“NYCO Renaissance is, in fact, one of several suitors who have been angling to take over the City Opera name and assets, and the group still has to win approval from a bankruptcy judge. But Capasso and Niederhoffer have raised $2.6 million in pledges, garnered support from former City Opera musicians, and have planned an all-star tribute gala to the late City Opera maestro Julius Rudel in March.”
Olivier Awards Invite Civilians To Become Judges
“Members of the public can now apply to become judges of the 2016 Olivier Awards, after the Society of London Theatre opened applications. Alongside professional panellists, members of the public are required to judge four different categories: theatre, affiliate – which covers smaller, non-West End theatres – opera and dance.”
Sony Hack: “Variety” Editor Feels Qualms About Revealing Info, But Rationalizes Anyway
Andrew Wallenstein: “Let’s get real: The hackers are playing the press as pawns. Journalists are essentially doing their bidding by taking the choicest data excerpts and waving them around for the world to see, maximizing their visibility. … While I found a lot to question about the rationales, ultimately I’ve arrived at an uneasy peace with why the leaks just can’t be ignored.”
Detroit Symphony Continues March Toward Stability
Officials confirmed that, following some very difficult years and the aftermath of the bitter 2010-11 strike, the DSO has posted the second balanced budget in a row and renewed contracts with music director Leonard Slatkin and president Anne Parsons through 2016-17.
How A Chicago-Based Film Producer Snagged A Possible Oscar-Winner This Year
“The early Variety review, Arentz says, ‘actually scared off all of our competitors. There was no bidding to speak of. We found out later there was one competing offer, and it was ridiculously low.'”
The Internet Meets Duchamp
“The most effective conceptual writing, as with all conceptual art, alters a thing’s accepted context. Critics would have you think that all this is merely silly, but in the best cases there’s a method to the madness: these artists are doing the very basic, very necessary work of helping us see with new eyes.”
How To Become A Poet
“I’ve been thinking about 1998. I was twelve years old that year; Matthew Shepard and James Byrd, Jr. were both killed that year. To learn about that kind of violence existing in the world — both racist and homophobic — it changed me. I don’t know if I fully understood it at the time, but I was terrified. And terror does many things but it also clarifies.”
Stage Manager Paralyzed In Theatre Accident Is Awarded Millions In Compensation
“She went through a standard, unmarked door, which had no warning signs or notices. When she opened the door she was met with a black curtain, which she assumed was a light blocker. She went in what she thought was a room but stepped into open air above the stage.”
How Can Music Matter At A Time With Thousands Marching Through The Streets?
“People turn to music in times of crisis — I do — but even as it brings happiness and helps process deep feeling, it can feel like something extra. There’s an urge to repurpose it, to figure out how it can serve a higher cause.”
Museums Are Set To Become Downright Creepers (In An Attempt To Collect Data)
“A team of experts at New York’s Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum searched for hidden spots in the rotunda to conceal tiny electronic transmitters. The devices will enable the museum to send messages about artworks to visitors via their smartphones while at the same time collect details about the comings and goings of those guests.”
With Hundreds Of Millions Of Dollars At Stake, Apple Would Like Ruling In E-book Pricefixing Overturned
“In Apple’s version of events, the company did ‘nothing more’ than ‘[hear] out’ the publishers’ complaints about Amazon and convey its ‘openness to pricing above $9.99.’ Nothing in the evidence, they stress, definitively shows otherwise.”
What Should Arts Journalists Do With The Hacked Sony Information?
“The entire business world is fueled by secrecy, but the sort of secrecy kept behind Hollywood’s closed doors, notorious for its power plays, publicist machinations, and bloated egos — that’s sexy.”
The Highest-Earning Musicians Of 2014
“To reach these figures, Forbes added together all musicians’ touring money, record sales, publishing royalties, merchandise, endorsements, and other major business ventures.”
The Wikipedia Problem
“That it has survived almost 15 years and remained the top Google result for a vast number of searches is a testament to the impressive vision of founder Jimmy Wales and the devotion of its tens of thousands of volunteer editors. But beneath its reasonably serene surface, the website can be as ugly and bitter as 4chan and as mind-numbingly bureaucratic as a Kafka story. And it can be particularly unwelcoming to women.”
