“Currently Joachim is riding a wave of success for her album Fanm d’Ayiti (Women of Haiti), which The New York Times called ‘an evening-length artistic exploration of matriarchy, drawing Haitian folk and popular traditions into the world of contemporary classical music.’ The reverse could also be said, that contemporary classical music is being drawn into Haitian folk and popular traditions. Either way, it is a cross-pollination and celebration that prompted Steve Smith of The New Yorker to write, ‘No more joyous chamber-music collection has arrived this year.'” – San Francisco Classical Voice
A Powerful Chamber Opera Reveals the Complexity of Contemporary Hong Kong
“In the 70-minute chamber opera Mila, Hong Kong playwright Candace Chong Mui Ngam has come together with composer Eli Marshall to tell the story of a Filipina woman named Mila who has traveled far from home to work as one of the thousands of so-called ‘domestic helpers,’ sometimes referred to as FDWs (foreign domestic workers).” – San Francisco Classical Voice
A Real-Time Election Night Play, Ready For This Week’s UK Vote
The Vote, originally staged at London’s Donmar Warehouse in 2015, will return in an updated form this Thursday. The 90-minute play depicts the final 90 minutes of voting at a polling place in a swing district. – The Observer (UK)
How MBA Programs And Big Corporations Are Using The Arts To Train Executives
The business school at Oxford has students try to conduct a choir. Carnegie Mellon uses a book club and art installations. The Royal Academy of Dramatic Arts offers courses to business types. And what lessons get learned in all this? – The Economist
Actor René Auberjonois, Known For ‘M*A*S*H’, ‘Benson’, ‘Deep Space Nine’, And Robert Altman Films, Dead At 79
“Mr. Auberjonois worked constantly as a character actor through several periods and forms, from the dynamic theater of the 1960s to the cinema renaissance of the 1970s to the prime period of network television in the 1980s and ’90s — and each generation knew him for something different.” – The Washington Post
Why Are Ireland’s Archeological Sites Disappearing?
About 15,000 new archaeological sites have been discovered over the past two decades. But where are they? The truth is that most have been physically removed. Are we to believe, therefore, that they were not worth keeping? That thousands of sites deserved nothing more than a dusty report on a shelf? – Irish Times
After 150 Years, Vienna State Opera Presents Its First Opera By A Woman
“One hundred and fifty years is a long time. But I’ve always said it’s never too late. So it’s good that they finally have thought about it. And at least if you’re the first, there has to be a second and a third and so on. So it’s always good to have a starting point.” – BBC
Prince Was A Meticulous Documenter And A Perfectionist. Is It Fair To Reveal His Incomplete Work?
Would Prince have agreed to the release of this material in this form? Does the potential public good, and the contribution to the historical record, outweigh whatever uncertainties Prince might have had about the revealing of his rough drafts? – The New York Times
Parasite Racks Up Another Best Picture Win, This One At The Los Angeles Film Critics Awards
Justin Chang is prepared for the inevitable backlash over some of the choices the LAFCA made. Prepared, but not pleased: “I’ve always been struck by the recurring phenomenon of LAFCA and other critics’ groups getting attacked online for the elitist snobbery of their allegedly out-of-the-box choices. To accuse us of snobbery, I think, gets the situation exactly wrong; championing work that falls outside the usual awards-season conversation, informed by the fact that we spend 52 weeks a year watching and writing about new movies from all over the world, strikes me as a pretty good definition of egalitarianism in action.” – Los Angeles Times
The Blogosphere Is Shrinking Again
And not just any blog is closing, but Feministing, one of the only remaining feminist blogs from the heyday of the 2000s. One of the site’s former editors says, “It was unclear how we could have such a ferocious audience and not be onto something. … Many of us involved in the feminist blogosphere are now in mainstream media, and that’s exciting. That said, we need independent media because they’re an important check.” – The New York Times
Great Britain Has Fantastic Public Spaces, And A Kitschy Retail Christmas Market Doesn’t Fill Them Will
Architecture critic Rowan Moore is not thrilled with the thoughtless, crass commercialism filling Trafalgar Square. “It is not the presence of the market, precisely, that’s the problem, so much as the cluelessness with which it and other temporary elements are jammed in among the stonework. These include a crib housed in something like a bus shelter and a makeshift health-and-safety skirt of crush barriers and green tarpaulin around the 25-metre Christmas tree, donated every year by Norway in thanks for British help during the Second World War. If the Norwegians are kind enough to give us a tree … we should at least put a tiny bit of thought into whatever goes around its base.” – The Guardian (UK)
A Grudging Defense Of That Rather Expensive Banana Idea
Let’s go deep: “You are not a hopeless philistine if you find this all a bit foolish. Foolishness, and the deflating sensation that a culture that once encouraged sublime beauty now only permits dopey jokes, is Mr. Cattelan’s stock in trade. But perhaps you will find more to appreciate in Mr. Cattelan’s work if you take note of two points: one formal, one social.” – The New York Times
Hundreds Of Architects, Designers, And Engineers Work On This Venice
It’s a candy Venice. A Venice of candy and gingerbread, royal icing (“basically like glue”) and buttercream for decoration. And when roofs collapse? The teams soldier, or solder (with buttercream), on. – NPR
Teenager Admits Attempted Murder In Throwing Boy From Tate Modern Balcony
The now-18-year-old said he did it because “he had to prove a point ‘to every idiot’ who said he had no mental health problems, asking police if it was going to be on the news.” – BBC
Caroll Spinney, Long The Voice Of Sesame Street’s Big Bird And Oscar The Grouch, Has Died At 85
Spinney created two indelible characters, and, in his long tenure on Sesame Street, assisted in the creation of many more. “His Big Bird had a childlike innocence, sometimes goofy, sometimes subdued, outgoing or shy, like most children a creature of habit and mood. His themes were simple: that it was good to speak up, O.K. to make a mistake, all right to be sad sometimes. At Jim Henson’s memorial service in 1990 at the Cathedral of St. John the Divine in New York, Big Bird sang a heart-rending farewell, ‘It’s Not Easy Being Green.'” – The New York Times
Styling ‘Orlando’
Orlando, a new opera based on Virginia Woolf’s Orlando, a time-traveling, gender-bending love letter to her aristocratic lover Vita Sackville-West, “is the first opera commissioned from a female composer by the Vienna Opera in its 150 years of existence.” They wanted to get the costumes right, so they commissioned designer Rei Kawakubo of Comme des Garçons, who is a bit busy. She says, “There were 36 main costumes for the principals, plus 106 others for the choruses and other groups. I accepted to do the costumes on condition that … I could use the theme of “Orlando” for the two Paris collections proceeding it.” – The New York Times
France Wants To Rein In Big Tech
Digital taxes are only a start, says France’s digital affairs minister. “More important? Targeting the biggest tech companies—most of which are American—with new regulations to prevent them stifling competition and damaging democracy.” (Er, and part of the plan is designed to help French entrepreneurs and their start-ups.) – Wired
African And Arab Filmmakers Put Their Focus On Genre
Films and filmmakers from Africa and the Middle East have had a good year at A-list film festivals, including Mati Diop and her Atlantics, which won the Grand Prix at Cannes. “The ‘new wave’ of Arab and African cinema includes a small group of films that explore links with genre cinema – including fantasy, sci-fi and horror – which is related to a broader trend in literature and the contemporary arts in the Arab world that is exploring dystopias and fantasy settings.” – Variety