“Only the males can vibrate a section of their abdomen called the tymbals to make either phaaaaaroah drone sounds or chchchchhwhhhs noise waves, depending on the species. For any mating to happen, though, the females must respond with a quiet but audible flick of their wings, leading the males on to successive sounds only if this flick happens at exactly the right time after the male stops vibrating. The orchestration is incredibly precise,” writes David Rothenberg, who likes to take his clarinet out to a field and play along. – The New York Times
Songwriters Are Getting Screwed By Streaming Too
Last month, Midia Research, which specializes in music and digital media, released a study, “Rebalancing the Song Economy,” that was commissioned by Abba’s Bjorn Ulvaeus. It includes some surprising findings — in a survey, twice as many streaming users said a song mattered more to them than the artist who performed it, rather than the opposite — and sounds an alarm about the need to reform the economics of streaming to better support songwriters. – The New York Times
Muti: COVID Year Was An Experiment In Global Culture
Riccardo Muti called the experience of the past year “an unnatural global experiment” that had “stunned” the world. “If we truly took into account how we are living, we would all go crazy. We try to maintain the illusion that we are living a normal life. It is the only way to reach the end of this absurd path,’’ he said. – Toronto Star (AP)
The Compromises Of Live-Streaming
Livestreaming adds an additional layer of technical complexity and cost but doesn’t necessarily improve the audience’s experience of the play itself. Pre-recording allows the various elements of the production – editing, sound, etc – to be fine-tuned in advance. But then why not go the whole hog and just release an actual film? – Irish Times
Gabriela Muñoz Speaks About the Importance of Collaboration
The Senior Program Coordinator of the National Accelerator at ASU’s Herberger Institute for Design and the Arts speaks about the impact of collaboration and fellowships on students. – Aaron Dworkin
Manzoor Ahtesham, Who Brought Bhopal To Life, Has Died Of COVID At 73
Ahtesham wrote of his native city with care and love. One of his translators said, “He had this almost magnifying glass of an eye. … If a cinema hall was razed or a new suburb was being built, he would describe these changes with a sensitivity, caring and love as if it were part of his own corporal organism.” – The New York Times
The Pandemic Massively Accelerated A Digitization Trend
Today, we can see music, theatre, visual art, and new movies all from our chairs, couches, and beds. A year ago, not so much – heck, even the Louvre has put its entire collection online. “Many larger institutions like the Parisian giant had already made significant strides before last year to increase their online presence. But the rest of the cultural sector was forced into an innovative panic when COVID-19 struck.” – CBC
Cryptoart Isn’t New, And It Isn’t All NFTs
Instead, it’s a way for independent digital artists to make a living. “Beneath the glossy auction houses, breathless headlines and outrage, there is a global ecosystem of crypto artists who entered the once-niche NFT art space motivated by passion and curiosity. Most aren’t raking in millions or leading major sales. But many are making a decent living — ditching side gigs, supporting families, paying for college, buying houses — all by selling art in a form most of us hadn’t even heard of until the Beeple sale.” – Washington Post
As Glaciers Melt, Relics From WWI’s Alpine Front Emerge
On the 10K Mount Scorluzzo in Italy, “the Austro-Hungarian soldiers who occupied those barracks were fighting Italian troops in what became known as the White War. There in the Alps — removed from the more famous Western Front, a site of bloody trench warfare between Germany and France — troops climbed to precarious heights in the stinging cold to carve fortifications into the rock and snow.” Now everything they abandoned in 1918 is coming to a museum. – The New York Times
How Sesame Street Went From Radical Experiment To Mainstream Success
When the show premiered, it wasn’t the beloved Big Bird and Elmo experience that people think of today. “In 1969, Sesame Street unveils and there is a African American couple who live in the same neighborhood with their white neighbors — yes, with Big Bird and several other Muppets — but it’s a very integrated cast. The first time this [was] ever seen on television in Jackson, Miss., the public television station received a lot of complaints and they stopped airing the show. Miraculously, a commercial station in Jackson said ‘if the public station won’t air it, then we will.’ This is just an example of how groundbreaking this was.”- NPR
