Before joining the VSO, Angela Elster was senior vice-president of research and education at the Royal Conservatory of Music in Toronto, where she played a key role in opening the TELUS Centre for Performing Arts and Learning and founded the Learning Through the Arts program. At the VSO, she piloted the Day of Music celebration that welcomed over 14,000 people to 100 free performances, forged the Indigenous Council, and launched a new focus on health and wellness programming at the organization. – Georgia Straight
Gypsy Rose Lee’s Son Remembers Life On The Road With Mother
Erik Lee Preminger (his father was film director Otto Preminger) started traveling with his mother while still an infant, got his first jobs with her show before he was old enough to go to school, and was her dresser by the time he was a teenager. Of course he has stories — like the time when Gypsy was driving her first Rolls-Royce through Switzerland in winter and got stuck in the snow: “She tried to dig us out using a bidet she had stolen from a hotel. It was quite an adventure.” – American Theatre
The Very Controversial Start Of Asian-American Literature Studies
Students of Asian American literature have often been far more familiar with what is wrong with Aiiieeeee! than with Aiiieeeee! itself. From the earliest days of its publication, many Asian Americans did not hear themselves in the scream of Aiiieeeee!, did not see themselves in the “our” of its “fifty years of our whole voice.” They chafed against what they saw as the editorial limiting of “authentic” Asian Americanness to “Filipino, Chinese, and Japanese Americans, American born and raised.” This act of border drawing, by excluding Pacific Islander, Korean, and South Asian Americans (among others), further contributed to critics’ rejection of Aiiieeeee!’s brand of Asian American cultural nationalism as more divisive than unifying. – Paris Review
How The Franco Regime Ruined Zarzuela And Flamenco Music For Many Spaniards
“But as is the case with other musical genres indigenous to Spain, they initially developed with no ties to one political ideology over another. Zarzuela is nowadays perceived in the national imagination as an integral part of musical life under the Franco regime and, as such, outdated and conservative. … More than classical music and zarzuela, flamenco was perhaps the genre that suffered the most from Franco’s cultural policies.” – JSTOR Daily
What Did Happiness Used To Look Like?
We don’t know without a lot of careful analysis because words and their meanings change. However, “over the past two or three decades, the historical study of emotions has developed a rich set of tools with which to chart the ways that emotions have changed over time. Emotions such as anger, disgust, love and happiness might seem commonplace, but they are not so readily understood in the past.” – Aeon
James Wood: Technique Versus Effect In Literary Criticism
The first way of reading is non-evaluative, at least at the level of craft or technique; the second is only evaluative, and wagers everything on technical success, on questions of craft and aesthetic achievement. – LitHub
100-Year-Old Bookstore With No Customers Sends Mournful Tweet And Customers Respond
The store hadn’t had any sales that day, perhaps for the first time ever, says the manager. He sent out a tweet and Twitter readers responded with a thousand pounds worth of orders. – The Guardian
Large Incan Idol That Pizarro Claimed He Destroyed Has Survived
“A basketball-player-size wooden idol that allegedly escaped destruction by the Spanish conquistadors is real — but it may not be quite what people suspected. The statue is even older than thought, and may have been worshipped by the people who came before the Inca. And belying the grisly lore that surrounds it, the so-called Pachacamac idol was painted with cinnabar, not drenched in blood, the researchers found.” – Live Science
Missouri Debates Jailing Librarians For Lending “Age-Inappropriate” Books
Under the parental oversight of public libraries bill, which has been proposed by Missouri Republican Ben Baker, panels of parents would be elected to evaluate whether books are appropriate for children. Public hearings would then be held by the boards to ask for suggestions of potentially inappropriate books, with public libraries that allow minors access to such titles to have their funding stripped. Librarians who refuse to comply could be fined and imprisoned for up to one year. – The Guardian
Want A Job? Increasingly You’ll Have To Get By The AI Algorithms First
With HireVue, businesses can pose pre-determined questions — often recorded by a hiring manager — that candidates answer on camera through a laptop or smartphone. Increasingly, those videos are then pored over by algorithms analyzing details such as words and grammar, facial expressions and the tonality of the job applicant’s voice, trying to determine what kinds of attributes a person may have. Based on this analysis, the algorithms will conclude whether the candidate is tenacious, resilient, or good at working on a team, for instance. – CNN
Alan Gilbert Appointed Director Of The Royal Swedish Opera
He will begin in the spring of 2021. Gilbert will combine his new position with the post of Chief Conductor at the Elbphilharmonie in Hamburg, the position which he took in the fall of 2019. – Operawire
Study: It Takes Decades (4), But Liberal Arts College Degree Pays Off
40 years after enrollment, the return at liberal arts colleges reached $918,000, more than 25 percent higher than the $723,000 median gain at all colleges. – InsideHigherEd
Hollywood Talent Agencies Face Uncertain Times
