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San Diego Symphony Extends Contract With Music Director Rafael Payare

“The Venezuelan-born conductor — who became a naturalized US. citizen last year on the stage of the symphony’s Jacobs Music Center — began his tenure here with the orchestra in late 2019.” His contract term now extends through the 2028-29 season, with the new title of Music and Artistic Director. - The San Diego Union-Tribune (MSN)

Here’s One Israeli Orchestra That Isn’t Met With Protests When It Tours

The Galilee Chamber Orchestra, currently touring the US, is based in Nazareth (considered the cultural capital for Israel’s native Palestinians, about 20% of the country’s total population). It was formed 13 years ago as the first fully professional orchestra with equal numbers of Jewish and Arab musicians. - The Philadelphia Inquirer (MSN)

So What Is Progress, Really? Some Limits Are Good

“Modernity is a machine for destroying limits." This attack on limits is legible in a host of current phenomena, including mass immigration, free-market orthodoxy, the rise of AI, overseas labor exploitation, the clear-cutting of rainforests, and new ideas about gender. - The Atlantic

Fort Worth Opera Tries A Pay-What-You-Can Program

For each of this weekend’s three performances of Philip Glass’s La Belle et la Bête (Beauty and the Beast, set to Jean Cocteau’s 1946 film), Fort Worth Opera has 100 tickets available for $1 or whatever price the purchaser names. - NBC 5 (Dallas-Fort Worth)

For A Long Time Artists Have Been On The Leading Edge Of Culture. Maybe Its Time To Give Up That Role?

What about all the painting, sculpture, photography, video, and performance that people still love to make and see? They’re not going away, but it’s become harder to create fine art in those media while remaining on cultural discourse’s cutting edge.  - Art in America

French Art Establishment Opposes New Tax On Art

Under the legislation, France would become the only major market art center to impose a wealth tax on the mere possession of artworks, says the statement. France is the world’s fourth-largest art market, and accounts for more than half of the European Union’s market value, at $4.2 billion. - ARTnews

Nico Muhly On The Physical Translation Of Music Into Dancers’ Bodies

Watching a dance rehearsal as a score-addicted musician is surreal. You can have 30 people in the room, and only two of them will have the score. What is fascinating is that the choreographer has imposed an entirely different, invisible form of notation on the form of their counting. - The Guardian

Howard University Is On A Mission To Preserve The History Of Black American Newspapers

The project is digitizing U.S. newspapers that are are now in the public domain (after 95 years). The center also has permission to place online certain titles still under copyright. Other U.S. Black papers still under copyright are available on site, as are publications from the Caribbean and Africa. - The Christian Science Monitor

Disney Hits A Wall With Its AI Ambitions

Even as other industries — from technology to publishing — proceed to incorporate AI to cut costs and replace jobs, media companies have bumped up against numerous roadblocks including actors reluctant to cooperate with AI models, animators and post-production experts pushing back on change, technological limitations and legal questions. - Yahoo Finance

This Playwright Enlisted Anorexic Actors: The Ethics Of Who Portrays What

Theater makers have long depicted health struggles onstage, including the realities of living with H.I.V. and cancer, but the debate around this production, titled “Jeanne Dark” and running through May 22, has shown that ethical questions remain about how various conditions are portrayed theatrically — and who gets to shape those depictions. - The New York Times

Norwegian National Ballet Did A Piece About Sami History By A Sami Choreographer. Oslo Loved It, But Did It Fly In The Sami Heartland?

That question worried the choreographer, administrators, and the dancers, none of whom are Sami themselves. What’s more, the piece was about a particularly sensitive topic: a violent uprising in 1852. So everyone was nervous about performing in the town where the rebellion happened. - The New York Times

The GLP-1 Era Is Changing How We Think About Self Control

Although scientists are just beginning to study food noise as a concept, individuals who have taken a GLP-1 drug often report that it significantly reduces this distracting, ruminative thinking about food – a near-constant background hum of unwanted food-related thoughts, feelings and desires that may contribute to making poor food choices. - Psyche

This Year’s Worldwide New Building Of The Year

The Holy Redeemer Church and Community Center of Las Chumberas, designed by Spanish architect Fernando Menis, has been named as the World Building of the Year at the 2025 World Architecture Festival. - Archinect

Pope Leo: Movie Theatres And Cathedrals

There's "an inner peace that comes from entering the sanctum sanctorum of those movie palaces with the wall-sized screens.2 Don’t take it from me. Take it from a higher authority: his holiness, Pope Leo XIV." - The Bulwark

Wagnerian Tenor Gary Lakes Has Died At 75

A veteran who performed at the Metropolitan Opera 106 times and at many other companies, he was known for such challenging roles as Tannhäuser, Lohengrin, Tristan, Parsifal, and Siegmund and Siegfried (at various times) in the Ring cycle, as well as Florestan in Beethoven’s Fidelio and Aeneas in Berlioz’s Les Troyens. - OperaWire

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