Streaming Theatre Will Do For Now
But nothing can replace the live experience. “Call it immediacy or authenticity, unpredictability or uniqueness, but it’s part of the reason people pay more to attend a single concert than they will to purchase the entire recorded works of the same musician.” Live streaming theatre, though, is tricky. – Irish Times
Lloyd Price, Whose Smash Hits Prefigured Rock, Dies At 88
Price, inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame in 1998, had his first big rhythm and blues hit with “Lawdy Miss Clawdy” in 1952. “Nicknamed Mr. Personality after his most recognizable hit, which reached No. 2 on the Billboard singles chart in 1959, Mr. Price found success with Black and white audiences alike. He was a prolific songwriter as well as a gifted singer — a combination that was relatively uncommon at the time — and his songs were covered by many others.” – The New York Times
The End Of Net Neutrality Was Riddled With Fraud
Fraud – and 8.5 million (Eight. Point. Five. Million.) bot comments secretly created by ISPs to urge against net neutrality. To be fair, there were millions of other fake comments, but according to the New York Attorney General’s report, “the astroturfing effort by the broadband industry stood out because it used real people’s names without their consent, with third-party firms hired by the industry faking consent records.” – Wired
Lyn Macdonald, Who Preserved The Voices Of WWI Soldiers, 91
Macdonald was a producer for the BBC in 1973 when she “was given what she thought would be a one-off journalistic assignment: to accompany a group of World War I veterans from a British rifle brigade on a final pilgrimage to the battlefields of France.” She interviewed more than 600 veterans and wrote seven books about their experiences, popularizing and changing military history. – The New York Times
Emma Donoghue ‘Toned Down The Horror’ In Room
Those who read the book or saw the movie may not quite believe it, but the real-life case from which the author drew her inspiration was far worse. Then there were her own kids. “I had three and a half years’ worth of things to say. About what a huge gap separates an adult and a small child, with only curiosity, humour and love to bridge it. About how a mother is her baby’s captor and prisoner, sometimes both at the same time. About how you long to give your growing kid freedom while somehow, impossibly, keeping them perfectly safe.” – The Guardian (UK)
Martin Bookspan, The Voice Of The Lincoln Center, 94
Bookspan realized young that he probably wouldn’t make it as a solo violinist, but he brought music to anyone with a radio or TV. “After an early career behind the scenes at radio stations in Boston and New York, he established himself as a stalwart of Live From Lincoln Center, the PBS program that became America’s premier source of classical music on broadcast television. He joined the program when it went on the air in 1976″ and retired from it in 2006. – The New York Times
The Big Screen Experience Is Unparalleled
No matter what you’ve got in your house, there’s nothing like watching a movie in the theatre with scores of other people. Then there are the prices: “The fact that I know I’m being ripped off is, somehow, part of the charm. Have you got a statistic about the ludicrous mark-up on popcorn for me? Have you got a story about seeing it loaded into the back of the cinema in a dozen bin bags? Ooh baby, yes: talk nasty to me.” – The Guardian (UK)
Art Frieze New York Is Back, And So Are The Art Parties
Someone even asked, “Are we going to pretend nothing happened?” But no, not at the fair itself: “To gain admittance at the Shed at Hudson Yards, visitors had to fill out an online questionnaire and upload their proof of vaccination or negative Covid test results before receiving a QR code. There were no exceptions. Even Michael R. Bloomberg, whose name graces the building, got stuck outside until he provided the proper documentation.” – The New York Times
Musicians Versus The Streaming Companies – Something’s Gotta Change
The artists’ demands are threaded with anger and anxiety over the degradation of creative labor. But the musicians face long odds. Despite solidarity among many older and independent artists, the most successful current pop acts have largely been silent on the issue. And while many musicians paint Spotify as the enemy, the shift to streaming over the last decade has returned the industry to growth after years of financial decline. – The New York Times