In 2014, in a parking lot following a solo recital, the Milwaukee Symphony’s concertmaster got zaped with a Taser and had his violin ripped from his hands. (The culprit, it turned out, was an individual named Universal Knowledge Allah.) In an appearance at The Moth, Almond recounts the entire tale, from the mugging to the police response(s) to the recovery. (audio) – The Moth
Modern Library To Release New Low-Cost Series Of Classics By Women Authors
“The Modern Library will launch a new trade paperback series, Modern Library Torchbearers, this May. The series, the publisher said, will ‘honor a more inclusive vision of classic books’ by ‘recognizing women who wrote on their own terms, with boldness, creativity, and a spirit of resistance.’ The books, all previously published, will be repackaged, and each will be introduced by a contemporary woman writer.” – Publishers Weekly
When Actors Smash The Scenery, These Are The Folks Who Clean It Up
Take, for instance, the recent Broadway production of Sam Shepard’s True West and the wreckage Ethan Hawke left behind every show. “How would anyone, save for a skilled team of crime scene cleaners, be able to return this stage to a state of order, especially given the narrow time frame on two-show days? It turns out, as is the case with many things in the theater, the task is more than doable — you just have to rehearse it. A lot.” – The Concourse
The Choreographer Who Brought Barefoot Modern Dance To Broadway
That would be John Heginbotham, a Mark Morris alumnus who now has his own company. The show is director Daniel Fish’s revisionist Oklahoma! Gia Kourlas talks with the choreographer about what he did with the dream ballet, which is now (after a few other versions) a 13-minute solo. – The New York Times
It Took 23 Minutes After The First Alarm To Find The Notre-Dame Fire
“A fire alarm first wailed inside the Notre Dame Cathedral at 6:20 p.m. Monday, but for 23 critical minutes cathedral staff searched for a blaze, unable to find the cause. It wasn’t until a second alarm went off at 6:43 p.m. that a fire was detected in the attic of the centuries-old religious landmark.” – BuzzFeed
Murdoch Empire 2.0? Son James Said To Be Investing $1 Billion In New Media Ventures
The Financial Times cited sources close to James Murdoch tonight that said his new three-comma fund could include a long-rumored liberal-leaning news outlet. – Deadline
Peter Sellars: On Art, On Culture, On The Artist’s Job Description
“The world is moving in a direction that does require intervention and does require comment and does require a shift in direction. That’s the job description for artists. We’re the people who suggest a bunch of that stuff. Nobody needs to vote for an artist. You’ve got nothing to lose, you just put it out there. This is a very important time to be an artist.” – San Francisco Classical Voice
San Diego Public Library Forgives $2 Million In Library Fines
“Libraries are known as the ‘great equalizers’ because we provide equal access for all patrons, regardless of their socio-economic status. Wiping the slate clean of outstanding fines means welcoming back many of the under-served patrons who most need our services.” – NPR
Notre Dame’s Fire Is Tragic. Great Buildings Have Repeatedly Survived Tragedy
Philip Kennicott: “History tells us these things are all too common, even as modern media saturation makes it seem somehow unprecedented. Flip through the pages of any tourist guide to an old castle, church or palace, and there is often a litany of fires, floods, revolutions and occasional bouts of revolution and iconoclasm.” – Washington Post
Unpublished Daphne Du Maurier Poems Discovered Tucked Into Picture Frame
“The two unknown poems were found tucked underneath a photo of a young Du Maurier in a swimming costume standing on rocks, which was part of an archive of more than 40 years of correspondence between the author and [a] close friend.” – The Guardian
The Real Prizes In This Ballet Competition Aren’t The Awards
At the Youth America Grand Prix, says founder/artistic director Larissa Saveliev, “You don’t have to win to get the prize. The real prizes are the scholarships. And for those, you just have to be noticed by one director. We are the biggest matchmaker operation in the ballet world.” – The New York Times
Here’s What’s Happened To The Art, Artifacts, And Organ Inside Nôtre-Dame
So far, it appears that almost all of the major art objects and relics in the cathedral were saved, thanks to a human chain formed during the fire; most will be taken to the Louvre for conservation and storage. Amazingly, neither the stained-glass windows nor the grand organ appear to have suffered severe damage. – Smithsonian Magazine
Is The French Church Or The French State Responsible For Historic Sites Like Nôtre-Dame? Well, That’s The Problem …
In a newly relevant article brought back from the archives, Jerome Bernard explains that this question has been argued over ever since France legally separated church and state in 1905 — and that dispute is why places like Nôtre-Dame-de-Paris have been allowed to deteriorate so badly. – The Art Newspaper