Maps Show Damage To Cultural Heritage In Syria
“The exact numbers still need to be validated on the ground, but the maps confirm the impression of devastation. Its analyses have “revealed a total of 13,778 affected structures in Homs, 8,510 in Aleppo, 5,233 in Hama, 3,112 in Deir Ez Zor, 467 in Ar Raqqa, and 351 in Daraa.”
What Happened To Jose Feghali?
“His career fairly exploded after the Cliburn win. With top-drawer management, he had a busy schedule of playing with the world’s top orchestras, and in the most prominent recital halls. Latin good looks and that natural ebullience didn’t hurt. Given the bumpy history of Cliburn winners, critics speculated that this guy just might have staying power. But something happened along the way.”
Visiting The Classical Dept. At The Last Tower Records Left
“But Tower’s flagship Tokyo store, nine stories high, has remained the Godzilla of the world’s record stores, the largest and indestructible. It’s still there, just up the block in the Shibuya district from the busiest intersection in the world. A giant sign in Tower yellow and red reads: No Music, No Life.”
Australian Prime Minister Changes Jury’s Choice For Book Prize, Furor Ensues
The judges for this year’s Prime Minister’s Literary Award for fiction chose to give the $80,000 prize to Steven Carroll for A World of Other People. Then Tony Abbott stepped in (it’s his award, right?) to decree that Carroll should split the prize with Richard Flanagan for The Narrow Road to the Deep North, which had already won this year’s Man Booker Prize. This did not make many people happy.
How the Arts Drove Pittsburgh’s Revitalization
“But in looking at Pittsburgh’s impressive revival, it’s important to take note of the key role played over the last 30 years by the Pittsburgh Cultural Trust, an organization that has managed one of the city’s most vivid transformations, turning a large part of downtown that had been overtaken by porn shops, strip joints, massage parlors, and sleazy bars into a lively, safe, and attractive district for cultural arts and entertainment.”
Google News Is Pulling Out Of Spain Due To New Law
“Starting Jan. 1, recently enacted Spanish legislation will require the search giant to pay the publications it links to. For previewing their articles. In addition to the article title, Google News offers a small content snippet, beckoning users to click on the link visit the news site. For that, the Spanish government believes, they should pay the publisher. You can furrow your brow and scratch your head now.”
What “Serial”, The Rolling Stone Rape Story, And Michael Brown’s Death In Ferguson Can Teach Us About Memory
“Our expectation that memory is consistent and reliable is ubiquitous. It is taken for granted in day-to-day interactions and determines countless decisions. We do not acknowledge often enough how unstable our memories are, how susceptible they are to change, and how serious the implications of those changes are when we rely on memory to determine the fates of real human beings.”
Why Not Bring Back The Movie Serial? (Hey, It’s Working For Cable TV And Public Radio Podcasts)
“Imagine if True Detective, which aired as eight one-hour episodes’ worth of cinema-quality entertainment, had instead been packaged as four two-hour installments of cinema-quality entertainment and released in theaters on the first Friday of every month. And imagine if, for the first three weeks after each release, the only place you could see the new installment was in a movie theater.” The answer to cinema owners’ prayers?
Shonda Rhimes: “I Haven’t Broken Through Any Glass Ceilings”
“If I had broken through any glass ceilings, I would know. If I had broken through a glass ceiling, I would have felt some cuts, I would have some bruises. There’d be shards of glass in my hair. I’d be bleeding. … So how come I don’t remember the moment? When me with my woman-ness and my brown skin went running full speed, gravity be damned, into that thick layer of glass and smashed right through it?”
American Museum Of Natural History To Add New Science Center
“[The] sprawling hodgepodge of a complex occupying nearly four city blocks [in Manhattan] is planning another major transformation … a $325 million, six-story addition designed to foster the institution’s expanding role as a center for scientific research and education.”
The Greatest Animated Film That Never Got Finished
“Now in his 80s, the animator, director, and designer [Richard Williams] has created thousands of animated film titles and commercials and even written a book on the art of animation.” (Not to mention doing the Toons in Who Framed Roger Rabbit?) “All this despite the fact that for three decades he was sacrificing other work to direct one immense film that never made it to screen, the Fantasia-esque Arabian tale called The Thief and the Cobbler.”