“What if we could choose which memories of the holiday season – or any season – will stand out most vividly and which we’re content to let fade with the passage of time? While it isn’t possible to do this with an exacting, sci-fi level of precision, it is possible to use some basic findings about human memory to increase the odds that you will remember that amazing New Year’s party but forget that Christmas-dinner squabble over Obamacare.”
Streaming Liberates Obsessive Collectors From Endless Record Shows (And More)
“I had arrived in the promised land — or at least Spotifyland — no more bulky records and CDs strewn about my home requiring alphabetization, no more ripping, no more glitchy files downloaded nefariously from KaZaa needing to be retitled and volume equalized, no more agonizing how I would parse my eMusic allowance, no more checking and unchecking tracks in iTunes so I could get just the right 19,873 songs on my iPod classic.”
Ballet Is Ruthlessly Darwinian, Not To Mention Dangerous
“Ballet is a high-risk activity, and a slippery patch of stage or a split-second’s inattention in a leap can spell serious injury and months of rehabilitation.”
Cuban And U.S. Artists Have Always Found Ways To Collaborate Around The Embargo
“The announcements by Obama and Castro won’t affect the particulars of any of these projects in progress. But the move does have many people in the cultural sphere considering what might be artistically possible between the two countries down the line.”
Funding Is A Struggle Even For Big-Name Hollywood Projects, If They Feature African Americans
“Despite America’s changing demographics, Hollywood’s most powerful industry leaders have been slow to respond to a demand for movies that reflect cultural and racial shifts that have long been underway.”
Writing About The Past When Evidence Is Slim
“I was very interested in the way that the past was just continually reinvented as new ideas of homosexuality came along. It left me interested in not just the gay past, but how we write about the gay past and how we claim it or deny it. That led straight into my novels.”
Google Starts To Publish Song Lyrics Online
“According to reports, Google has begun including lyrics in the results pages for certain search terms . When US-based users search for phrases like “stairway to heaven lyrics” or “comfortably numb lyrics”, the words to these songs appear at the top of the page, above the corresponding listings for third-party sources.”
Conductor Jerzy Semkow, 86
“Semkow’s idiosyncratic and somewhat imperial personality didn’t always mesh well with American orchestras; this was a man sometimes seen strutting around backstage at Orchestra Hall wearing a cape. Semkow favored broad tempos, fleshy textures and flowing phrases that sighed with lyricism. He knew what he wanted, and it was usually a kind of clarified spiritualism, beauty and understanding.”
“Mozart In The Jungle” And The Backstage Drama
The new show, based on Blair Tindall’s book, “Mozart in the Jungle: Sex, Drugs and Classical Music,” is a lighter and more diffuse production. At times, it feels like a smarter, less melodramatic version of a backstage series like “Smash” (or a less over-the-top version of a superior backstage story like “Slings and Arrows”).
Daniel Barenboim Latest To Interrupt Performance To Scold Audience
“Madam, I am trying to give you my best, but you have no respect for it! Those who take photographs during concerts are badly educated. I have asked at every concert. The first time nicely, but now it’s serious.”
Jeremy Lloyd, 84, Writer Of Cult BBC Comedies
He and colleague David Croft co-created the series ‘Allo ‘Allo! and Are You Being Served?.
The Best Movie Trailers Of 2014
“In the past 12 months, the number of movie trailers you’ve seen is probably greater than the number of actual movies you’ve seen. Now that the Internet means you don’t have to show up to a theater to watch them, previews are more widely available – and widely discussed – than ever. Which means the good ones really deserve to be appreciated.” (includes video)
Keeping Alvin Ailey’s Company Vital, 25 Years After His Death
Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater Artistic Director Robert Battle, only the third person to head the company in its history (and the first not to be an original member of the company) talks about keeping Mr. Ailey’s technique and works alive as well as adding other choreographers’ work to the repertoire. (audio)
Why American Jews Eat Chinese Food on Christmas
“For many Jewish Americans, the night before Christmas conjures up visions, not of sugar plums, but plum sauce slathered over roast duck … The story begins during the halcyon days of the Lower East Side where … Jews and Chinese were the two largest non-Christian immigrant groups at the turn of the [20th] century.”
Why Guilt-Prone People Aren’t “Team Players”
“A lot of us know someone who is a bit more guilt-prone than they should be, liable to nose-dive into a shame spiral over seemingly minor incidents. A new study hints at some of the effects this trait could have in the workplace or the classroom: Guilt-prone people may be less likely to want to team up on projects out of fear they will disappoint their colleagues.”
Top Posts From AJBlogs 12.23.14
Monday Recommendation: Holly Hofmann
AJBlog: RiffTides Published 2014-12-22
Lookback: was Johnny Mercer a poet?
AJBlog: About Last Night Published 2014-12-23
Problems with data: measuring diversity
AJBlog: For What It’s Worth Published 2014-12-21
Should nonprofit museums have free admission because they are tax exempt?
AJBlog: For What It’s Worth Published 2014-12-20
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Security Experts Disagree About Whether North Korea Is Behind The Sony Hack
“Skeptics criticized the evidence saying it was inconclusive and failed to make the FBI’s case. The agency, however, maintains that it has other evidence it can’t disclose, raising questions about whether signals intelligence collected by NSA surveillance might have been used.”
Sony Backs Down And Will Screen “The Interview”
“Following the announcement that Sony Pictures was cancelling the movie’s planned Christmas Day release amidst threats from hackers of attacks on establishments showing the film, the studio is reportedly allowing some theaters to screen it.”
The Recently-Fired Ari Roth Talks About The Role Of Theatre And Politics
“Civil society has a role to play in bringing political actors together. It is all intertwined. The work that theater people do and the work that journalists do and people to people initiatives outside of the political sphere have in moving society forward toward reconciliation, or any type of coexistence is critical.”
A Dance Critic Looks At The Physicality Of Wrestling
“The intensity of wrestling is so airless and complete—body on body, the skeleton being pulled and twisted more than it seems possible to withstand, every muscle driving for that inch, or a fraction of an inch, that allows one set of shoulders to be pinned or another to resist. Wrestlers are so crushingly close they make boxers look distanced and clinical.”
The Challenge Of A Classical Music Christmas Album
“The classical-music holiday album is, on a scale of Santa to Scrooge, everything from a sincere embrace of the season to an evergreen marketing opportunity. It also brings different challenges and conventions than recording Bach or Beethoven.”
How To Thwart Art Thieves? A Security Expert’s How-To
“The key is to make objects slow or complicated to physically remove, while at the same time making it difficult to ascertain the way objects on display are secured, for those engaged in hostile surveillance.”
The Ten Most Expensive Artworks Sold At Auction This Year
The trends to spot are trends that have been going on for a few years now.
“Legit” Theatre Versus Religion (The Great Divide)
“Art and religion share the psychological state of transportation—being transported. We all love being taken out of ourselves, temporarily. So why in fields that are both devoted to awe and transport, does the norm seem to be an unspoken separation between church and stage?”
Moody’s Lowers Metropolitan Opera’s Credit Rating
“The Metropolitan Opera’s decision to once again use its monumental Chagall murals as collateral for loans was one of the factors Moody’s Investors Service cited on Monday when it downgraded the company’s credit rating, noting the company’s ‘weakened financial profile’.”