“The Orchestre National de Lyon, France, announced on Tuesday that its current music director, Slatkin, 71, will leave that position at the end of the 2016-17 season.”
Meet The Russian Cellist Outed In The Panama Papers For Controlling Billions Of Dollars
“Almost nobody in Russia remembered that Vladimir Putin’s closest friend from the 1970s was a St. Petersburg musician named Sergei Roldugin. Even fewer could imagine that the cellist with an old- fashioned haircut lived a secret life offstage, allegedly plotting huge scams and moving more than $2 billion through a network of offshore bank accounts and companies.”
And The Next Famous Property Matthew Bourne Will Adapt Is –
“It is some people’s favourite movie but the stage version was one of the biggest disasters in Broadway history. So the choreographer Sir Matthew Bourne admitted he was taking a risk as he announced his next production.”
To Be Or Not To Be (Pretentious Or Aspirational?)
“A discomfort with the radical, or the confusing, or the challenging—with artworks, and lives, that insist on being otherwise—is very often what lies beneath the charge of pretentiousness. As much as it’s a way of deflating some apparently empty cultural gesture, calling something (or someone) pretentious is also a way of defending yourself against the uncomfortable feeling of not getting something, or—worse still—the uncomfortable suspicion that you’re being had.”
Columbia University Students Protest A Sculpture – And P.C. Has Nothing To Do With It
“Unlike many campus outcries of the past year, this one has nothing to do with sexism or racism. [Henry] Moore’s Reclining Figure (1969-70), many students have said, is just ugly and doesn’t fit in with Columbia’s neo-Classical aesthetic.”
Hope Muir Names Artistic Director Of Charlotte Ballet
Muir thus becomes the third woman in her 40s to be named director of a ballet company in the last two months. (Aurélie Dupont will take over Paris Opera Ballet, and Julie Kent will lead Washington Ballet.)
What We Can Learn From Our Weirdest Dreams
“Dreaming is a kind of play in a set apart from space where ordinary rules of reality are suspended temporarily and we try out different strategies, we rehearse different kinds of behavior.”
Is My Family’s Painting Nazi-Looted Art? Because We Can’t Tell, It Hangs In Limbo
“The Nazis were superb record keepers. But not good enough to help me settle whether this work came out of Europe via theft or honest transaction. Instead, it has joined the growing ranks of paintings in provenance limbo.”
Why The Rock & Roll Hall Of Fame Should Be Closed
“Throughout all the talk, all the arguments, I’ve never heard anyone voice what I think is the root cause of all the problems: the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame is, essentially, anti-rock’n’roll.”
Counter-Intuitive Data: Box Office Results For Movies With African-American Leads
Inside the data, the researchers found something: “significant evidence that movies featuring black actors not only keep up with films at the box office and among the critics, but blow away films with no black actors at all.”
Hit Hungarian Reality Show About Young Classical Musicians Goes Global
Dick Clark Productions said there’s interest in the show from China and Japan and the company is working on a deal with U.S. networks.
Why Zaha Hadid’s Gender Was Figured So Prominently In Her Obits Last Week
“A report published by the San Francisco Chapter of the American Institute of Architects last year revealed that though women make up 42% of graduates from programs accredited by the National Architecture Accrediting Board, they make up only 28% of architectural staff in AIA-member-owned firms, and only 17% of principals and partners.”
Study: Singing In a Choir Boosts Your Health
“We have been building a body of evidence over the past six years to show that singing in a choir can have a range of social, emotional, and psychological benefits,” says co-author Dr. Ian Lewis, director of research and policy at Tenovus Cancer Care. “Now we can see it has biological effects too.”
How Reality TV Is Like Greek Tragedy (No, Really)
“In fact, by shaming their characters, these shows are trafficking in a very old, very deep aesthetic pleasure. Aristotle called it ‘catharsis’.” Only in this case, the emotions involved aren’t pity and terror.
A ‘Hamilton’ Skeptic Explains Why The Show Isn’t Really So Revolutionary
Lyra Monteiro: “My argument is basically that the play does a lot of this thing that we call ‘Founders Chic’ … It’s still white history. And no amount of casting people of color disguises the fact that they’re erasing people of color from the actual narrative.”
