Professional accent and dialect coach Andrew Jack covers a dozen or so accents from England, Ireland, Scotland, Wales, and even the Isle of Man – all in 1’25”. (video)
The Purpose Of Failure
“Since we cannot succeed simply by not failing, we should stop spending so much energy trying to avoid failure or engineer it away. Instead, we should embrace it — smartly.”
Austrian Gov’t Declines to Bail Out Bankrupt Businessman by Buying His Art Collection
Karlheinz Essl “had offered to sell his 7,000-piece collection, most of which is housed in the Essl Museum near Vienna, to raise money to inject into his struggling DIY store chain bauMax.”
Why Don’t Some Of The Biggest Hits On Cable Get (A Lot) More Press?
“Bravo’s The Real Housewives of Atlanta, the crown jewel in its flagship franchise, swelled to a network-best 4.6 million viewers in February. The current season, one of the top five nonfiction series across all of cable, skews overwhelmingly African-American, at 68 percent. “
Are We Ready For Bite-Sized Lunchtime Theatre?
“I sat next to a woman who told me she had children and normally rushed home after work, but that she liked the idea of seeing a 50-minute show in her lunch hour. Tellingly, as a result of seeing a lunchtime show she was planning to see an evening show later in the month.”
Why Are Galleries In NY and LA So Overwhelmingly Male?
“Rather than dwell on the inequity, Hebron and her collaborators turned it into art – in most cases, a poster, though there is painting, quilting and assemblage as well.”
The Dying Last Of A Breed: Peter Matthiessen, The CIA, The Paris Review, And Zen
“Born into the East Coast establishment, Matthiessen ran from it, and in the running became a novelist, a C.I.A. agent, a founder of The Paris Review, author of more than 30 books, a naturalist, an activist and a master in one of the most respected lineages in Zen.”
Smithsonian’s Air and Space Museum Gets $30 Million From Boeing
The museum, one of Washington’s top tourist attractions, “will use the money to renovate its main exhibition space that serves as home to such icons of aviation as the Wright Brothers’ airplane and Charles Lindbergh’s Spirit of St. Louis.”
Most Britons Want Local Arts Funding to Triple (If You Read the Study That Way)
“According to the results of a new survey … 63% of residents in the UK want to see their local council budgeting at least 50p per person every week on arts, museums and heritage.” The actual figure, averaged across England’s local councils, is 16p; only three spend more than 50p.
Priscilla Morgan, One of the 20th Century’s Great Cultural Matchmakers, Dead at 94
“Known for recognizing talent and nurturing it, for making connections among artists – ‘an instinctive, intellectual switchboard,’ [one observer] wrote of her – Ms. Morgan was at various times an agent, an amanuensis, an administrator, a salon-keeper and a behind-the-scenes alchemist who helped forge creative partnerships for decades.”
Will Durant’s Lost Final Book to Be Published
“Durant mentioned it several times in interviews in the 1970s, once calling it ‘a not very serious book which answers the questions of what I think about government, life, death, God.’ But the whereabouts of the manuscript were unknown before it was found in a box in his granddaughter’s attic last year.”
Critic and Pianist Harris Goldsmith, 77
“Goldsmith, who set aside a pianistic career to write for High Fidelity magazine in the heyday of the classical LP, became a familiar and influential critical voice for music lovers in the ’50s and ’60s, and could be spotted almost any night of the week in the press section of one or another of the New York concert halls, listening intently and then expounding to his colleagues on the music.” (includes audio)
‘A Rich Noticer of Strange Things’ – Colm Tóibín on Lynne Tillman
“Her style has both tone and undertone; it attempts to register the impossibility of saying very much, but it insists on the right to say a little. So what is essential is the voice itself, its ways of knowing and unknowing. An observation; a dry fact; a memory; something noticed; someone encountered; a joke; something wry; a provocation; something playful.”
Who Should Replace David Letterman? After Just a Few Hours, The Internet’s Full of Ideas
Colbert, Conan, Ellen, Tina and Amy, Craig, somebody/anybody named Jimmy … and even a certain notorious mayor.
Top Posts From AJBlogs 04.03.14
What did you do in the war, mummy?
AJBlog: Performance Monkey | Published 2014-04-03
San Francisco Museums Land A Great Gift
AJBlog: Real Clear Arts | Published 2014-04-03
Are Strads really better than new violins? First report from the Paris Experiment
AJBlog: Slipped Disc | Published 2014-04-03
The Inventiveness of Brad Mehldau, and Another Bookstore Down
AJBlog: CultureCrash | Published 2014-04-03
How Do We Feel About Killer Heels?
AJBlog: Real Clear Arts | Published 2014-04-04
[ssba_hide]
Music You Can Visit – Apparently There’s Interest In Buying The Only Copy Of Wu-Tang Clan’s New Album
“Announced last week, Once Upon a Time in Shaolin is not just one of two new Wu-Tang records: the 128-minute double album will only be pressed once, in a unique edition that will tour festivals and galleries. According to RZA, there have already been numerous offers to purchase the music once it finishes its exhibition circuit.”
The State Of Reading In Prisons
How do prison libraries actually work, and if you were locked away, how easy would it be to get hold of the books you wanted?
The Most Detailed Map Of The Human Brain Was Revealed This Week
“Scientists released the most detailed map ever made of the fetal human brain today. It contains a massive amount of information about gene activity at a crucial time in development — just as the cerebral cortex is developing. The scientists believe it holds important clues about the biological origins of disorders like autism, as well as insights into what makes the human brain unique.”
Of Artists And Politics (What’s Their Responsibility?)
“Do artists have a special responsibility to speak out about injustice? Or do artists contribute best to social welfare by the practice of their art, and that alone? This issue is pertinent in classical music, because the field is considered, for better or worse, a high art with a mystique of gravitas and enlightenment.”
Americans for the Arts: Early Bird Discount Ends Friday
The Americans for the Arts Annual Convention in Nashville this June 13-15 is your opportunity to learn from and network with more than 1,000 arts professionals from across the country. [read more]
Study: Can Animals Dance?
The debate lies in a crucial distinction. While many animals are obviously capable of “moving rhythmically” to music, that’s not the same thing as dancing.
Latest Women-Shouldn’t-Be-Conductors Gaffe Comes From Legendary Conducting Teacher
Jorma Panula, the now-83-year-old professor who trained a flock of talented maestros that includes Esa-Pekka Salonen, Osmo Vänskä, Sakari Oramo, and (ahem) Susanna Mälkki, told a Finnish news broadcaster, “They can come [to my masterclasses] and try. It’s not a problem – if they … take more feminine music. Bruckner or Stravinsky will not do, but Debussy is OK. This is a purely biological question.”
How Amazon Plans to Take Over Our TV Sets
“Amazon has a vested interest in making sure it is present at every moment of possible consumption, which is all the time. It wants to get into that television screen and start to build a relationship.” The tool: Fire TV, a new set-top box.
Geoff Dyer Had A Stroke At 55. It Changed How He Sees Himself
So no, nothing had gone permanently wrong in my head, or at least nothing had gone wrong that had not been in the process of going wrong for a while, but I now regarded my head and the brain snuggled warmly inside it in a new and vulnerable way.