Since succeeding Osmo Vänskä as music director in the fall of 2023, he has shown a flair for programming, thrown himself into community engagement (he insists on conducting family concerts himself), and enchanted the musicians. Says one principal, "We're still on our honeymoon." - The New York Times
Since the elimination of mandatory retirement in symphony orchestras and with union protections making it difficult to fire older players, many orchestras include members who look as though they just arrived from a retirement home. - Nightingale Sonata
The re-recording mixer for Emilia Pérez said that AI software was used to extend the vocal range of star Karla Sofía Gascón to reach that of her songs, and The Brutalist editor Dávid Jancsó used an AI program to correct the pronunciation in Adrien Brody's and Felicity Jones's Hungarian dialogue. - The Guardian
Alan Cumming, who made the comparison, provides a good example: he was hired in September to run the Pitlochry Festival Theatre and "invite the world's best theatre artists" to perform. He still doesn't know whether the company will be funded even for this summer. It's like this throughout the sector. - The Scotsman
"The station, which began broadcasting on television in 1960 and recently celebrated its 50th anniversary in radio, is expected to move out of its current building … at the end of February and break ground on a new building … later this year." - KERA (Dallas)
"It is a sprawling, chaotic reflection of Britain’s psyche over 300 years: its voracious curiosity and cultural relativism; its pugnacious superiority complex; its restless seafaring and trading; its cruel imperial enrichment; its brilliant scholarship, its brutality, its idealism, its postcolonial anxiety." - The Guardian
"The newly unearthed spa complex comprises the classic Roman trio of thermal rooms — calidarium (hot), tepidarium (warm), and frigidarium (cold) — alongside a spacious apodyterium (changing room). … The remarkable discovery, located in insula 10, offers a rare glimpse into how wealthy Romans fused leisure, art, and political ambition within their homes." - Euronews
"Introduced in 2003 by then culture minister Jean-Jacques Aillagon, this policy incentivises corporate philanthropy for arts and charities by offering a 60 per cent tax relief on donations, capped at 0.5 per cent of a company’s annual turnover. The law has transformed France’s cultural funding." - Financial Times
"The Pulitzer Prize-winning cartoonist, playwright, screenwriter and children’s book author was one of the most humorously neurotic literary voices of his generation. … (He) found his voice in comics that provided a sardonic and sarcastic takedown of authority and conventional wisdom." - The Washington Post (MSN)
Haven’t critics freaked out about the brain-scrambling power of everything from pianofortes to brightly colored posters? Isn’t there, in fact, a long section in Plato’s Phaedrus in which Socrates argues that writing will wreck people’s memories? - The New Yorker
“It’s not really enjoyable to make music now. It takes a lot of time, it takes a lot of practice, you need to get really good at an instrument or really good at a piece of production software. And I think the majority of people don’t enjoy the majority of the time they spend making music." - Music Radar
Los Angeles is facing a loss of artists, producers and executives ranging from sound to visual effects. Musicians, and the players behind them, are a vital aspect in that. - The Hollywood Reporter
Is it inherently bad to cater to people who may prefer their viewing on the more casual side? Is it snobbery to believe that TV must demand all of our attention all of the time? - The Guardian
Classical music has long been wandering in the desert of its own identity crisis, and 2016 was an unexpected checkpoint. Overnight, it seemed that artists had sprung into creative overdrive, making works to comment on the moment - Van
About 63 percent of us read at least one book last year, an improvement from the 54 percent we saw in 2023.Other sources don’t point to a seismic shift in reading habits, so this may be a refined estimate rather than a trend. - Washington Post
