“It overruns the boundaries separating art from pop, mainstream from underground, primeval past from hi-tech present. … It is as though, in a reversal of tectonic drift, isolated land masses of taste were re-forming as a supercontinent.”
How The L.A. Phil Is Facing The Future
“‘Our audience is segmenting. There isn’t such a thing as a classical music audience. There are dozens of classical music audiences,’ said Chad Smith, the Phil’s vice president of artistic planning. ‘We want to be seen as relevant to what’s happening in our world. L.A. is the most contemporary city. You miss a beat and you are forgotten.'”
At This Lit Festival, Books Really Are A Matter Of Life And Death
“There are obvious security challenges in organising a literary festival in a country where people get killed for the things they write. … [Yet] the Karachi literature festival (KLF) is now in its sixth year, and welcomed more than 100,000 people through its security scanners last weekend.”
“They Are, In A Way, Aliens”: Helen Mirren On The British Royal Family
“The world they live in is so beyond our understanding. You’ve never queued for anything. Ever, for anything. Every time you go in the street, the traffic is stopped for you. It’s a world you can’t imagine. They are, in a way, aliens. But inside that, they are the same flawed, insecure, vulnerable, complicated human beings we are. It’s my job to get into the person who’s inside that world.”
Being Guillaume Côté
The 33-year-old Quebecker is a principal and the National Ballet of Canada and arguably the nation’s biggest male ballet star. He also makes high-profile guest appearances, composes and performs music, runs a summer arts festival in the countryside north of Montreal, and is choreographing a full-length ballet based on one of the most beloved works in all of French literature (Le Petit Prince). And he’s a dad.
Here’s How Your Brain Lights Up On Celebrity Gossip
“While the students claimed there was nothing especially entertaining about the negative celebrity gossip, a part of their brain known to be involved in the experience of pleasure (the caudate nucleus) was extra active when they heard stories of movie stars doing naughty things.”
“A 553-Year-Old Overnight Sensation”: How A Little-Known Florentine Painter Became An Art Star
“When American millionaires bought paintings by Piero di Cosimo in the late 19th century, almost all the works were attributed to other Italian Renaissance artists. Piero, a painter of Florence during its golden age, was simply regarded as too obscure to produce such masterful works.”
Classical Ballet Joins New York’s Downtown Dance Scene
Thanks to a series of proverbially unfortunate events that haven’t, in the end, worked out so badly, New York Theater Ballet – homeless just a year ago – has found itself ensconced in one of the East Village’s iconic avant-garde performance venues.
How Can The Arts Help People With Alzheimer’s?
“Improv theater is particularly helpful because it doesn’t rely on memorization, which patients may struggle with. Rather, improv is about going with the flow and enjoying the immediate energies.”
Artist Who Made That (Gorgeous) Poppies Exhibit At The Tower Of London Says He Received Death Threats
“Mr. Cummins said: ‘The threats came, I suppose, because they felt that the money was going to charities which in some way were involved in war.'”
The Worldwide Threats To Political Cartoonists
“Just days ago, Malaysian cartoonist Zulkifli Anwar Ulhaque, better known as Zunar, was arrested over a tweet he posted criticizing Malaysia’s judiciary. A cartoon he posted on his Twitter account showed Prime Minister Najib Razak as the judge in a high-profile case involving an opposition leader.”
At The Berlin Film Festival, A Dissident Iranian Filmmaker Takes Top Prize
“Taxi is Panahi’s third film since he was banned from making films by the Iranian authorities and forbidden from travelling in 2010. It was filmed covertly as the director drove a taxi around Tehran.”
Get Ready For Crowded Skies As Commercial Drones Become Legal
The FAA “said it believes that drones can save lives, boost the economy, and be integrated safely into the national airspace.”
Top Posts From AJBlogs For 02.15.15
Philip Levine, Former U.S. Poet Laureate And Pulitzer Prize Winner, Dies At 87
“In spare, realistic free verse, Mr. Levine explored the subjects that had animated his work for decades: his gritty Detroit childhood; the soul-numbing factory jobs he held as a youth; Spain, where he lived for some time as an adult; and the Spanish anarchists of the 1930s, a personal passion since he was a boy.”
A Brilliant, Progressive Woman Invented Monopoly – And Then A Man Stole The Idea And Sold It
“Magie filed a legal claim for her Landlord’s Game in 1903, more than three decades before Parker Brothers began manufacturing Monopoly. She actually designed the game as a protest against the big monopolists of her time — people like Andrew Carnegie and John D. Rockefeller.”
What Living Architect Can Restore The Glory Of Charles Rennie Mackintosh’s Glasgow School Of Art?
“The news last May that the Glasgow School of Art was burning was, for many people who care about British architecture, as close to hearing that an actual human friend was in danger as any threat to inanimate building materials can be.”
The Composer Of The Opera ‘Mourning Becomes Electra,’ Who Went To Prison For Pot Smuggling, Dies At 82
Marvin David Levy “was at midcentury an American composer of seemingly limitless promise, compared by Leonard Bernstein to Benjamin Britten.”