“Digital juggernaut Pornhub has offered itself as a streaming partner to Germany’s Oldenburg Film Festival, a 26-year-old indie movie event known for edgy programming and quirky celebrity tributes. The offer … comes nearly a week after the festival announced it will forge ahead as planned for a September run [with] a combination of physical and virtual screenings. The move is yet another recent sign of Pornhub’s seriousness about participating in mainstream cinema.” – Variety
Gabriel Bacquier, France’s Greatest Baritone Of The Postwar Era, Dead At 95
In addition to his triumphs in Europe, he was one of the few French singers of his time to have a big career in the U.S., notably in Chicago and Philadelphia and at the Met, where he sang for 18 seasons. Also unusually for a francophone singer of the day, he was admired internationally for his command of Italian opera as well as the French repertoire. – OperaWire
This 222-Year-Old Poem Really Captures The Spirit Of 2020 (And Not Just Because Of COVID)
“Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s ‘The Rime of the Ancient Mariner,’ first published in 1798, is … the dream-poem of right now.” It’s currently appearing on YouTube in short daily installments read by a nebula of quirky stars (Jeremy Irons, Marianne Faithfull, Willem Dafoe, Hilary Mantel, Tilda Swinton, Iggy Pop, etc.), and James Parker explains why the project reflects our zeitgeist so well. – The Atlantic
Why The Pandemic Has Seen Shakespeare Popping Up Everywhere Online
Alexis Soloski: “The glut of new content speaks to the reach and ubiquity of his work, the open-source accessibility of his plays, the confidence that if you do share a snippet of pentameter, you will be heard, recognized and retweeted. The plays — and the humanist values they intimate — offer a [common] cultural touchstone when the rest of our lives feel unsteady.” – The New York Times
A New Kind Of Corona-Concert: Ten Minutes, One Musician, One Listener, One Empty Airport
Flutist Stephanie Winker has been organizing these very intimate events at the airport and in other locations around Stuttgart — inspired, she says, by The Artist Is Present, the project in which Marina Abramović sat in a chair and, one at a time, stared into people’s eyes. – The New York Times
Time For Spotify Et Al To Pay Musicians More
Spotify, which controls 36 per cent of the world streaming market, reported third-quarter operating proceeds of $60 million (all figures U.S.) in October 2019. YouTube, meanwhile, revealed its ad-revenue intake publicly for the first time in February: last year it was $15.15 billion, a 36 per cent increase from 2018’s $11.16-billion tally. And here’s what you’ve been offering the creators in return for all that content that has enabled you to attract and retain tens of millions of loyal subscribers — paltry per-stream or pre-view royalty rates of, by platform: YouTube, $0.00069; Pandora, $0.00133; Vevo, $0.00222-$0.0025; Amazon, $0.00402; Spotify, $0.00437; Deezer, $0.0064; Google Play, $0.00676; Apple Music, $0.00783; Napster, $0.019 and Tidal, $0.01284 (all figures according to the online music distributor Ditto). – Toronto Star
Education Moved Online With Startling Speed – But It Will Be Bumpy From Here…
In non-pandemic times, even the most modest change at a college or university can take months, if not years. Think of the committees, reports, reviews, and approvals needed to introduce even a timid curriculum revision. That millions of faculty moved hundreds of thousands of courses online in a matter of weeks reveals the surprising resilience of academia in crisis. But with colleges and universities still shuttered and no clear indication of when they might reopen, don’t expect smooth sailing from now on. – Spectrum IEEE
Could The Pandemic Be The Catalyst To Change How Museums Work?
