Coltrane is the archetypal creative obsessive intent on finding unheard approaches to the building blocks of music, from the arc of his melodies to the rhythmic drive of his solos to the harmonic framework for his songs. – Times Literary Supplement
San Francisco’s Wealth Problem – Can The City Survive?
With Bay Area-based tech companies scheduled to hold initial public offerings this year, the city of instant millionaires is about to have thousands of even newer millionaires. And many residents of this city — secretly and not-so-secretly — fear that 2019 is the year San Francisco becomes a truly impossible place to live. – Washington Post
‘The Jungle’ — Dramatizing A Crucial Period In The Life Of The Notorious Calais Refugee Camp
The play, written by two young Englishmen (Joe Murphy and Joe Robertson) who went to live for several months in the camp and set up a makeshift-but-busy performing arts center there, shows what happened in the winter of 2016 after French authorities issued an order that the southern half of the camp — by that point, home to 3,500 people, several mosques and churches, restaurants, and a school — was to be evacuated and destroyed. – The New York Review of Books
Baritone Lucia Lucas Becomes First Transgender Woman To Sing Lead Opera Role In U.S.
Lucas, who is based in Germany and has her career largely in Europe, began rehearsals this week for the title role in Don Giovanni at Tulsa Opera. And this is not her first time playing Mozart’s antihero. – Tulsa World
Music Is Ephemeral: That Makes It Difficult To Write About. Also To Understand How A Conductor Does What S/he Does
Conductor Mark Wigglesworth wrote a book to try to explain the latter. Robert Philip wrote another that tries to make music comprehensible in words. These aren’t meager tasks. – Times Literary Supplement
Major Find: Catalogue To (Huge) Library Of Christopher Columbus’s Son
“The Libro de los Epítomes manuscript … contains more than 2,000 pages and summaries from the library of Hernando Colón, … who made it his life’s work to create the biggest library the world had ever known in the early part of the 16th century.” Only about a quarter of the actual volumes have survived, so the catalogue provides invaluable information on what was being published at the time. – The Guardian
Vienna’s State Ballet Rocked By Reports Of Abuse At Its School
“The ballet academy at Vienna’s renowned State Opera was hit Wednesday by allegations of serious physical and mental abuse against its students, as well as sexual assault. The weekly Falter newspaper published findings of a detailed investigation which it said exposed ’19th-century’ methods inflicted on students, illustrating the piece with a photo of the bloodied feet of a student after a day’s training.” – Yahoo! (AFP)
Amazon Prime India’s New Series Goes Where No Bollywood Saga Gone Before
“Centered on Karan (Arjun Mathur) and Tara (Sobhita Dhulipala), two friends who run a wedding-planning business, [Made in Heaven] takes on a wide array of issues that a burgeoning generation of South Asians is facing, including class, homophobia and sexual harassment. At the helm are three acclaimed Bollywood directors and screenwriters, who also happen to be women.” – The New York Times
Academia’s Itinerant Labor Problem: How Exploitation Of Adjuncts Betrays Students
In the nineteen-seventies, about a quarter of college faculty were on limited-term, adjunct contracts; the majority of professors were tenured or on the tenure-track. Today, it’s estimated that nearly three-quarters of college faculty are adjuncts. – The New Yorker
I Used To Have A Great Sense Of Direction. Then Came GPS… What Skills Is It Safe To Forget?
Instead of looking at what we’re learning, perhaps we should consider the obverse: what becomes safe to forget? As the internet grows ever more powerful and comprehensive, why bother to remember and retain information? If students can access the world’s knowledge on a smartphone, why should they be required to carry so much of it around in their heads? – Aeon
Rushing Restrictive Laws About Internet Content After Terrorist Tragedy Is A Bad Idea
There are vile things on the internet. And after what happened with shootings in New Zealand, there are calls to clamp down on digital content. That may be a bad idea, argues David Sullivan. – Slate
This Theatre Asks Audience Members To Help Plan Its Programming
“For the last year or so, the Theatre Royal [in the English city of York] has not only been asking its audience what they think of their shows – it has invited them to make programming decisions themselves.” Visionari, a group of about 20 (old) Yorkers assembled by Theatre Royal, “[have] attended workshops, met everyone from the artistic director to the graphic designer, and taken responsibility for a week-long festival in the studio.” – The Guardian
Eureka!
