“The largest – and until recently, only – orchestra in Central Africa has played on three continents, to standing ovations, and graced some of the philharmonic world’s most prestigious stages in recent years. But at home, it remains a modest affair. The first trumpeter still spends his days working construction sites. The double bass player is a nurse, and the tubist a pharmacist. One violinist, who is also the repairman tasked with mending instruments warped by the Congolese humidity, runs a small shop across the street, selling eggs and toothpaste.”
Ten Years After Katrina, Louisiana Philharmonic Finally Gets Its Hall Back
“After ten years of post-Katrina concerts in other venues, the Louisiana Philharmonic Orchestra returns to the Orpheum Theater in New Orleans’ Central Business District to open its 2015-16 concert season. Farrar Hudkins talks with Mary von Kurnatowski, one of the Orpheum’s new owners, and longtime LPO musicians Patti Adams and Jim Atwood, to give us the story of this historic homecoming.” (audio)
4,000-Year-Old, Eight-Foot-Long Egyptian Manuscript Rediscovered
“The oldest Egyptian leather manuscript has been found in the shelves of the Egyptian Museum in Cairo, where it was stored and forgotten for more than 70 years. Dating from the late Old Kingdom to the early Middle Kingdom (2300-2000 B.C.), the roll measures about 2.5 meters (8.2 feet) and is filled with texts and colorful drawings of the finest quality.”
‘Brokeback Mountain’ To Be Made Into Stage Play
“It started as a short story, became an Oscar-winning film and then an opera, and now Brokeback Mountain is going to be adapted for the legitimate stage. Producer Tom O’Connell has acquired the rights to Annie Proulx’s short story … and the production is expected to premiere in London’s West End in 2016.”
Frank D. Gilroy, 89, Playwright Of ‘The Subject Was Roses’
The 1964 Broadway hit won a Tony and a Pulitzer. “But for Mr. Gilroy, who wrote more than 30 other plays, Roses was his only major theatrical success. And while he wrote the screenplays for 10 feature films (some of which he also produced or directed); three novels; and scores of adventures, westerns and dramas in the golden age of television, none had the impact of his first and only Broadway hit.”
Controversial Winner For The Leeds International Piano Competition
Anna Tcybuleva’s success certainly raised a few eyebrows after her performance of Brahms’s B flat Concerto – the last of the six concertos we heard – in which, for all the fluency of her playing, she often seemed incapable of seeing the overall shape of the work, and her role in projecting it, rather than the detail of each passing moment.
Cincinnati’s Music Hall Closes For $129 Million Renovation
“Officials announced Monday that the historic, 1878 landmark will completely shut down in June for what is now a $129 million construction project. Following an extensive and complex renovation, it will reopen in fall 2017.”
Are Superfans Today’s Equivalent Of Cult Members?
Trekkies. Deadheads. Beliebers. Red Sox Nation. The throngs at ComicCon. Are fan groups like these simply means of social cohesion, or do they eventually take over their members’ lives? Jared Keller gives a glimpse into the mindset of a superfan (he’s obsessed with the ’70s band Tower of Power) and looks at the evidence.
Benjamin Millepied On The Paris Opera Ballet’s New Digital ‘Third Stage’
“The idea of having a third stage that’s a digital platform was really to invite [non-dance] artists to come to the opera and get a sense that they can really create something here: work with the dancers, the music, the architecture, something. … It’ll be totally original content; so far we’ve had many people, from visual artists to directors. I want them to feel they have carte blanche.”
Joffrey Ballet’s Newest Dancers Have More To Think About Than Dancing
“[They] must contend with their own newly emerging public identities almost as readily as they practice their turnout. Last year, Valeriia Chaykina, a dancer from Russia, was cast in an ongoing series from Teen Vogue. In 2011, Colombian-born Joan Sebastián Zamora starred in the documentary First Position, which followed six young ballet dancers preparing for New York City’s Youth American Grand Prix, one of the world’s largest ballet competitions.”
Fake Weddings Are The Hot New Party Fad In Argentina
#falsaboda (yes, it’s a hashtag) is “a fake wedding where the bride, groom, and officiant are actors and the guests are there to party rather than celebrate a new marriage. The party-goers, usually young and single, pay between $43 and $65 for tickets, which are in high demand. The faux-wedding-goers receive a video that tells the backstory of the ‘couple,’ and they’re usually in for some kind of drama.”
