“Art fraud officers detained the two dealers for questioning were both Paris-based experts in 18th century furniture. They are suspected of selling two fake chairs out of a batch of four to the Chateau at Versailles, home of Louis XIV, for €1.7m … sending France’s high-end antiques world into ‘panic’.”
Is It Harder To Be Immersed In A Book As We Age?
“Like everything else, the way we read changes with time and age. The books I find engrossing now still have the power to make the world around me vanish. But I can’t inhabit them as I did with my childhood favorites.”
Elon Musk: Odds Are Good We’re All Living In A Giant Simulation
Citing the speed with which video games are improving, he suggested that the development of simulations “indistinguishable from reality” was inevitable. The likelihood that we are living in “base reality,” he concluded, was just “one in billions.”
Why The Silence On The Chicago Theatre Abuse Case?
“Was everyone hypnotized and mesmerized like some kind of Manson Family Member? Were all these women and stage managers and directors bedazzled by all the attention and full houses to the point where they simply had to submit to the abuse? Were they drugged? C’mon, people, where is the personal responsibility?”
Vast Ancient Cities Discovered Beneath The Jungles Of Cambodia
“The new cities were found by firing lasers to the ground from a helicopter to produce extremely detailed imagery of the Earth’s surface. The airborne laser scanners had also identified large numbers of mysterious geometric patterns formed from earthen embankments, which could have been gardens. Experts in the archaeological world agree these are the most significant archaeological discoveries in recent years.”
New Robot Can Find Misshelved Library Books
“Misplaced library books frustrate patrons and give librarians migraines. The whole system relies on books being precisely in their proper location. … [Researchers in Singapore] have created an autonomous shelf-scanning robot called AuRoSS that can tell which books are missing or out of place … and instruct librarians how to get the books back in order when they arrive in the morning.”
UK’s National Theatre To Commission Virtual Reality Theatre Works
“The National Theatre is to commission new work for virtual reality headsets. … The first project to be produced is an immersive, 360-degree, verbatim documentary, HOME: AAMIR, which tells the story of a refugee living at the Calais migrant camp. It will premiere at Sheffield Doc/Fest 2016.”
Classical CD Distributor Lays Off Staff, Stiffs Client Labels
“Portland-based Allegro Media Group, a distributor for small, independent music and video labels, appears to be leaving a swath of unhappy business partners in the wake of its financial problems.” (The comments include testimony from an exec (under his own name) at one of the client labels, as well as from an ex-employee and a former competitor.)
The Problem With All Of Those Hot New Food Halls In Big Cities
” It’s easy (if you’re not poor, that is) to be swept away with excitement by the sight of all that quivering, umami, gleaming, exciting food. Smoked whitefish with rice from Ivan Ramen! Hibiscus doughnuts from Dough! Popsicles made from cherry blossoms! Wow! But when you finally eat them, the revolutionary pleasures they seemed to offer are compressed out of all existence by the crowded, uncomfortable, competitive space, the lackluster culinary skills of the food workers, and the pressures of doing what is in effect the unpaid job of Instagramming, tweeting, and blogging about the hyped-up food you just ate.”
Do We Expect Too Much From Poetry?
We want too much from poetry. We want it ” — to defeat time, to still it beautifully; to express irreducible individuality in a way that can be recognized socially or … to achieve universality by being irreducibly social,” and so much more. “The one thing all these demands share is they can’t ever be fulfilled with poems.”
Report: Live-Streaming To Movie Theatres Is A Gateway To Live Arts Attendance
“The Live Cinema in the UK Report 2016 defines live cinema as films augmented with additional activity, including soundtracks played live by musicians, site-specific screenings, and interactive singalongs. This is distinct from event cinema – such as live and recorded screenings of theatre and opera – though the two have a comparable economic impact. In 2014, Secret Cinema’s live cinema production of Back to the Future grossed £3.5m, while the National Theatre’s event cinema screenings of War Horse grossed £2.9m.”
That Viral Video Of Dancers Mixing Ballet And Hip-Hop? It’s Driving Some People Nuts
“For all the positive attention the dancers have gotten – most have applauded their style and confidence, and they’ve performed on multiple major TV networks since the video went viral – some viewers have attacked the Hiplet style and the legitimacy of the teacher who created it: Homer Bryant of the Chicago Multicultural Dance Center. … Chicago magazine spoke with Bryant about racism in classical ballet, the Hiplet safety debate, and the role his school plays in the city.”
Cole Porter, Indiana, And Me
“How do you celebrate one of the 20th century’s most sophisticated artists in a place where his brand of sophistication and artistry is not generally valued?” Cathy Day – like Porter, a native of Peru, IN – looks at Hoosiers’ ambivalent (if that’s the word) attitudes toward the great songwriter and other high achievers who leave the state.