One professional musician who has long been passionate about connecting with communities is shocked by an insight about most performing arts marketing — and that shock isn’t really surprising. – Doug Borwick
Music from Paradise
It is remarkably little known that the non-Western genre that has most influenced Western composers is not African or Chinese or Indian – it’s Indonesian. – Joe Horowitz
Women Dominate Man Booker International Prize Shortlist
Of the six authors and six translators up for this year’s £50,000 award, only one author (Juan Gabriel Vásquez of Colombia) is male. Arguably the most prominent name on the list is Polish novelist Olga Tokarczuk (who took the same award last year for Flights) with Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead. – The Guardian
The Aretha Franklin Doc ‘Amazing Grace’ Is To Documentaries What Terry Gilliam’s Don Quixote Movie Is To Features
Which is to say that, like Gilliam’s The Man Who Killed Don Quixote, it was eagerly anticipated, took decades to get done, got stopped immediately before a premiere screening by a lawsuit, and generally ill-starred if not cursed. Reporter Natalie Rinn tells the tale. – The New York Times
Who, Us? Of Course We’re All Black, Hungarian ‘Porgy And Bess’ Cast Members Tell Gershwin Estate
“The Hungarian State Opera has asked the nearly all-white cast … to sign a statement declaring that ‘African-American origin and identity is an inseparable part of my identity’ and made being in Porgy and Bess ‘a special joy.'” – Yahoo! (AP)
Quiz Bowl — Like College Football, But For ‘Jeopardy!’
Ken Jennings, Jeopardy! all-star and an alum of Brigham Young University’s quiz bowl team (and a fine writer), gives a look inside what’s become quite a youth subculture: “Quiz bowl: molding the Jeopardy! gladiators of tomorrow, one little brainiac at a time.” – Slate
Wait, Did Russell Maliphant Just Choreograph A Dance About Rolfing?
Not exactly, no, but Silent Lines is about “the internal environment of the body” and very much draws on his training in Rolfing, the deep-tissue massage technique, and in other forms of bodywork. Writer Anna Winter talks with Maliphant about what he’s after in his new piece. – The Stage
They’ve Found The Cause Of The Fire That Destroyed Brazil’s National Museum
The culprit was one of three air conditioning units on the ground floor of the two-century-old building. The machines weren’t installed according to manufacturer’s recommendations for grounding and separate circuit breakers, and all three were receiving a more powerful electrical current than they were designed for. – Smithsonian Magazine
Last Year’s Most Objected-To Books In Schools And Libraries
The American Library Association’s annual list is out, and as usual, there are some head-scratchers. Harry Potter? To Kill a Mockingbird? The media darling of the list is John Oliver’s parody of the Pence family’s leporine romp A Day in the Life of Marlon Bundo. – Melville House
Seymour Cassel, Longtime Film And TV Character Actor, Dead At 84
For more than 200 appearances over five decades, “[he] played raconteurs, street toughs and cha-cha-dancing hoodlums, frequently collaborating with independent filmmakers John Cassavetes and Wes Anderson.” – The Washington Post
Chicago Symphony Strike: In For The Long Haul?
Despite some movement on dollar amounts and percentages, the two parties appear to remain essentially where they were four weeks ago on the basics. – Chicago Tribune
Rockin’ at the Met with “Play It Loud”: Guitar Action & My Copyright Infraction
The Eagles may have booted Don Felder out of the band, but he was the one who enjoyed a star turn at the Metropolitan Museum’s memorable press preview for Play it Loud: Instruments of Rock & Roll. – Lee Rosenbaum
Chicago Symphony Musicians Reject Management’s ‘Last, Best And Final Offer’
“According to the musicians’ statement, the offer from the Chicago Symphony Orchestra Association would ‘freeze the pension plan at its current level today, thereby prohibiting new hires from joining and denying nearly 2/3 of the orchestra currently in the pension plan any guarantee to increase their retirement benefit, even if they don’t retire for another 20 years.'” – Chicago Tribune