Executive director David Snead: Of the $13 million raised, “$8.3 million was for endowment, which will result in a quadrupling of the corpus, and another $5.2 million was raised for a new Strategic Initiatives Fund that is financing a triple-digit increase in education programs, national touring, 6 CD’s, growth in staff, new audience development initiatives such as these videos and online streaming of concerts and market research and a new brand strategy, increases in artistic budget, the commissioning of a new work by Gabriela Frank together with the Library of Congress, infrastructure and capacity growth etc. And the number of new subscribers has doubled in one year. As a result of all this, H+H has grown from a $3 million operation to a $5 million operation in the course of just a few years, all while posting 6 consecutive balanced budgets. So yes, the joint is transformed.”
Mac Wellman Isn’t Just An Unorthodox Playwright, He’s An Unorthodox, And Great, Playwriting Teacher
Says one former student, Paul Ketchum, “He knows exactly where to put pressure to release the inner playwriting beast of his students. Mac would hate this, but he’s like a fucking dramaturgical acupressure neuromancer.” Wellman talks teaching, structure (he hates it) and gossip with another former student, Eliza Bent.
Was The Trial Of Socrates About Free Speech Or Rule Of Law In A Democracy?
“There is no dispute about the basic facts of the trial of Socrates. It is less obvious why Athenians found Socrates guilty, and what it might mean today. People who believe in both democracy and the rule of law ought to be very interested in this trial. If the takeaway is either that democracy, as direct self-government by the people, is fatally prone to repress dissent, or that those who dissent against democracy must be regarded as oligarchic traitors, then we are left with a grim choice between democracy and intellectual freedom.”
The Person Dancers Depend On To Make Those Tutus Flare
“If fashion is chimerical fantasy, Mr. Happel brings a dose of earthbound reality to the work: Will all that detailed embroidery read from far away? Will dancers actually be able to raise their arms in that bodice?”
The Ballerina Triplet Who Escaped The Nazis But Is Still Dancing [AUDIO]
“When things got painful, we’d hug each other and speak either French or German with each other and dance together.”
Fifty Prominent Museum Directors Sign Letter Supporting North Dakota Indian Treaty Rights
“The letter was initiated by the Natural History Museum, a project of the New York-based art collective Not An Alternative, which has sought to politicize science and natural history museums around issues of climate change.”
Netflix Reveals Which TV Episodes Hook People On Watching The Series
You know that moment you’re watching something and your interest makes you “invest” in the show and its characters. Netflix thinks it’s the “thriller/horror/ crime” genre that seems to get viewers committed earliest. The hardest to addict you? Shows like “Gilmore Girls. There’s a cool chart of favorite shows in this article that shows you the fan tipping point.
Research: Neurologically Our Brains Respond More Intensely To Reality Than To Art
“When we think we are not dealing with reality, our emotional response appears to be subdued on a neural level. This may be because of a tendency to ‘distance’ ourselves from the image, to be able to appreciate or scrutinize its shapes, colors, and composition instead of just its content.”
In Its First Year, LA’s Broad Museum Smashes Projected Attendance Numbers
“The attendance total of 823,216 tripled pre-opening projections and placed the Broad among the top U.S. art museums for annual visitors.
‘The Big Data Jukebox’ – AllMusic, The Project That Makes The Likes Of Spotify And Pandora Possible
“Discovering new kinds of music is easier than ever … But having all this music at our fingertips was only part of the equation – we needed to be armed with information.” And where is all that information kept? “Today, we talk about AllMusic, one of the internet’s first – and best – archival projects.”
Is This The Important Next Generation Of Classical Music?
“I realised there was a growing audience of people who grew up on club music who were used to listening to music for timbre and texture, rather than vocals, who were listening to music for the experience, who could graduate from Aphex Twin to this. That’s taken a long time, maybe 10 years.”
Kendall Jenner, Ballerina? (Not Hardly)
For a recent shoot Vogue España elected to dress the model in a variety of ballet-adjacent outfits and to film her sashaying around a dance studio. And when the ballet world caught wind of the video, it was not pleased.
The World’s Longest Documented Family Tree, 78 Generations And Counting, Belongs To Confucius
“There are a lot of groups that trace their origins. But there are few that can actually point to genealogical records from the Song [Dynasty] that are then kept up and recompiled pretty continuously up to the present.”
Is Your Kid Too Aggressive? Study Says Music Lessons Can Help
Researchers looked at two groups of students, “ — one taking music lessons, the other studying the natural sciences — for a year and a half. The study found that the budding scientists were more likely to respond to provocation with aggression as they grew older. In contrast, the young musicians were not.”
