Conductor and radio presenter Guy Noble: “The houses are too big for many of the voices to cut through and as a consequence audiences are leaving with a less than exciting experience. Amplification is seen as such a dirty word. … I sincerely hope that opera doesn’t disappear in a puff of purist smoke. And if it does, might we not even be able to hear it?”
Steve Reich At 80
“He composes, he travels, he coaches young musicians in their performances of 30-year-old scores. Asked whether he has any plans to retire — like his fellow octogenarian, the novelist Philip Roth — Reich professes to not quite understand the question.”
Why Startup Companies Need Philosophers On Their Strategy Teams
“When a business is beginning, often times its struggles are existential in nature. Consultants can come in and teach you the finer points of agile, scrum, kanban – you name it. Accountants can come in and teach you how to make sure you don’t lose track of your money. But precious few can come in and tell you what your business is really going to be at a deep level. But that’s the kind of stuff philosophers are trained to do.”
Berkeley Breathed Talks About The Revived ‘Bloom County’
“Early and Late Bloom County should be worth a week in some future bullshit college course on pop history. Nobody has done this before – start strip, stop strip, start family, see world, get old, watch world become digital, start strip again. So it is sorta intriguing. Remember, Bloom County became of age when I was barely out of college. I ended it at an age most college kids now graduate and finally leave the house. Read: what the hell did I know?”
Syrian Architect Develops Plan For Rebuilding Country’s War-Ravaged Cities (In One Of Which She Is Trapped)
“Did Syria’s urban architecture help fuel the civil war that has shattered the country and claimed the lives of hundreds of thousands of people? This is the provocative theory proposed by Marwa al-Sabouni, a young architect from Homs who spent two years confined to her apartment with her husband and two children as the city’s historic heart was reduced to rubble.”
Imagine There’s No Grade Levels
“The key is to have a rich, detailed view of what the student knows and can do. Advancement will then be at the student’s pace, but there will be expectations for how quickly a student should advance.”
Writer Ann Patchett Says Authors Need To Buckle Down And Save Their Industry
“When customers visit the bookstore and tell her Amazon is cheaper: ‘I’m like, ‘You cannot come in, soak up what we have, talk to the staff, get recommendations, then go home and buy the book on Amazon. If you do, I will hunt you down and smack you around.'”
A Video Game Artist Finds Inspiration In External Limitations
Janice Chu, who’s working on the sequel to The Lego Movie and a lot more: “It’s a fun challenge thinking with constrained rules. … It’s definitely a different way of thinking which is awesome.”
Idea: Jail Time For People With Overdue Library Books
“Library director Paula Laurita said the harsh new rules were necessary because offenders were effectively stealing from the library and taxpayers.”
Wells Fargo Slams The Arts In Its Ads – And Is Called To Account By Theatre People
Yeah, not a great look, Wells Fargo. (The bank apologized later.)
A Journalist Works On A Story So Depressing She Has To Turn It Into A YA Series
“She was assigned to edit a haunting news story by Emily Wax about women in India whose husbands, sons and brothers had been disappeared by state police.”
Explaining The Conditional Love Song In Musicals, Flowchart And All
“When the conditional love song is a solo, the real subversions begin.”