Arthur Kaptainis: “[He] managed to forge an entente with an orchestra still reeling from the public resignation of Charles Dutoit and a provincial government that took culture more seriously than most. Not to mention a public that was quite prepared to be mesmerized by his mix of Japanese ancestry, Californian upbringing and European credentials. … As the right conductor at the right time, Nagano was in a much better position than most music directors to do whatever he wanted … [including] programming that few other North American orchestras would hazard.” (Not to mention opening a brand-new concert hall.) – La Scena Musicale (Montreal)
How Music Is Gaining A Bigger Role In Sleep
To combat sleeplessness, people are turning to all sorts of techniques, iWhile sleep music used to be confined to the fringes of culture—whether at avant-garde all-night concerts or New Age meditation sessions—the field has crept into the mainstream over the past decade. Ambient artists are collaborating with music therapists; apps are churning out hours of new content; sleep streams have surged in popularity on YouTube and Spotify. – Time
What The Canada Council’s New Chairman Wants To Do
“The way I view work now within colonial structures and institutions is harm reduction. Ultimately, the goal for me is to reduce the harm the Canada Council causes, not just to my community but to any community that suffers under colonialism, which is really all of us on some level, and to make it somewhat easier to exist, work, live and participate.” – Toronto Star
Brent Carver, Tony Award Winner For ‘Kiss Of The Spider-Woman,’ Has Died At 68
Carver, one of Canada’s great stage actors, “was an artist who demanded the most from himself, opening up his heart to reveal the pain and beauty of life. He was an inspiration to everyone who knew him.” – CBC
Reading The First Drafts Of Anna Karenina Is Revealing
Go back to the time when a switch flipped in Tolstoy’s head: “It’s as if Tolstoy woke up in Pushkin-world and put on his own seven-league boots and started striding over the heads of all the other writers.” – LitHub
Can A Fictional Character Defame A Real Human?
Alan Dershowitz has sued CBS for a”defamatory” comment on the TV show The Good Wife. If the plaintiff were to win his lawsuit, it would be a real problem for TV writers and novelists. CBS’s lawyer: “As one might explain to a small child, the Series, its characters and the things they say are all make-believe. People don’t watch the Series for factual information about Professor Dershowitz or anyone else.” – Washington Post
Zoe Saldana Apologizes For Playing Nina Simone
The Marvel and Star Trek actress, who was heavily criticized for playing the much darker-skinned singer in the 2016 biopic Nina (which has a 2% rating on Rotten Tomatoes, whew). Saldana said, “Nina had a life and she had a journey that should have been – and should be – honoured to the most specific detail because she was a specifically detailed individual.” – BBC
Can German (Can Any) City Centers Be Saved During The Coronavirus?
Many things have battered the city center over the past two decades. “German mayors have tended to turn to marketing in an effort to attract more people to the city center. With retail moving online, entertainment, cultural events and good food became the primary selling points. And it worked for quite a while.” Then Covid-19 shut it all down. – Der Spiegel
Is The British Theatre Critic Tradition Coming To An End?
It is hard to think of a leading critic under fifty. There is no new generation in sight. This is unprecedented. Billington was barely thirty when he began at The Guardian, older than Nightingale when he started at The Statesman. Much is made of the fact that Tynan took over at The Observer when he was 27, but Hobson was only 31 when he began as a theatre critic and James Agate was 30 when he began at The Guardian. The great critics, in short, always began before they were forty. Who are their equivalents today? Where are the new, young voices in theatre criticism? – The Critic
What I Learned From The Worst-Reviewed Novel Ever
In a book called Weird Wisconsin: Your Travel Guide to Wisconsin’s Local Legends, Burrows’s name was listed under a chapter called “The Worst Novel Ever Published in the English Language.” Maddeningly, the Google Books preview would not reveal the offending passage, but soon I located a Washington Post article that explained the whole entanglement. – The New Republic
Where’s Classical Music Performance Headed Post-COVID? Here Are Some Clues
Having listened to recent online offerings from North America and Europe (where concerts are carefully starting to move back into halls), David Patrick Stearns predicts that “innovation and experimentation will continue to be part of the package …, but in a less reckless form than in the past, and with a strong streak of social responsibility. Performances will be more intense. Decorative elements will be at a minimum. The pursuit of artistic truth could easily translate into a lack of polish. And that will be okay — we’ve had plenty of polish in recent decades.” – WQXR (New York City)
Of Experts And The Willingness To Be Wrong
When experts and pundits can’t or won’t say ‘I don’t know’, the consequences can be dire. In the short term, bad advice leads to bad decisions. In the context of admitting uncertainty about challenging questions, there are two ways this can happen. These are particularly clear and salient in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic. – Aeon
Reckoning With The Ugly Racist Origins Of Some Of American English’s Most Common Expressions
“‘Sold down the river.’ ‘Cakewalk.’ ‘Master and slave.’ American English is riddled with words and phrases with racist origins or undertones. Since the killing of George Floyd by police in Minneapolis and the flurry of protests his and other Black Americans’ deaths have inspired, a growing number of public and private institutions are reevaluating their reliance on language with racist connotations or history.” – The Boston Globe
Black Dancers Are ‘Reclaiming’ Richmond’s Robert E. Lee Monument
Here’s one instance from last month: “Standing at the base of the three-story pedestal supporting the Confederate general’s likeness, [Janine] Bell, the artistic director of Elegba Folklore Society, welcomed a small sea of drummers, dancers and bystanders banging on plastic buckets to an event she called the Reclamation Drum Circle. ‘We are not playing today,’ she said, and invited all present to move and sway to the music. And so began an extended jam session at a park long considered a whites-only space.” – The New York Times
Stop Panicking Over The Age Of Classical Audiences, Says NY Times Chief Critic
Anthony Tommasini: “Elements of dismaying ageism run through the chronic bemoaning over the graying of classical and opera audiences, something that bothered me even before I entered this older demographic myself. … But images and television broadcasts make plain that even back in the 1960s, when Leonard Bernstein was galvanizing the Philharmonic and attracting young people like me to his concerts, audiences were dominated by those in their 50s and older. Yet, year after year, devoted older fans continued to appear.” – The New York Times
Staffers At Philadelphia Museum Of Art Vote Overwhelmingly To Unionize
The vote tally was 181 to 22. “While organizers said there were many reasons behind the union drive, complaints against two Art Museum supervisors provided the movement with energy. Organizers hoped that union representation would ’empower staff in the face of incidents of harassment and discrimination like those publicized in January of this year.'” – The Philadelphia Inquirer
What’s The Definition Of ‘Museum’? The International Council Of Museums Is Tearing Itself Up Over That Question
“In recent months, several people working on the committee to revise the body’s definition of what a museum is have resigned, and there have been accusations of ‘back-alley political games.’ The Council’s president has also quit her post. For some, these disagreements reflect a wider split in the museum world about whether such institutions should be places that exhibit and research artifacts, or ones that actively engage with political and social issues.” – The New York Times