The Dunedin Consort, an Edinburgh-based period-instrument group known for its recordings of Bach sacred works and Handel oratorios, had its first engagement since lockdown this past Friday in northern France. The problem: Boris Johnson’s government announced late Thursday night that anyone entering the UK from France after 4 am on Saturday would have to be quarantined for 14 days, and every regular means of transport for late Friday night was sold out. – BBC
Can The Arts Help Revive Rural America?
“According to the Rural Establishment Innovation Survey, residents in rural counties that are home to performing arts organizations earn up to $6,000 more than people who live in rural counties without such platforms. All of this is sparking hope for a revival of rural counties — half of which have seen their population decline since 2000 — and at a time when experts are predicting mass migration from urban centers to smaller towns because of the growing costs in cities and the increased possibilities for working from home.” – OZY
A New Way to Look at Shakespeare’s Sonnets
Instead of reading the sonnets in the numbered sequence of the 1609 quarto, which is the usual way, they examine them in what they believe was their order of composition. This puts a special focus on the considerable tinkering that went into them. – Jan Herman
A Classical Music Host Says Music Is Keeping Her Alive After Emergency Brain Surgery
Clemency Burton-Hill works as the creative director at WQXR, New York’s classical station, and has been a BBC presenter, including a lot of Proms coverage. In early 2020, she had a massive brain hemorrhage and emergency surgery. As she regained consciousness, she heard a familiar piece and, she says, made some internal choices. “Music is the opposite of despair. It was going to be worth the fight.” – BBC
The Studio Behind This Year’s Oscar-Winning Animated Short Are Trying To School Hollywood
Lion Forge is a Black-owned animation studio, the only Black-owned animation studio. For founders and staff, that makes its mission different. “It’s representation on the screen. It’s representation on the producing side of things. But then also, and I think what’s always missed, is, there needs to be representation in the executive teams that have the power to be able to push the content through.” – FastCompany
Minecraft Hosts A Massive Music Festival For Everyone Stuck In Quarantine
Well, why not let a video game provide a virtual mosh pit, virtual vendors, and a musical experience that lasts for days? “The super fans eat it up because they’re excited in a time when there’s not a whole lot else to consume.” – CBC
Members Are Furious At SAG-AFTRA’s Plan To Change, And Limit, Health Coverage
Seriously, SAG-AFTRA? During a global pandemic that has a lot of members out of work? Well, trustees say, “By 2024, the Health Plan is projected to run out of reserves. We must prevent this from happening.” – Variety
How A Writer Pays, And Then Loses, Attention
Novelist Helen Garner terrified her friends for years with what they called her pitiless writer’s eye – detached, curious, and omnivorous. But as she ages, she’s found it’s harder and harder to pay that attention to the world. Then the virus, and lockdown, arrived. “The daily work habits of 40 years went up in flames and new ones sprouted from the ashes. Instead of going to bed early and starting work straight after breakfast, I wallowed on the couch till one in the morning, feasting on wild-eyed Jewish stand-up and cold case investigations by women detectives.” – The Guardian (UK)
The Terrible Plight Of Music And Theatre Event Staff
Lighting designers, sound engineers, tour managers, caterers, bus drivers, and more – all laid off more or less permanently, nebulously, until a vaccine. Their unions and associations are trying to help. “We basically trawled the internet looking for temporary jobs for our members. … Some top technicians have got themselves into Amazon fulfilment centres, or driving for Asda. We had two members bump into each other in the same aisle in Tesco, stacking shelves on a night shift.” – The Guardian (UK)
Linda Manz, Who Starred In Terence Malick’s ‘Days Of Heaven’ At Only 15, Has Died At 58
Manz also featured in Dennis Hopper’s Out of the Blue. – Variety
To Find A Book That Charts Our Own Distressed Times, Try Doris Lessing
The Golden Notebook, published almost 60 years ago now, gets to the heart of almost everything (depressingly, still) going on right now. “Lessing — like Anna — is unafraid to dirty her hands in the quest for truth. She might write with an acid touch but she doesn’t keep an Olympian distance from new causes or passionate affairs.” – The New York Times
The Many Hatreds Of Horror Master H.P. Lovecraft
Lovecraft was clearly racist and clearly an anti-Semite – and guess what? He also thought the Irish were inferior. “Such prejudices weren’t simply background colour. They are front and centre of many of his most iconic tales.” (Which is why a new series would make him so mad.) – Irish Times
Writing With Radical Ordinariness
Emphasis on that radical, please, when you’re talking about author Carol Shields. – The New York Times
Think School Testing Is A Mess In The US? Take A Look At How The UK Shafted Students In The Pandemic
This is not to excuse the United States’ patchwork of school tests, the weirdness (and inequity) of the ACT or SAT, but … wow. “The coronavirus pandemic means exams were canceled and replaced with teacher assessments and algorithms. It has created chaos.” – Wired
Congress Adjourns With No Help For Live Music Venues (Or Anyone At All)
That likely condemns a lot of venues to closure. “‘It’s shocking that they don’t just stay until they figure it out,’ says Audrey Fix Schaefer of the National Independent Venue Association (NIVA).” Small music venues and theatres are truly at dire risk. – Variety
Leon Wieseltier, Chastened, Is Starting A New Magazine After All
A literal éminence grise (his hair went white decades ago) best known for editing the books-and-culture pages of The New Republic for 32 years, Wieseltier was about to launch a journal funded by Laurene Powell Jobs and called Idea when, in 2017, a slew of #MeToo allegations (none of which he denied) led both the magazine and Wieseltier to be canceled. Now he’s back, with a new quarterly called Liberties (420 pages of text, no images, no ads) about “the rehabilitation of liberalism” — and, perhaps, of the man himself. – Air Mail