New Russian Film About USSR In Afghanistan Infuriates Politicians And Vets
Pavel Lungin’s Leaving Afghanistan (Russian title Bratstvo, meaning Brotherhood), based on the real-life experience of an officer who went on to become the head of the FSB (the successor to the KGB), is said by its director to be about “the senselessness and cruelty of war.” The head of one veterans’ organization calls it “dirt and filth” and a senior member of parliament says it’s unfit for “educating young people with a sense of patriotism.” – The Guardian
Barbara Schultz, TV Exec Who Stood Up For Serious Drama When Rest Of Industry Wanted Comedy, Dead At 92
“One of a very few women in television’s executive ranks at the time, [she] oversaw CBS Playhouse in the late 1960s and the PBS series Visions in the 1970s, … offer[ing] writers a platform free from interference by corporate sponsors in exchange for stories that explored contemporary American themes.” – The New York Times
Game Of Thrones Premiere Shatters Ratings With 17.4M Viewers; Most-Watched Scripted Show Of The Season
GoT is the extremely rare drama that has managed to grow its audience every single season (AMC’s Breaking Bad was another). AMC’s The Walking Deadused to top Game of Thrones in the ratings, but the zombie drama has recently fallen to around 5 million weekly viewers. – Entertainment Weekly
An Art Professor’s Painstakingly Detailed Scans And Images Of Notre Dame Could Help Rebuild It
In 2010, Andrew Tallon, an art professor at Vassar, took a Leica ScanStation C10 to Notre-Dame and, with the assistance of Columbia’s Paul Blaer, began to painstakingly scan every piece of the structure, inside and out. They mounted the Leica on a tripod, put up markers throughout the space, and set the machine to work. Over five days, they positioned the scanner again and again—50 times in all—to create an unmatched record of the reality of one of the world’s most awe-inspiring buildings, represented as a series of points in space. – The Atlantic
UK Survey: Forty Percent Of Those Who Drop Out Of The Arts Workforce Leave Because Of Family Obligations
The survey of over 2,000 current or former arts workers, carried out by Parents and Carers in Performing Arts (PiPA) and Birkbeck, University of London, found that 43% of respondents who had left the industry cited being a parent as the biggest factor behind their decision to leave. – Arts Professional
Is Fighting A Bad Idea? (Philosophically Speaking, Of Course)
The upside of winning is pleasure and glory, but the cost of always winning is never getting to know how much more was in you. The only way to find the limit is to cross it. But you can’t lose unless you fight your heart out. Which is why I say, more fighting, more biting. – The Point
Outdoor Piano Concert Attracts Bats. The Ravel Made Them Furious!
Boris Giltburg: “Those critters just wouldn’t budge. They seemed to appear on the keyboard out of nowhere and then stayed there, lethargically, utterly unresponsive to any shooing movement I managed to produce while playing. I had a choice: to close my eyes and constantly risk my fingers landing on one, or keep my eyes open and observe a mass of insects all moving ever so slightly on the keyboard.” – The Guardian
More joy
On March 8, I went to the WoCo Fest, a festival of music by women, and was so radiated with joy that I cancelled plans I had for the next night, and went back again. What made WoCo Fest so joyful? – Greg Sandow
Propwatch: the poppet in ‘The Crucible’
It’s a small doll, nothing fancy, fashioned in a courtroom to pass the long hours between denunciations. The young servant girl Mary Warren brings it home to the Proctors, gives it to the missus – and it is that poppet that will haul Mrs Proctor to prison accused of witchcraft. – David Jays
My friend Harry
I was twenty-two when I met Harry Jenks, for many years the ballpark organist for the Kansas City Royals and the first great jazz musician to enter my life. He taught me more than any of my teachers, and meant as much to me as a person as anyone outside my immediate family. – Terry Teachout
Inside The Culture Of Facebook As It Struggles With The Culture Of Everyone Else
This is the story of the tumultuous and chaotic past year “based on interviews with 65 current and former employees. It’s ultimately a story about the biggest shifts ever to take place inside the world’s biggest social network. But it’s also about a company trapped by its own pathologies and, perversely, by the inexorable logic of its own recipe for success.” – Wired
What Happened To Nôtre-Dame Could Happen To UK’s Houses Of Parliament At Any Moment
The Palace of Westminster is a crumbling fire trap, warn MPs and building maintenance professionals, and fire patrols on the premises round the clock are the only reason the place hasn’t burned up already. – The Guardian