“That his tenure at The Denver Post from 1966 to 1981, including the role of publisher, was only one of a dozen hats he wore over the decades speaks to the breadth of his life and times.”
GarageBand: Good Or Bad For Music?
“While audiophiles and classic rock enthusiasts might sneer at the software’s humorously simple design, digital natives simply see it as making something impenetrable now liberatingly accessible.”
The Oregon Shakespeare Festival Explains (Further) The ‘Translating Shakespeare’ Initiative
“There will be a dramatist’s perspective in the center of these plays for the first time in 400 years. Typically, we rely on information about the plays from actors, directors, dramaturgs, designers, and scholars. I’m asking the writers to go into the plays (I keep joking about giving them coal miners’ hats) and see what they discover about how the plays work from within their structure. Compressing the length of the project to three years also was strategic. I just wanted a snapshot of ‘now,’ how we think about Shakespeare now.”
New Research: Shakespeare’s Dad Was Rich
It has long been assumed that Shakespeare’s father was a small-town glover and dealer in hides and wool, who went from riches to rags. The new research suggests that, far from going bust, John Shakespeare was reinvesting in wool and making even more money than ever, some of it via shady deals. It was also wool, not the theatre, that prompted William to leave Stratford-upon-Avon for London in 1585, where he could act as the family’s business representative.
How Broadway Transformed Itself Out Of The 1970s
Broadway and Times Square today would not be recognizable to those who last saw it in the mid-’70s or, for that matter, in the late ’20s. Broadway musicals are as popular as ever, but much of the grit and seediness has been washed clean, and the area is now more akin to a family-friendly theme park than a bawdy vaudeville enclave.
Everything These Days Is About “Social”. But What About The Introverts?
Comprising anywhere from one third to about half of the population, introverts sometimes appear shy, depressed, or antisocial, when that’s not always the case. As Susan Cain put it in her famous TED Talk, introverts simply “feel at their most alive and their most switched-on and their most capable when they’re in quieter, more low-key environments.”
Laura Poitras Creates A Magnum For Online Documentaries
The project, called Field of Vision, “sees independent documentarians around the world investigating concerns close to Poitras’s own practice: surveillance as well as political boundaries, hidden social conflicts, and the layers of urban space. … Field of Vision will produce about 50 short-form or episodic nonfiction films a year. Its first season debuted online September 29.”
San Francisco Really Is Pricing Out Its Artists
“While it’s hard to know exactly how many artists have left San Francisco in the last several years, there’s a consensus that the city is facing an emergency. In September, the arts commission released the results of its first ‘artist eviction survey’” Of nearly 600 local artists, 70% had been or were being displaced from their studio space, their home, or both.”
Bernie Sanders, The Arts President?
In the video, produced by the Arts Action Fund, Sanders reflects on his time as mayor of Burlington, Vermont, explaining that in 1981, he helped establish the Burlington Arts Council. “At that time, way back when, it was almost unheard of to have a municipally funded and supported effort to promote the arts,” he says. The goal was to “unleash the creativity of our residents and harness the untold benefits that investments in the arts bring to communities.” He calls the creation of the council “one of my proudest achievements” as mayor.
London’s National Gallery Workers Strike Drags On…
In August, about 200 members of the Public and Commercial Services (PCS) union began an indefinite strike, which has led to “limited public access” to some areas of gallery. “I’m very hopeful that the strikes will come to an end quite quickly,” director Gabriele Finaldi said at his first press conference on Tuesday. “I think that would be good for the public and our staff and for the gallery’s image too. Above all we want to return to our normal operation.”
A Dance Company That Has Thrived Log After Its Founder Died
“What happens when the founding genius, the original voice, is gone? Martha Graham died in 1991, but her troupe survives, thanks to “contextual” presentations and new works by living choreographers; Paul Taylor, still actively producing work, is 85. His company, too, is making moves to widen its repertory. But the dance world often overlooks another company that has quietly gone about its business for decades in the absence of its founding choreographer, José Limón.”
Kansas City Symphony Signs Music Director Michael Stern For Another Five Years
“Our symphony audiences have never been larger, and our financial position has never been stronger. The Kansas City community has embraced Michael, and he has returned the affection with energetic and entertaining performances of the highest quality.”
Grand Rapids’ Art Prize, In Its Seventh Year, Is Finding Its Voice
The targeted investments, impressive lineup of jurors and new curatorial initiatives are attracting higher-level artists and creating more trenchant thematic exhibitions that exist like self-contained planets within the ArtPrize universe.
Study: Watching Quality TV Can Improve Emotional Intelligence
Two years ago, groundbreaking research revealed that reading literary fiction can help us understand the inner lives of others. Now, a newly published paper finds watching quality television drama can do the same thing.