Agencies are under growing pressure “to scale up and adapt to a changing media industry. The rise of streaming and the expected decline of TV packaging — where agencies collect fees for packaging talent on shows — combined with the effects of the longstanding writers boycott, have squeezed talent agencies, some of which have weathered high-level executive turnover, laid off workers and cut back on overtime pay for assistants.” – Los Angeles Times
How To Save The Oscars From The Academy
At the moment, the Oscars reflect the Academy, but the Academy reflects nothing but its august name; plausible deniability and the shunning of responsibility are built into the current system. Paradoxically, counting only votes from members with a stake in the image of the industry put forth by the industry would cast onto the Oscars the sharp light of accountability, would be, in effect, a truth-in-awards program.” – The New Yorker
Podcasts Are Getting Book-Group-Like Fan Clubs — And, Like Book Groups, They’re About More Than Just The Material
“Though they are ostensibly meant for conversation about the shows themselves, actual episodes are seldom discussed. Instead, members get sidetracked and end up on tangents, talking about their failed marriages, sharing parenting advice and helping each other pick outfits for first dates.” – The New York Times
Putin Enlists Major Cultural Leaders To Rewrite Russian Constitution
Wasting no time, the Kremlin on Wednesday posted a list of 75 members of a working group appointed to draft the constitutional amendments, including a range of political and cultural figures. Among them are Mikhail Piotrovsky, the director of the State Hermitage Museum in St. Petersburg, and Zelfira Tregulova, the director of Moscow’s State Tretyakov Gallery, both seasoned political players. Both were among the public figures who served as his 2018 presidential campaign confidants. – The Art Newspaper
Audible And Publishers Settle Lawsuit Over Captioning
“In July, the audiobook company owned by Amazon announced Captions, an additional function for the existing app that would allow customers to read the text as it was read, as well as looking up words and translating them. … Seven publishers, including the ‘Big Five’ – Penguin Random House, Hachette, Simon & Schuster, HarperCollins and Macmillan – sued Audible in August, a move that was also backed by bodies representing authors and agents,” all of whom maintained that the captioning was unauthorized reproduction of the printed text. – The Guardian
Betty Pat Gatliff, Who Pioneered Practice Of Forensic Sculpture, Dead At 89
“Ms. Gatliff developed a new method for facial reconstruction in the late 1960s, then spent nearly five decades refining her technique and teaching it to hundreds of students, including at the FBI Academy in Quantico, Va. … Using little more than modeling clay and a set of soft, eraser-like dowels, Ms. Gatliff transformed unknown skulls into eerily lifelike busts. Her work helped identify murder victims, catch killers and give solace to grieving families.” – The Washington Post
Carnegie Library’s Ex-Archivist And His Fence Plead Guilty To Stealing And Selling Rare Books
“Between 1992 and 2017, archivist Greg Priore smuggled some 300 documents worth more than $8 million out of the Carnegie Library of Pittsburgh, where he served as sole manager of the rare books room. … He then delivered the items to bookseller John Schulman, who subsequently re-sold them to unsuspecting clients. On Monday, the two men pleaded guilty … [and] will be sentenced on April 17 of this year.” – Smithsonian Magazine
Gustavo Dudamel Renews With Los Angeles Philharmonic Through 2025-26
“The four-year extension … maintains what has proved a winning formula: the pairing of a conductor whose fame extends beyond the classical music world and is a powerful audience draw with an orchestra that has developed perhaps the strongest reputation in the country for innovative programming and community outreach.” – The New York Times
“Jeopardy” Now Has Its All-Time Champ. But Why Did It Need One?
Elsewhere, we carp, battle and grind one another down for bragging rights and total triumph. Sports culture and champion-making has seeped into nearly every aspect of life. It’s all just a little (or a lot) more elbowy and contentious — primary campaigns, award show nominations, lists of the decade’s best albums. – Washington Post
Dance Theatre Of Harlem Gets Its Biggest-Ever Gift, Will Expand Company
Virginia Johnson, a founding member of Dance Theater of Harlem who was named artistic director in 2009, said the gift would go toward increasing the size of the company from 18 to 20 dancers, supplementing the organization’s lean staff and further encouraging the development of works by women and people of color. – The New York Times
Happiness Index: Why It’s So Difficult To Tell
Over the past two or three decades, the historical study of emotions has developed a rich set of tools with which to chart the ways that emotions have changed over time. Emotions such as anger, disgust, love and happiness might seem commonplace, but they are not so readily understood in the past. These concepts and the experiences associated with them are not historically stable. – Aeon
Board Games Are Thriving
In Germany, the home of modern board-gaming, the industry has grown by over 40% in the past five years; the four-day SPIEL trade fair this year saw 1,500 new board and card game releases, with 209,000 attendees from around the world. – Fast Company
Slideshare Has Become A Major Repository For Pirated Books
The more popular the book, the more pervasive the SlideShare piracy. Searches for the top five fiction and nonfiction books on the New York Times bestseller list (which includes authors ranging from Malcolm Gladwell to Delia Owens to Ronan Farrow) produce multiple pages of pirated e-book links on SlideShare for each title. – Fast Company