Allan Kozinn: What A Spiked Review Says About The State Of Arts Coverage Today
“The sequence of events and their timing, as well as the correspondence, tell us a lot about how criticism is perceived in the current journalistic ecology. It also shows us to whom editors – or at least, one editor – feel beholden, and shockingly, it is not his writer or, by extension, the readers who expect to find reviews of major productions shortly after they open.”
Making ‘Sensory-Friendly’ Theater For Kids On The Autism Spectrum
“Children squealed with glee as a tall man in a green T-shirt took the stage. ‘When you go to the theater, you might usually meet someone who shushes you,’ said Thomas P. Quinn, the Walnut [Street Theater]’s director of education. ‘This is a shush-free zone.'”
This Year’s Likely Tony Winners
“The Tony Awards single out — sometimes rightfully, often capriciously — outstanding artistry. But as this season has rousingly shown, there’s no success like shared success.”
This Violinist Spent A Month Playing Free Pop-Up Bach Concerts With No Promotion Whatsoever (And It Was A Raging Success)
Michelle Ross: “A lot of times we talk about outreach in classical music: ‘How can we break whatever preconceptions people might have? How can we bring classical music to people who aren’t exposed to it?’ This concept of outreach is really important, but I think labeling it as outreach can sometimes make us feel like we have to explain ourselves or we have to explain the music. And I firmly disagree with that.” (Q&A with video clips)
Swift Responses, In Chicago And Beyond, To Investigative Report Of Onstage Abuse
“Theater communities in Chicago and across the country reacted swiftly to the publication of this week’s Reader cover story … condemning the alleged abuses at the north-side storefront theater and standing behind a group that has emerged to protect non-Equity theater professionals.”
World’s Richest Prize For A Single Novel Goes To Akhil Sharma
“Sharma’s Family Life, a mostly autobiographical novel that tells of how a family moves from Delhi to New York, where the older brother has an accident that leaves him brain-damaged and in need of 24-hour care, was named winner of the [€100,000] International DUBLIN Literary Award on Thursday.”
Top Posts From AJBlogs 06.09.16
Shock and ‘Eh’
I’ve been to enough ‘creative economy’ presentations to know how they generally flow: They draw a big circle and then flash a big number. The big circle includes lots of creative industries — from nonprofit … read more
AJBlog: The Artful Manager Published 2016-06-09
At the League conference
In this post: I’ll be at the League conference. My thoughts on the conference theme, diversity. classical music institutions don’t do enough planning, when they look for a new audience. … read more
AJBlog: Sandow Published 2016-06-09
Emerging from, Returning to Dust
Yvonne Rainer’s The Concept of Dust: Continuous Project — Altered Annually. … read more
AJBlog: Dancebeat Published 2016-06-09
Jeremy Steig, 1942-2013
Flutist Jeremy Steig died on April 13 at his home in Japan. He was 73. His death was confirmed days after the fact. “He didn’t like to read about musicians’ deaths in newspaper obituaries,” his wife … read more
AJBlog: RiffTides Published 2016-06-09
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Omaha Symphony Posts Record Attendance, Ticket Sales
And “symphony officials say subscription ticket sales for next season are 8 percent higher than they were on this date last year. Subscription revenue is up 9 percent so far. The fastest growth is in the Rocks and Movie Music series.”
How Technology Is Shaking Up Classical Music
“What changes does the new digital technology reflect or enable? Conversations with some of classical music’s most passionate advocates of the gadgets and with developers like forScore and Tonara that write applications for them reveal a number of developments. The traditional top-down structure of teaching has been shaken loose. “
Watching A High-Powered Dealer Prepare For Art Basel
“Who knew you could parse Benjamin Moore Classic Gray by percentages? That’s what Dominique Lévy was doing with her team recently while readying their gallery’s booth for the Art Basel art fair in Switzerland, which starts next week – determining how deep the shade of a wall should be behind a Gerhard Richter landscape (50 percent? 75? 100?).”
‘Hamilton’ Raises Top Ticket Price To Staggering High, Doubles Number Of Cheap Lottery Seats
“The paired moves – raising the price for premium seats to $849 while offering 46 seats per show at $10 each – are part of a broader effort to stanch the loss of tens of millions of dollars in potential revenue to scalpers, and to make the show available to people who can’t afford costly theater tickets.”
What Do You Get When You Cross Harry Partch’s Instruments With A Sax Quartet?
David Patrick Stearns gets with the PRISM Quartet to find out.
“The nine instruments coming to Philadelphia – with names such as chromelodeon and cloud-chamber bowls – collectively weigh 2,473 pounds, with transportation costs of approximately $10,000, equal to a healthy performance fee for a star soloist.”