Late Degas Wasn’t So Bad After All, Goes The New Consensus
“‘One had to apologise for the late work,’ [Museum of Fine Arts, Houston director Gary Tinterow] says. ‘It was thought to be that of an old man who could no longer draw, or a reflection of frustration and a loss of manual dexterity.’ [Curator Henri] Loyrette is even more blunt: ‘People said Degas was a blind man.’ It took time and scholarship and subsequent exhibitions, but that feeling has largely dissipated.”
Bette Midler ‘Hello, Dolly!’ Revival Smashes Broadway Sales Record
“More than $9m was spent in the first 24 hours on tickets to the musical, which will be staged at the Shubert Theatre from April next year. The theatre’s owners declared themselves ‘thrilled’ with the response. Tickets for the show range from $79 to $189.”
Curtis Hanson, 71, Director Of ‘L.A. Confidential’, ‘The Hand That Rocks The Cradle’, ‘8 Mile’
“Throughout his career, Hanson strived to re-create the level of actor-director intimacy and trust that he felt [Humphrey] Bogart and [Nicholas] Ray enjoyed, and which produced such raw on-screen emotion. As a result, Hanson developed a reputation among actors as a director who was particularly intuitive.”
More Concerts Canceled By Fort Worth Symphony As Strike Continues
“The cancellations include three concerts scheduled Sept. 30-Oct. 2 that featured pianist Stephen Hough performing Rachmaninoff’s Piano Concerto No. 1. … The musicians went on strike Sept. 8 after rejecting a proposed contract that included pay cuts and higher costs for health insurance. The orchestra association has since canceled three weekends of concerts.”
‘Dance’ Magazine And Its Siblings Acquired By Wall Street Exec/Dance Patron
“Wall Street dealmaker Frederic Seegal has acquired five titles of Dance Media from Macfadden Communications. Seegal, the one-time CEO of Wasserstein Perella and current vice chairman of Peter J. Solomon Co., … has been a longtime patron of the arts, serving as past president of the American Ballet Theater’s board of trustees and as a trustee for the San Francisco Symphony and the San Francisco Opera.”
Top Posts From AJBlogs 09.20.16
Some Of Our Orchestras Seem To Be Thriving – Is This A New Trend?
There’s been a change in the news coming out of symphony orchestras over the past summer. Usually there’s a background drumbeat of struggle as orchestras fight to stay alive. But for months now, the beat has shifted, and we’re hearing about orchestras that are not only surviving but thriving. … read more
AJBlog: diacritical/Douglas McLennan Published 2016-09-20
What Makes A Good Collector? And What Is Craft vs. Art? Two Stories
Usually, the most noteworthy collectors – aside from those, like J. Paul Getty, with the wherewithal to buy anything they want – are the ones that go their own way, that collect a field that’s out-of-fashion but full of worth artworks. … read more
AJBlog: Real Clear Arts Published 2016-09-20
Adulated Adjaye: Acclaimed in DC, Under-the-Radar in NYC (with video)
While there’s been widespread critical acclaim for David Adjaye‘s $540-million National Museum of African American History and Culture in Washington, few New Yorkers have heard of, let alone visited, his $84.7-million, 13-story Sugar Hill Project in Harlem … read more
AJBlog: CultureGrrl Published 2016-09-20
The Art of Relevance
I purchased my copy of Nina Simon’s The Art of Relevance on the first day it was available. I am only now posting comments about it because, frankly, I know more people are paying attention in September … read more
AJBlog: Engaging Matters Published 2016-09-20
Monday Recommendation: Ken Peplowski
Ken Peplowski, Enrapture (Capri) Despite a playlist that seems to represent a grab bag of music, there is nothing scattershot about Ken Peplowski’s eclecticism. The clarinetist and tenor saxophonist with the capacious tone and imagination … read more
AJBlog: RiffTides Published 2016-09-20
[ssba_hide]
Businesses Stress Culture In Hiring (And Here’s Where It Can Get Tricky)
“Agencies’ only asset is their people, so it makes sense to put a premium on the the multitude of intangibles that make up “culture.” After all, it’s hard to get through an issue of Harvard Business Review without coming across an article related to corporate culture. But for some, the focus on culture is often a way to keep out people not like those hiring.”
Long-Awaited Louvre Abu Dhabi Finally Has A Director
Since 2013, Rabaté has been the director of Agence France-Muséums, the French government agency charged with the Louvre Abu Dhabi project. He graduated from the Institut d’Etudes Politiques de Paris, and has worked at the Musée du Louvre and Musée du Quai Branly in Paris.
How TV And The Movies Wore Out Leonard Cohen’s ‘Hallelujah’
It’s a fine song, but “it has soundtracked dozens of deaths and breakups, and been belted in too many singing competitions to count. Because it telegraphs emotion – both mournful and hopeful – and involves some vocal acrobatics, it has become shorthand for Big Emotional Moment and employed by performers looking to stamp themselves with authenticity. Here’s a brief history of how pop culture has tortured Mr. Cohen’s creation over the years.”