“You’ve probably never heard of them, but Relaxing Music Therapy has had a pretty damn successful music career. At least, on Spotify. This ‘artist’ has more than 500,000 monthly listeners on the platform, all thanks to One Simple Trick: optimizing their name to show up prominently in Spotify’s search results.” – OneZero
What It Was Like To Edit RBG
“I was a youngish editor at Random House, overseeing the Modern Library, our classics imprint. The book had come to me because of her. With her letter she enclosed two lectures she had written, one given three years earlier; the other she would deliver during her upcoming travels. “Perhaps a Random House editor could suggest a way to draw from the talks to compose an introduction.” – Paris Review
A Sculpture Park For Art From Burning Man
No, not all the art on the Playa goes up in flames. In fact, Burners face a real problem: how do they get these enormous sculptures out of the Black Rock Desert and what do they do with them afterward? Now one longtime Burner has provided an option in the desert just outside Las Vegas: Area15, where artworks from the festival are put on display and offered for sale. – Artnet
It’s A Horrible Time For British Theatre, But It Could Be Great For Circuses
“With many circuses sustained by performers and backstage crew from outside the UK, Brexit is a cause for concern. But as the UK’s leading circus directors tell Douglas McPherson, it is also a chance for them to make their mark.” Why? “Circuses thrive in a recession.” – The Stage
The Pervasive Toxicity Of Online Misinformation
Today, those wishing to sow discord don’t need bots to post and spread their falsehoods and distortions. They have plenty of unwitting people to do that, their beliefs and actions warped by a “behavioral modification system. That mistrust has destabilized democracy around the world. – Wired
Using Video Games To Explore India’s Politics And History
“Through fantastical environments where buildings and oversized monuments are made of rubber sandals and toothpaste tubes, Studio Oleomingus … crafts interactive stories that cast a playful light on India’s complicated past and present.” – The Guardian
Why Does Netflix Keep Canceling Series After Two Seasons?
Data from media analytics firm Ampere Analysis suggests that on average, a Netflix Original gets just two seasons before being canceled. – Wired
Why A Russian Billionaire Is Buying Up Unwanted Confederate Statues
“If the monuments are going to be thrown out, chucked away, we’re happy to buy them and dismantle them and put them together back in Russia for future generations to enjoy and to appreciate. The idea is preserving those things for history. History has two sides of it always. Bad or good, it’s a piece of art.” – Washington Post
Why The Internet Is Debating “Canceling” Beethoven
A musicologist and a songwriter, stars of Vox’s ‘Switched on Pop’ podcast produced with the New York Philharmonic, have been criticised for their new reading of Beethoven’s Fifth, which argues that white men embraced the work and turned it into a “symbol of their superiority and importance.” – ClassicFM
Is It Fair To Call ‘Tenet’ A Flop? Not Exactly …
“Overall, it can be agreed [that Christopher Nolan’s] palindromic thriller is gradually coming to be viewed as a theatrical launch failure — certainly not a flop in traditional terms, but no doubt a studio example of what not to do in pandemic circumstances with your biggest IP.” – Vulture
How BandCamp Became The Anti-Spotify
The platform, with its artist-first business model, has since its birth in 2008 become a player in the music streaming wars by celebrating niche communities while promising a radically transparent approach to royalties. – Los Angeles Times
Marie Hale, Founder Of Ballet Florida, Dead At 87
A Mississippi native who began studying dance at age 2, she settled in West Palm Beach in her late 20s and began teaching. In 1973, she founded Ballet Arts Theater of Palm Beach, which grew to a four-productions-per-season schedule and a school with 300 students and a record of placing graduates in some of the world’s top troupes. In 1986, Hale reconstituted BAT as Ballet Florida, one of the few fully professional dance companies in the state. – Dance Magazine
With Major Award, Milan Kundera And Czech Republic Kiss And Make Up
The great author and his home country, about which he wrote his most widely-known books, have not always gotten along since he fled the Communist regime in 1975 and didn’t return after it fell. (The latest flare-up happened earlier this year.) But now the 91-year-old Kundera has been awarded the Franz Kafka Prize, one of the Republic’s highest honors for writers, and he has “joyfully” accepted. – The Guardian
Accounts Of ‘Horrifying’ Sexual Abuse At Curtis Institute Confirmed By Investigation
“A months-long investigation by the law firm Cozen O’Connor into ‘horrifying accounts of rape and repeated sexual abuse’ from violinist Lara St. John while she was a student at the Curtis Institute of Music has found her claims to be credible. A report by the firm detailing her experience, as well as separate claims of abuse by about two dozen other students over a period of decades, was unanimously accepted Tuesday by the Curtis board,” which unreservedly apologized to St. John and thanked both her and the newspaper reporters who published her account. – The Philadelphia Inquirer
Plans For Picasso Museum In Aix-En-Provence Collapse
“The Musée Jacqueline et Pablo Picasso, which would have held some 1,000 paintings by the artist, fell through as a result of a failed negotiation between the French town’s city council and Jacqueline’s daughter and Picasso’s stepdaughter Catherine Hutin-Blay, who headed the project for the institution.” – ARTnews
Holidays are canceled?
Many of us in the arts are cynical about holiday productions. But these performances are meaningful in the lives of our audiences and I think should be respected as such. I’ve been thinking abut what is lost when audiences miss out on holiday shows this year. – Hannah Grannemann
David/Valda Over the Years
The screen announces “The Philadelphia Matter 1972/2020,” and glimpsed behind it is the large, alarmed face of its creator: choreographer David Gordon. The piece (no surprise) is propelled, guided, and shaped by words. Postmodern poetry — written and uttered by Gordon and/or his wife, Valda Setterfield — repeats and enlarges upon itself. – Deborah Jowitt
One-Third Of Musicians May Quit Profession Because Of COVID, Says UK Union
“A survey of 2,000 members of the Musicians’ Union found that 34% ‘are considering abandoning the industry completely’, because of the financial difficulties they face during the pandemic, as performance opportunities are severely curtailed. Almost half have already found work outside their industry, and 70% are unable to do more than a quarter of their usual work.” – The Guardian