A sense of precariousness is not unfamiliar to museum workers who were already living through austerity, Brexit, and the deregulation of the workforce. But long before this current health crisis, the skepticism about whether commercially-driven blockbuster exhibitions could ever plug the widening gaps in public funding for museums was already part of a much bigger existential question: Is the dominant model for 21st-century museums sustainable? – Artnet
UK Leaders Discuss The Future Of Theatre After Virus
“Some tough decisions are going to have to be made. And it’s not going to be small changes, it’s going to be big changes for a time. And that feels incredibly painful if I’m honest.” – BBC
How The Chicago Symphony Is Thinking About Returning To The Stage
“If things are not yet 100 percent (in Chicago in September), it’s possible we could have a group of the orchestra divided into two parts: a group of 45, 50 people (and) another group of 45, 50 people. One part plays in the first part of the program, the other in the second part, so everybody can play, can come back to make music.” – Chicago Tribune
Why Does American Culture Treat Kids As A Different Species Of Human?
We isolate them together, seal them off, protect them from the larger world. It’s not like this in other cultures. So why is that? – Aeon
John Macurdy, Who Sang 1,001 Performances At Met Opera, Dead At 91
“While he did take star turns, his many ‘comprimario’ roles, as opera’s supporting roles are known, increased his performance total to sixth among basses in Met history. He sang 62 roles with the company.” He also performed in six major world premieres at various houses, including Samuel Barber’s Antony and Cleopatra at the opening of the new Metropolitan Opera House at Lincoln Center in 1966. – Yahoo! (AP)
AI Is Already Changing How Big Movies Are Made
Here’s how studios are currently using artificial intelligence to manage operations and workflow, editing, analysis of finances and moviegoer preferences, and “digital humans.” What’s more, predicts a senior researcher at Google, “Decades from now, an AI algorithm will make your movie simply from the text of the script.” – The Hollywood Reporter
AT&T’s $4 Billion Gamble On HBO Max
“The investment is the biggest bet to date made by AT&T to realize the promise of its $85.4 billion acquisition of Time Warner. … The hope is that HBO Max is built up over the next few years to be a multipurpose platform for the global distribution of WarnerMedia content as well as an engine for bundling subscriptions to AT&T’s wireless and data services. The fear is that an underwhelming HBO Max would tarnish or, worse, be a financial strain on HBO proper.” – Variety
MoMA Gets Involved In Effort To Save Oslo’s Picasso Murals
Two concrete murals, designed by Picasso and sandblasted onto the walls by a Norwegian colleague, are part of a government building that was damaged by Anders Breivik‘s car bomb in 2011. For several years there’s been controversy over the government’s plan to demolish that building and relocate the murals — a controversy that two of the Museum of Modern Art’s chief curators have now stepped into. – The Art Newspaper
L.A. Phil Cancels Hollywood Bowl Season, Furloughs And Layoffs Follow
“The summer closure — the first in Bowl history — following the spring closure of Walt Disney Concert Hall has triggered the furloughing of the Hollywood Bowl Orchestra (65 musicians and staff) and 25% of the [Los Angeles Philharmonic’s] full-time, non-union workforce (about 50 people) through September. A total of 226 seasonal employees at the Hollywood Bowl have been laid off.” – Los Angeles Times
Santa Claus, Musical Patriotism, And The New York Philharmonic: The Great Critical Kerfuffle Of 1853-54
America’s oldest orchestra had the development and promotion of American music as part of its founding mission. Yet, in its first 11 seasons, it played two American works, both composed by its own concertmaster. Then, in 1853, a British orchestra and a French conductor went on a months-long tour of the U.S., commissioning and performing American music the entire time (including William Henry Fry’s Santa Claus Symphony). Musicologist Doug Shadle recounts the ruckus that ensued. – The New York Times
What Comes Next? II
Economic recovery from coronavirus will be far slower for the bottom 90% than for the top 10%. This is a deeply perilous prospect for the nonprofit arts industry. In the minds of many, we are closely associated with the economic and social “elite.” – Doug Borwick
Companies Have Figured Out It May Be Cheaper (And Easier) To Work From Home. So What Happens To Cities?
Companies are considering not just how to safely bring back employees, but whether all of them need to come back at all. They were forced by the crisis to figure out how to function productively with workers operating from home — and realized unexpectedly that it was not all bad. If that’s the case, they are now wondering whether it’s worth continuing to spend as much money on Manhattan’s exorbitant commercial rents. – The New York Times