Marissa Wolf was midway into her first full season as artistic director at Portland Center Stage and had just opened The Curious Incident of The Dog In the Night-time in March of 2020. – The New York Times
Marin Alsop Is Proud Of Her Baltimore Symphony Tenure — And Frustrated, Too
“If I had it to do all over again, I would not have tried so hard to move the BSO out of the Ivory Tower. Sometimes you have to say, ‘OK, this is not where people want to go. Try to enjoy the orchestra and community as much as you can.’ … I didn’t have problems with any one individual. It’s more about an ethos and a philosophy of how you want to exist in a community. I had pushed as hard as I could push.” – The Baltimore Sun
Revenue From NPR’s Podcasts Just Keeps Rising And Rising
“From 2015 to 2019 US-based National Public Radio saw its podcasting revenue grow ten-fold. Things were tougher last year due to the pandemic, though NPR still managed a small amount of growth, but it’s now bouncing back big time,” with an estimated rise of 30% from last year. – World Association of News Publishers
How Did US Public Broadcasting Become The Institution It Is? It Sure Wasn’t Easy
“As self-evident and uncontroversial as the belief in equal access to information sounds within the noncommercial media sector itself, politically the concept always faced resistance. … Fast forward to 2021, and the origin of public broadcasting looks something like a social movement.” – Current
Queer Cutlets at Judy’s Cafe
Stuck like a plum in a pound cake for a decade at The Philadelphia Inquirer, I wondered where to eat. A colleague knew I needed a spot to eat that would make me feel like myself, so he took me — so I recall, maybe he recommended it — to Judy’s Cafe, on South 3rd and Bainbridge in, yes, Queen Village. – Jeff Weinstein
Naomi Wolf Was Once Highly Influential. How Did She Get So Crazy?
With each subsequent decade, Wolf has injected a little more madness into the cesspool of weird that we sometimes call “the discourse.” – The New Republic
1974: The Year Los Angeles Became A Cultural Powerhouse
Ronald Brownstein, a senior editor at the Atlantic and political analyst for CNN, offers 1974 as a pivotal year in which Los Angeles took center stage as a cultural broker and “transformed movies, music, television, and politics.” – Los Angeles Times
Sony Writes Off Artists’ Debts
This means that groups and single artists who were still trying to pay back debt – and thus were not eligible for royalties – can now start earning money from streaming. – BBC
Trying To Replicate An Unexpected, Grand Success
That’s what season 2 – and sophomore novels – are all about. Overwhelming numbers for a TV series or book can scare artists off. So what’s going to happen in series 2 of Lupin? – The New York Times
The Next Streaming Wars Are Coming
Coming to those who are interested in Spanish-language media, to be a little more precise. Disney, Netflix, and Warner Media, and Univision all have a piece of the pie – and are tugging, hard. “It’s easy to see why streamers and studios see a gold mine. Latinos consistently accounted for a disproportionate amount of moviegoing before the pandemic, yet they are severely underrepresented onscreen and behind the camera, including at Netflix” – Los Angeles Times
Food Travel Shows Desperately Need New Gatekeepers
Take Netflix’s new High on the Hog as an example: “The narrative about Black food is often one of resilience—a history of dishes and cooking passed down from one generation to the next as Black people survived subpar and inhumane conditions. While part of that is true, High on the Hog is not afraid to complicate that narrative by reconsidering Black cooking through a lens of abundance, and even luxury: It provides context around the lives that were lived before enslavement.” – Vice
How To Be Everywhere Online
First, meme well (and second, make She Memes Well the title of your memoir). In her new book, comedian and meme power user Quinta Brunson “breaks down her journey from struggling stand-up comedian to being recognized by strangers all over the world. The book includes hilarious anecdotes about growing up in West Philadelphia, being a Black woman, dating and life after internet fame. She also gives serious thought to the evolution of memes, and how they have emerged as a powerful tool to help people communicate and organize online.” – The New York Times
The Fights Over Robert Indiana’s Estate Come To An End
It’s been an expensive and draining series of legal battles. “After three years of courtroom hostilities, the estate of the artist Robert Indiana and the artist’s former business partner said Friday that they had agreed to settle the legal disputes that cost the estate millions of dollars and clouded the market for a man known for such works as the sculpture, LOVE.” – The New York Times
A Guide To The Pulitzer Prize Books
Northern Hemisphere summer reading plans, here you go. – The New York Times
Netflix’s ‘Selena’ Disrespected The Singer And The Latinx Staff, Writers Say
