“The sheer number of tweets was fuelled by a young tech-savvy cast and audience and its crossover popularity in hip-hop circles, as well as fresh material in the form of impromptu video performances that occur periodically on the front steps of the Richard Rodgers Theatre, the Broadway home of Hamilton.”
Rare Beethoven Manuscript Turns Up In Connecticut House
The sketches “went from being a curio in a Greenwich home to a $100,000 windfall when it sold at auction last month. For music scholars, it’s become an exciting addition to the Beethoven canon.
Viola Davis On Bland Roles For Women: ‘I Look At Them Sometimes And Don’t Recognise Them’
“They’re watered-down femininity. Like when your mom told you to make sure when you sat down to keep your legs closed, or not mess up your hair, it’s the famous saying: ‘The well-behaved woman seldom makes history.’ … We have to ‘woman up’ and live our truths through our work and define ourselves in our terms, not the Mr Potato Head model of male desirability.”
Protesters Trash Geneva Opera House Over Alt-Culture Budget Cuts
“An unauthorised demonstration over Geneva budget cuts for alternative culture spun out of control late Saturday, with protesters vandalising much of the centre of the Swiss city … The façade of Geneva’s main theatre, the 19th-century Grand Théâtre, and the sculptures lining its entrance were splashed with black and coloured paint, interspersed with white graffiti.
Streaming TV Isn’t Just A New Way To Watch, It’s A New Genre
James Poniewozik: “At some point during Netflix’s Sense8 … I had to ask myself: What am I watching? I didn’t mean that the way I usually do when reviewing a baffling show. I meant what, in a definitional sense, was this maximalist, supersized, latticework story? A mini-series? A megamovie? To put it another way: Is Netflix TV?”
An Opera (In HD) Buff, At The Met For The First Time
“She longed to see the Met’s home for herself, to hear the singing without the intermediaries of broadcasting — the voices that introduced the voices, the cameras that focused on what the director decided to focus on. It was a longing that had begun when she was a girl.”
The Supreme Court Takes On A First Amendment Case, But About Hip Hop, So We’ll See How That Goes
“Killer Mike took a dim view of the Supreme Court, saying it had gutted the Voting Rights Act. But he held out hope that the justices would treat the violent images in Mr. Bell’s song no differently than they would similar ones in folk, country, reggae — or opera.”
Seven Architecture Firms Are On The Shortlist To Design The Obama Presidential Library
“The dearth of Chicago finalists will likely be something of a blow to the city, which takes great pride in the pioneering role it played in the development of modern architecture and in such contemporary projects as Millennium Park.”
Saving Broadway’s Best Choreography For A New Generation
“‘When shows close, the book remains, the score remains, but there’s really no notation for choreography,’ said Nikki Feirt Atkins, the producing artistic director of Dance Machine, which is committed to passing on musical-theater dances from one performer to the next. She gestured toward Ms. de Lappe, who was showing some young men how to rein in their imaginary horses. ‘This is the living mission statement of the company.'”
A Modern Issue, Unfortunately: Archiving Public Grief
“‘We need to leave some of the objects, and at the same time, we need to make room for the sidewalk, sometimes even the road, so that life can go on,’ said Guillaume Nahon, director of the Paris archives. ‘It’s a day-to-day process, and a contradictory one too, because these memorials are supposed to be ephemeral, but people still need a place to mourn for now.'”
Should Legacy Groups Like The Hartford Symphony Learn To Innovate?
“Is this folly as Rome burns? The symphony is bleeding $1.3 million a year and nearing the end of its cash reserves. It’s asking for pay concessions from the musicians’ union, which is, to say the least, not thrilled with this new digital scheme, as some musicians fear it could divert money or devalue their skills.”
A Tale Of Two Sculpture Groups, And Two Public Art Fates, From Philadelphia
“Both sets were fabricated from terra cotta, so this becomes a tale of two castings: one set preserved and cared for, the other ignored and lost until found in the most unlikely circumstances.”
‘Harry Potter’ Sequel Play Has A Cast, And A Surprise To Some
“In the films, Hermione was played by Emma Watson, a white woman, but [Noma] Dumezweni’s casting continues a tradition of imagining the character as a woman of color — her race isn’t specified in the novels and her status as ‘Mudblood’ in the wizarding world puts her in a similar position to many marginalized people in white institutions today.”
Top Posts For AJBlogs From 12.20.15
Bringing the World’s Most Difficult Quartet to Life
The intrepid Kepler Quartet is trying to finish their recording of the complete string quartets of Ben Johnston. Ben’s health is failing rapidly, it seems, and the project has taken on a race-against-time quality. This… … read more
AJBlog: PostClassicPublished 2015-12-20
AJBlog: PostClassicPublished 2015-12-20
Over the weekend I made my first visit to Atlanta’s High Museum of Art. I didn’t have time to check out the entire museum, and I missed an exhibit dedicated to the Hapsburg Empire.… … read more
Can New York’s Art Scene Be Saved From Gentrification?
“There’s been a bohemian class in New York that’s been sustained basically since the 1950s. It’s one of the attractions of New York. So the New-York-as-creative-hub mythology is actually not that mythical. People really are attracted to the city for that reason. But New York has also become a commercial hub in terms of advertising and publishing and TV production, film production, all of these different things, and for that reason, you could be kind of an everyday artist, but you can also end up getting a job in the creative industries.”
At The Colburn School, The ‘Last Piano Teacher’ Pushes Students Into The World
“Bidini’s rehearsal room at the Colburn School is a study in ambition, frailties, talent, insecurities and occasional brilliance. The room is bare except for a few chairs, a desk and two pianos that sit side by side: one for Bidini, the other for his student. The student plays, Bidini corrects. On and on it goes through scales, crescendos and silent moments between notes, just before a finger strikes a key hard or slips gently over it to evoke the longing or redemption in the composer’s mind.”
Same-Sex Pas De Deux: Contemporary Ballet Begins To Reflect The 21st Century
Alastair Macaulay: “Ballet exudes tradition, is surrounded by conservatism and still depends on a small core repertory of 19th-century classics. This century, though, it’s been showing multiple signs of changing its character. … What’s become evident, especially this year, is the new propensity shown by diverse choreographers to give equal weight to same-sex and opposite-sex couples.”