How The False Story Of Kitty Genovese’s Murder Spread All Over The World
“The murder had a major impact on people’s basic ideas about human nature – but it was based mostly on misconceptions and misreporting about Genovese’s murder … The soul-searching went on for decades, long after the original errors were debunked, evolving into more parable than fact.”
Athens And Epidaurus Festival Director Forced To Resign When His Programming Turns Out To Be Belgian And Not Greek
“The Belgian artist Jan Fabre has resigned as artistic director after local artists rebelled against his plan to turn Greece’s major arts festival into ‘a tribute to Belgium’ and devote eight of the festival’s 10productions to those from his homeland.”
‘New’ Rembrandt Created By A Computer
“The painting, which is being billed as ‘The Next Rembrandt,’ was created using data from more than 168,000 fragments of Rembrandt’s work. Over the course of 18 months, a group of engineers, Rembrandt experts and data scientists analyzed 346 of Rembrandt’s works, then trained a deep learning engine to ‘paint’ in the master’s signature style.” (includes video)
‘Pieces Of The Ceiling Are Falling Onto The Stage’: Concert Cancelled At Very Last Minute
Patrons were already arriving for the performance by the Lausanne Chamber Orchestra on Tuesday evening when the management of the Salle Métropole in the Swiss city closed the venue for safety reasons. (in French; Google Translate version here)
Johan Kobborg Suddenly Finds He’s No Longer Artistic Director Of His Ballet Company; Dancers Threaten Walkout
In his two years at the helm of Romania’s national ballet company, Kobborg is universally acknowledged to have raised standards and reinvigorated the troupe. But this week, one day after a new interim director took over the Bucharest National Opera, Kobborg found his name missing from the ballet’s artistic director slot and listed instead among the corps. The new boss says it’s a misunderstanding: he wants Kobborg to stay, but there’s not supposed to be a “ballet artistic director” post at the house at all. The dancers are saying that if Kobborg goes, they go. (in Romanian; Google Translate version here)
Hollywood Composer Found Bludgeoned To Death In His Florida Home
“Deputies in Citrus County, Forida say Don Terryl ‘Terry’ Plumeri, 71, was found dead due to extensive upper body trauma on April 1. Plumeri had rented the home in tiny Dunellon, about 80 miles northwest of Orlando, for many years.”
After 11 Months Of Talks, Grand Rapids Symphony Has A Labor Contract
“The [five-year] agreement that will carry the Grand Rapids Symphony through its 90th anniversary season in 2019-20 maintains the present 40-week performance season, preserves the current complement of musicians, and makes no changes to the orchestra’s health insurance.”
La Scala Ballerina Hit By Tram, Suffers Skull Fractures
Antonina Chapkina was walking on the street near Milan’s central train station when a streetcar struck her; though her head hit the pavement hard, her body did not fall under the vehicle.
Top Posts From AJBlogs 04.05.16
Relationship Maintenance
The arts industry is event-oriented, if not event-obsessed. Our principal contribution to public life is in the presentation of events. On the very deepest level we are “do-ers.” There is an inbred impatience with anything … read more
AJBlog: Engaging Matters Published 2016-04-05
Forrest Westbrook’s Album
Early this year I had the privilege of writing notes for Forrest Westbrook’s only album as a leader. The CD was released five-and-a-half decades after it was recorded and two years after the pianist’s death … read more
AJBlog: RiffTides Published 2016-04-05
What doesn’t kill you makes you stranger
Mrs. T has a longstanding weakness for James Bond films, so we watched Thunderball, which I hadn’t seen, the other night. Midway through the film I said to her, “If this damn score doesn’t get … read more
AJBlog: About Last Night Published 2016-04-05
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How Do You Manage The Business Behemoth That Has Become “Hamilton”?
“Ultimately, there may be as many as seven “Hamilton” companies, in addition to the one on Broadway, performing at the same time in multiple American and international cities. Ticket revenues, over time, could reach into the billions of dollars. If it hits sales of a mere $1 billion, which “Hamilton” could surpass in New York alone, the show will have generated roughly $300 million in profit on the $12.5 million put up by investors.”