The story of Selena Quintanilla is quintessentially American – so why did Netflix order it as a Latin American original with a tiny budget that meant filming in Mexico and paying writers (and other staff members) much, much less than they would have gotten in the U.S.? “Their love for Selena, the writers said, drove them to take the job despite the low wages, but all expressed frustration at the disrespect they say they felt being underpaid and overworked for a series that quickly dominated Netflix’s own top-10 charts in 23 countries following its December 2020 release.” – Los Angeles Times
Juilliard Students Lead Music, Dance-Filled Protests Over Tuition Hikes
After a planned protest in one of the school’s buildings, the students “were barred from the Diamond building, and the school told them that it was investigating an incident that included reported violations ‘pertaining to community safety.’ On Thursday, about 20 students continued their tuition protest on the sidewalk outside, waving placards and accusing the school of using heavy-handed tactics to quell dissent.” – The New York Times
The New Yorker Union Is Prepared To Strike
The writers, contributors, and freelance editorial workers are prepared to produce a strike issue – or a Labor Peace issue. It all depends on how negotiations end up. – LitHub
A Much, Much Larger Georgia O’Keeffe Museum Is On Its Way
The collection certainly demands a change: “The current facility, which opened in 1997, originally housed a collection of 40 O’Keeffe paintings. The museum had always been looking to expand, Hartley said, but as the years went on and the museum’s permanent collection size increased to more than 3,000 works — the Georgia O’Keeffe Foundation donated 981 additional items in 2006, the year it dissolved — it became clear relocation would be the better option.” – The New York Times
Keeping It Real – And Dreamy Too
To make In the Heights work as a movie, the playwright and scriptwriter Quiera Alegría Hudes had to make painful cuts, and so did songwriter Lin-Manuel Miranda. How to keep it faithful to the feel of the stage show? Director Jon Chu: “What they had created is not just a show. It is a life force.” – The New York Times
How Binary Thinking Constricts Design
The ways that each culture defines gender norms and structures are unique. Historically, the U.S. enforced a rigid gender binary to support its relentless growth, eliminating any traces of those that threatened its perception of normalcy. Prior to colonization, many Indigenous cultures valued queer, trans, and gender-nonconforming people as integral members of society. – Inside Design
Tania Leon Wins 2021 Pulitzer for Music
The Pulitzer citation describes Stride as “a musical journey full of surprise, with powerful brass and rhythmic motifs that incorporate Black music traditions from the US and the Caribbean into a Western orchestral fabric.” – NewMusicBox
Goodreads Bug Erases Book Ratings
It’s unknown how many books are affected by the bug. The number of ratings per book lost seem, without any further information, to be random. Authors took to Twitter with their worries, because for authors, the loss of reviews and ratings is in no way a simple error or a minor issue, as the platform is a powerful tool for book discoverability and promotion. – Publishers Weekly
Planned Film About Jacinda Ardern And Christchurch Mosque Massacre Draws Huge Backlash In New Zealand
The just-announced project They Are Us, to be written and directed by New Zealander Andrew Niccol (writer and co-producer of The Truman Show, writer-director of, among others, Gattaca and Good Kill) and starring Rose Byrne, focuses on the aftermath of the 2019 mass shooting and the national campaign led by Prime Minister Ardern to ban assault rifles in the country. Within a day of the news arriving, many Kiwis reacted with fury to the focus on white politicians rather than the Muslim victims and survivors, with some calling the movie “a White Saviour narrative” and launching a #TheyAreUsShutdown campaign to boycott all work on the project. (It’s not clear how many people have actually seen the script.) – The Hollywood Reporter
As Marin Alsop Leaves The Baltimore Symphony, Why Aren’t There More Maestras At Top US Orchestras?
“When she took the position in 2007, she was the first female music director of a top-tier American orchestra. She was, it seemed certain then, the avatar of a new generation of women on important podiums. … But when she departs this summer, the field will go back to the way it was before she came: 25 major orchestras … with no female music directors. Alsop and her Baltimore appointment are often referred to as trailblazing, but so far she remains alone on this particular trail.” – The New York Times
Conductor Grant Llewellyn, Late Of North Carolina Symphony, Makes His Way Back From A Stroke
Last summer, back home in Wales after completing his 16-year term in Raleigh, he suffered what turned out to be a three-day stroke that severely impaired the use of his right arm and leg. After a month’s hospitalization and six months of physical therapy, though he can’t hold a baton, he is back working with the Orchestre national de Bretagne, his ensemble in Rennes, France. “The irony of my situation is that I can conduct Beethoven symphonies but I can’t get out of bed. I can’t tie my shoelaces.” – BBC