Public Arts Funding Leads To Self-Censorship, Says Leader Of Famed Dissident Underground Theater
Natalia Kaliada, co-founder of Belarus Free Theatre: “Creative conformism is blooming in democratic countries, and so you have to ask whether the only way to secure funding today is to create safe art … I paid the price, and my family paid the price, for speaking our minds freely while living under a dictatorship. Now, living in a democracy, I start to develop a fear of speaking freely in our shows in case we will lose our funding.”
Strong Female Leads Make Audiences Uncomfortable, Says Leading Director
Vicky Featherstone, artistic director of London’s Royal Court Theatre: “We haven’t seen a female King Lear, we haven’t seen a female Willy Loman, we haven’t seen a female Hamlet. People haven’t written those plays yet. And when they do write them, or when they try …, people don’t receive the play very positively.”
Do Strong Female Leads Really Put Audiences Off? Ask Rosalind, Lady Bracknell, And Mama Rose
“Does Vicky Featherstone speak for us all when she says ‘we don’t know whether we’re very good yet at watching a female narrative’? Audiences who queued up for and gave standing ovations to Gillian Anderson’s Blanche in A Streetcar Named Desire, Imelda Staunton in Gypsy, or Kristin Scott Thomas’s Electra might disagree.”
World Ballet Day Is Here: 24 Hours Of Free Live Streaming On Oct. 1
“For the second year, five top ballet companies from around the world” – Australian Ballet, Bolshoi Ballet, Royal Ballet, National Ballet of Canada, and San Francisco Ballet (plus pre-recorded half-hour programs by Houston Ballet and Pacific Northwest Ballet) – “are joining for a day of free live streaming of their work, rehearsals, and performances.”
To Attract Millennials, Oregon Ballet Theatre Partners With Hipsters’ Favorite Beer
“Oregon Ballet Theatre’s latest marketing campaign features a bare-chested, on-pointe ballet dancer sharing the stage with a can of Pabst Blue Ribbon in full efface derriere. The sales pitch: ‘Come watch ballet. We’ll give you a beer.’ Too obvious?”
Top Posts From AJBlogs 09.30.15
Farmer and the Cowman Redux
Three years ago I published a post titled The Farmer and the Cowman in which I acknowledged an epiphany about the relationship between arts marketing and community engagement. In the past six months … read more
AJBlog: Engaging Matters Published 2015-09-29
The Pope, the music and the evacuation
A pope without music is like a ship without a flag. It’s part of the papal aura – but, unlike incense, it doesn’t send your sinuses into spasms. At the Festival of Families Saturday night … read more
AJBlog: Condemned to Music Published 2015-09-30
October Blues: Line-Dance Clicks
“Owing to the Greeks” – Tom McCartney on historical roots of the European Union fiscal crisis. “Do we mistake inaccessibility for brilliance?” – Leslie Jamison in NYT’s Bookends column (turkey headline), August 30 … read more
AJBlog: blog riley Published 2015-09-30
Diffident Leviathan
Accordionist Veli Kujala did a lovely job on my piece Reticent Behemoth for his quarter-tone accordion. Here’s the recording from the world premiere last Thursday in Turku, Finland (duration five and a half minutes). … read more
AJBlog: PostClassic Published 2015-09-30
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NY Post Cuts Theatre Writer Michael Riedel Back To Once A Week
“At the Post, a redesign of the features section now ghettoizes arts coverage to Fridays. Among other headline-worthy occurrences, that means that plugged-in Broadway columnist Michael Riedel has been cut back to one column a week, instead of two — odd since Riedel is the Page Six of theater news, followed and love-hated by the most powerful people on the New York/Hollywood entertainment axis.”
Movie Economics Have Killed Mid-Budget Movies (Can Anything Be Done?)
“In recent years, the recession and the concurrent rise of VOD streaming services have already torpedoed the midbudget movie. Suddenly, in order to be financially viable, a project has to cost less than $2 million or more than $200 million. Anything in between is dead in the water. Many of the country’s most vital filmmakers, unwilling to accept that their next movie would have to be either shot on an iPhone or connected to the Marvel Cinematic Universe, have begun to abandon ship.”
Phil Woods, 83 Revered Jazz Saxophonist
“[He] was one of the leading alto saxophonists in the generation that followed Charlie Parker … For much of that career, he was a sought-after section player in big bands because of his ability, unusual at the time, to read sheet music with as much breezy authority as he brought to his solos.”
See Our Movie, Save The World: Marketing Documentaries On Climate Change And Endangered Species To Viewers Who’d Rather Not Get Depressed
“Two movies on similar missions are opening within weeks of each other this season, Racing Extinction and This Changes Everything, both exploring the devastation humanity has wrought on the natural world. Yet rather than focusing only on what is dying and lost, both films offer messages of hope, profiling people who have helped stop, animal by animal, acre by acre, the pillaging of wildlife and land.”