“Born in 1778, in Biała Podlaska, Poland, [George Polgreen] Bridgetower started playing the violin at an early age. His father John Frederick Bridgetower (probably of West Indian descent) was a servant of Joseph Haydn’s patron: the Hungarian Prince Esterházy. And the young Bridgetower was tutored by Haydn himself. … Later, Bridgetower went on to give the first public performance of Beethoven’s Violin Sonata No. 9 in A major, Op. 47 (‘Kreutzer’), which the composer originally dedicated to him. The pair later fell out and Beethoven re-dedicated the work to the violin virtuoso Rudolphe Kreutzer, who never played it.” – The Strad
Manfred Fischbeck, Who Built Audience For Avant-Garde Dance In Philadelphia, Dead At 80
“For more than 50 years, [he] was an indefatigable contributor to the contemporary experimental dance scene in Philadelphia and around the world. … Mr. Fischbeck; his former wife, Brigitta Herrmann; and fellow innovator Hellmut Gottschild founded and directed Group Motion Multimedia Dance Theater in 1968. The Philadelphia dance troupe, internationally known for its avant-garde performances and outreach to enthusiasts, is celebrated locally for its continuing Friday night workshops [for] nondancers.” – The Philadelphia Inquirer
They Tell Aspiring Writers To Read Read Read. What If That’s Wrong?
“Now that I am a published writer, it is against this backdrop, of limited exposure to books in my adolescence, that I find the advice of established authors given to aspiring writers to “read, read and read books” lacking in nuance, unimaginative, and ignorant of the realities of those from backgrounds of scarcity, displacement, and war, like myself.” – Lithub
Ken Burns Does Hemingway
Let’s talk about the Burns Method: the frowning pan across the blotchy manuscript page, the dreamy plunge into the old photograph, the smatters of ambient sound, the talking head who is not so much a talking head as a deeply invested witness. How do you dramatize the interior life? How do you dramatize writing? If you’re Ken Burns, by talking to writers, by watching their faces and bodies register the Hemingway-shocks. – The Atlantic
Zaha Hadid’s Influence Has Only Grown Since She Died
Her presence continues to be felt across the contemporary design and architecture worlds. With around 1.2 million Instagram followers, Zaha Hadid Architects is now the most followed architectural practice in the world. Her sinuous lines and captivating shapes have been referenced by set designers on trendsetting movies including Black Panther. – The Conversation
For Some Artists, Quarantine Has Been A Gift
The open secret among anyone who enjoys the pleasure of their own company, however, is that the public health strategy of sheltering-in-place to combat COVID-19 was never a burden. It was a breath of fresh air. – ArtsATL
Why Withdrawing Dr. Seuss Books Is Just A Distraction
“Given these serious—and growing—problems, it’s not whataboutism to wonder why these old books get so much attention. Is it because attacking old books is easier than making the social and economic changes that would improve the actual lives of real children and their parents?” – The Nation
People Love Their Physical Music
Or at least, a Hollywood record store shuttered for many months by the pandemic: “‘We’ve been waiting for a year,’ said Silver Lake resident Kerri Barta, who was near the entrance on the cusp of access. Until COVID-19, a visit to Amoeba was part of the weekly ritual for her and companion Jason Yates. ‘It’s been a big hole in our life.'” – Los Angeles Times
Can The Huntington Change Its History Of Inequity?
Like most Gilded Age institutions, the Huntington has a lot to figure out. “Certainly, getting to a more equitable version of the future is going to take some work — and some unsentimental self-examination. ‘We need to look with a detached historical eye and not do hagiography,’ [director Christina] Nielsen says.” – Los Angeles Times
Riz Ahmed Explains How His Character In ‘Sound Of Metal’ Paralleled Life During The Pandemic
His character is a heavy-metal drummer who becomes deaf – very quickly. “You’ve got a character who is very focused on his daily grind. … Just like we are as a culture and a society, on the treadmill – a workaholic culture. Then we have a health crisis that suddenly throws him into a kind of purgatory, and in that lockdown limbo he’s forced to reassess what really matters to him. That’s a journey that so many of us have been on right now.” – BBC
Nike Wins A Restraining Order Against Artist Collective Selling Satan Shoes
Hello, freedom of artistic expression? Nope. Trademark protection – for both Satan and, perhaps, Jesus shoes: “MSCHF asserts that just like an earlier limited-edition of Jesus Shoes, these will be displayed in artistic collections, perhaps in museums. (In court papers, Nike has left open the possibility of amending its complaint to include a claim over Jesus Shoes, too.)” – The Hollywood Reporter
We Invented NFTs To Help Artists. It Hasn’t Worked Out That Way
“The idea behind NFTs was, and is, profound. Technology should be enabling artists to exercise control over their work, to more easily sell it, to more strongly protect against others appropriating it without permission. By devising the technology specifically for artistic use, McCoy and I hoped we might prevent it from becoming yet another method of exploiting creative professionals. But nothing went the way it was supposed to. Our dream of empowering artists hasn’t yet come true, but it has yielded a lot of commercially exploitable hype.” – The Atlantic
Theatres Leave LA Theatre Alliance After Awards Show Mis-identifies Asian Award-Winner
“More than 25 Los Angeles area theater companies, including the Geffen Playhouse, the Pasadena Playhouse and the Deaf West Theatre, have revoked their memberships in the L.A. Stage Alliance after the nonprofit organization misidentified and mispronounced the name of Asian actress Jully Lee at an awards show earlier this week.” – Deadline
You’re Teaching Dance To Incarcerated Men. COVID Locks Everything Down. How Do You Keep Teaching Them?