Problem With LA’s New Broad Museum – Too Much Art?
“The volume of work chosen for the inaugural exhibition, on both the third floor and a smaller first-floor gallery that will eventually be used for temporary shows, is overwhelming. Partition walls clutter the third floor, and obliterate its spatial drama. And too many of the works are so large, and importune the visitor so aggressively, that one feels hectored by hectares of art.”
How Late Night TV Got Reinvigorated
“Far from signaling the fading cultural import of the late-night talk show, which is what everyone feared the market-share-cannibalizing Leno-Letterman wars augured in the 1990s, this fragmented landscape has invigorated the format—nearly every weeknight brings some rich moment that goes viral.”
So What’s Missing From That Vanity Fair Picture Of Late Night TV?
“The Vanity Fair article, written by David Kamp, talks about the changes within the last few years in late-night comedy. The article also points out that women are still missing from late-night TV.”
The Man Who Made The Toronto Film Festival Great Talks About How To Succeed
Piers Handling: “When I was younger, what got me engaged were filmmakers who taught me to think analytically, and it began to reveal truths about relationships in the world – between people and society and everything around us – in a very different way. To decipher the world visually, try to uncover what’s beneath the surface and in the subtext, still fascinates me. And that’s what really began to open my eyes to the potential of the medium.”
The Problem With “Modern” Philosophy
The move to understand things theoretically only comes about when there is some interruption or “deficiency” in our ordinary dealings. A common error in philosophy, however, has been a kind of “intellectualism,” treating all our contact with the world in terms of concepts and representations, assuming that “knowledge is the only mode of experience that grasps things.”
Company Plans To Tour Show With Hologram Concert Of The Late Whitney Houston
Pat Houston, Whitney’s sister and president of the her estate, said: “It’s a great opportunity for her fans to see a reinvention of one the most celebrated female artists in history and to continue a legacy of performances that will not be forgotten in years to come.
Ballet Company Becomes Collateral Damage In Quebec Teachers’ Labor Dispute
Ballet Ouest de Montréal has had to cancel almost half (so far) of its December Nutcracker performances for school groups – which make up a hefty part of its income – because teachers staging a work-to-rule action are refusing to supervise field trips and extracurricular groups.
A Crowd-Sourced Instrument For Objectively Scoring The Level Of Evil (Is Such A Thing Possible?)
“For the last decade, forensic psychiatrist Michael Welner has led a curious, self-funded effort to create something he calls the Depravity Standard … But can a scientist really define the outer edges of our morality?”
Top Posts From AJBlogs 09.14.15
The change continues
I used to call it the decline of classical music – the aging, shrinking audience, the mounting financial woes. But now I’d rather call it the change. The old ways fade, becoming unsustainable. read more
AJBlog: Sandow Published 2015-09-14
A Delectable Selection of Native American Art, With Just One Problem
If you read my last post, about thematic exhibition cooperation among museums, you know I was in Santa Fe recently. But why was I in Santa Fe – that’s another story, one that resulted in a review … read more
AJBlog: Real Clear Arts Published 2015-09-13
Monday Recommendation: A Garner Classic Made Whole
Erroll Garner’s heroic 1955 concert will be released this week in its entirety for the first time. … read more
AJBlog: RiffTides Published 2015-09-14
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How To Plan A Complicated Season Of Theatre
Bill Rauch: “We hope that people will find plays that both reaffirm values they already hold and provoke new ways of looking at the world in each portion of the season. So when choosing which eleven plays to produce in a season, we must not only look at the merits of the individual plays themselves, but how they resonate with others that will be playing right next door or even in the same space later that same day.”
Good Writing? The Key Is What You Leave Out
John McPhee: Words are too easy to play on. When I joined The New Yorker, in 1965, I left puns behind. Not that I have never suffered a relapse. In the nineteen-seventies, I turned in a manuscript containing a pun so fetid I can’t remember it. My editor then was Robert Bingham, who said, “We should take that out.”
Chicago Symphony Musicians Contract Expires
“Orchestra members were left in limbo, without a contract, less than 48 hours before they are scheduled to begin rehearsals for the opening concerts of the CSO’s 125th anniversary season. Those concerts mark the start of Riccardo Muti’s sixth season as music director.”