, invariably, as a means of dismissing digital newsletters as retrograde." - Seth Abramson
Enormously useful mathematical tools that have been put to work during the pandemic—from classical differential equations to more recent techniques such as Monte Carlo methods and Markov chains—were in many cases invented by mathematicians who had no particular goal in mind. - Nautilus
It is "one of the first attempts to apply a new copyright directive adopted by the European Union intended to force internet platforms like Google and Facebook to compensate news organizations for their content." - The New York Times
Over six centuries in the Habsburg empire and most of another in Yugoslavia, the tongue of this tiny Alpine land might well have faded away. But one dedicated (or obsessive) 18th-century priest/author/publisher led the effort to mold a bunch of hillbilly dialects into a serious language. - Atlas Obscura
And it isn't just Downton Abbey and Killing Eve: MasterChef and Naked Attraction air in dozens of countries. In fact, other nations are now considering mandated limits, fearing that UK programming is crowding out their own industries. - The Guardian
Our research found that a complex blend of social inequalities, labour market failures, and outright discrimination are making these jobs so exclusive and keeping talented working-class people from making it. - The Conversation
AI software isn't designing the sculptures in the Italian quarry town (yet), but it is controlling precision machines that do the strenuous grinding and chiseling of rock that used to wear out human sculptors' bodies. - The New York Times
“Imagine being a theater owner and realizing studios need you less and less every day. Leverage is shifting rapidly in the streaming era toward the studios.” - Deadline