Good old-fashioned letters, it turns out. Choreographer and educator Suchi Branfman has been running her Dancing Through Prison Walls project with inmates of the California Rehabilitation Center at Norco since 2016. She was not going to let the pandemic make her abandon her students, but they didn’t have access to Zoom. So they started writing to each other. Garnet Henderson reports on how they made it work. – Dance Magazine
A Find In The Middle Of The Kalahari Desert Shows A Remarkably Innovative Culture 105,000 Years Ago
The conclusion from these finds is that people in the African interior weren’t lagging behind coastal cultures at all. Some of the most important innovations in human prehistory happened in multiple areas of the continent at around the same time. – Ars Technica
140 Filmmakers Blast PBS For Over-dependence On Ken Burns And Lack Of Diversity
“The decades-long interdependence of PBS decision-makers, philanthropists, and corporate funders with one white, male filmmaker highlights the racial and cultural inequities perpetuated by this system. The amount of broadcast hours, financial support (from viewers like who?), and marketing muscle devoted to one man’s lens on America has severed PBS from its very roots,” said Grace Lee. – The Hill
What A Raga Is, And What It Is Not
“I should say that a raga is not a tune. It’s not a note, not a scale, not a composition — although the raga is sung in the framework of a composition. But you can identify the raga from a particular arrangement of notes that have to do with the way they’re ascending and descending; a particular pattern in the ascent and a particular pattern in the descent identifies the raga.” Amit Chaudhuri — an award-winning novelist and nonfiction author and a trained Indian classical singer — has a go at explaining the difficult-to-capture meaning of raga and writes about how he found his way to carrying Western popular songs into the Indian classical system. – The New York Times
Ian McKellen On Playing Hamlet At Age 81
“I can’t pretend I’m 20. No one’s going to believe it. But I can feel that I’m 20. … One advantage is, when I was starting out as a young actor, I often played old men. Well, I didn’t know what it was like to be old, but being old, I do remember what it’s like to be young.” – BBC
Maybe Public Radio Stations Should Cut Two-Thirds Of Their Weekend Programming
Eric Nuzum: “The average number of unduplicated shows aired over Saturdays and Sundays is 25. Do all those programs help build audience? Station listeners — including even core listeners who love your station and are its heaviest users — usually listen for a total of one or two hours every weekend. By scheduling so many programs, most stations are offering a multiple of 10 times the amount of programming that most listeners will ever hear. If this programming so drastically overshoots that audience’s ability to consume it, why is it in your schedule?” – Current
Where The Candidates For Mayor Of New York City Stand On Arts And Culture
“New York City is heading into one of its most consequential elections in decades. … For the purposes of this inquiry, we asked eight leading Democratic candidates to spell out their specific proposals for arts and culture in New York City.” – Artnet
It Was Inevitable: New NFT Of ‘Salvator Mundi’ Holding Fistful Of Benjamins
“It sounds like an April Fools joke, and it both is and isn’t. Author and art historian Ben Lewis has created a real non-fungible token (NFT) of Leonardo da Vinci’s Salvator Mundi — and, like the original, he’s hoping to auction it for $450 million. Okay, he’s not really expecting to sell it for that much.” Because it makes total sense in this case, Lewis photoshopped into the Savior’s left hand a bunch of $100 bills. – Artnet
Venice Finally Bans Big Cruise Ships From Lagoon And Historic District
“For years, campaigns to oust cruise ships from the lagoon have been gaining traction, with locals claiming that the ships’ massive structures erode the seabed, effectively turning the lagoon into an offshoot of the Adriatic Sea. And now, finally, the Italian government has agreed with them, passing a decree to ban cruise ships and other large vessels from the lagoon.” For now, the behemoths will be rerouted to the area’s industrial port, Marghera. – CNN
What Music Festivals Could Look Like This Summer
Certainly with international travel likely to be restricted in some form for a while, the chances are that international and local demand for festivals will still not be the same as they were pre-COVID. – The Conversation
Web Streaming and Book Publishing: Two Bright Spots for the Cultural Sector During COVID-19?
Compared with the average annual growth rate of arts and cultural industries as a whole (+3 percent), web streaming and web publishing surged by 12 percent, in terms of the value added by those industries to the U.S. economy. The book and software publishing industry grew by over 7 percent. In both cases, we might expect to see sustained if not accelerated growth when the 2020 numbers are released next year. – Sunil Iyengar
Syracuse Musings: Words of Wisdom (or not) from Panelists at the Deaccession Symposium
Here are some lessons from old-school conference speakers who acknowledged the need for progress, but defended what former Metropolitan Museum director Philippe de Montebello once called “the primacy of art” in the museum’s mission. – Lee Rosenbaum