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Wall Street Fund Starts $2 Billion Fund To Buy Music Copyrights

“Increasing demand for content from streaming services and social media make iconic music IP a scarce and irreplaceable asset,” said Angelo Rufino, a managing partner at Brookfield, pointing to how music is being licensed to Peloton, TikTok and the metaverse. - The Wall Street Journal

A Critic’s First Hints About The Acoustics In The Renovated David Geffen Hall

Michael Andor Brodeur: "I can at least say without getting too subjective or getting in any trouble that the difference in sound is immediate and arresting. ... Not once did I find myself leaning forward in my seat or squinting with my ears. The sound finds you." - The Washington Post

Annie Ernaux Wins 2022 Nobel Prize For Literature

"Ernaux, 82, started out writing autobiographical novels, but quickly abandoned fiction in favor of memoirs. Her more than 20 books, most very short, chronicle events in her life and the lives of those around her. They present uncompromising portraits of sexual encounters, abortion, illness and the deaths of her parents." - AP

The Meritocracy Trap: Our College Divide

Why do faculty speak so differently about things that happen in their house as opposed to everyone else’s? Understanding this dynamic might help us begin to answer the question at the root of the inequities in American higher education: How can a system run by liberals be so conservative? - The Atlantic

“California Is Moving Toward A Revolutionary Overhaul In How It Finances The Performing Arts”

"In signing SB1116 into law on Thursday, Sept. 29, Gov. Gavin Newsom created the Performing Arts Equitable Payroll Fund, which would reimburse small performing arts organizations for large portions of their payroll costs. The smaller a company’s budget, the more the fund would reimburse." - San Francisco Chronicle

Daniel Barenboim Cancels All Performances “For The Coming Months”

On the same day that he won a Gramophone Award for Lifetime Achievement, the conductor and pianist announced, "My health has deteriorated over the last months, and I have been diagnosed with a serious neurological condition. I must now focus on my physical well-being as much as possible." - BBC

The Curator Forced Out At The Guggenheim: A Scapegoat?

How did a simple offer, over a single painting, lead to such a spectacular destruction of someone’s life and career? The answer involves the shifting sands of American corporate life, as newly activist staff demand that institutions take political positions. But there is also a much older ritual at work. - The Atlantic

When Music Is Torture

Musicologist Lily Hersh says that "people are still surprised that music can be used in negative ways: they think music is supposed to be sublime and uplifting ... but music can just as easily be destructive. That destructiveness is not something to cover up or shy away from." - Culture Study

What Did The Me Too Movement Do For Hollywood’s Craft Services?

Five years on, little has changed, say women behind the scenes. One woman in editorial says, "Realistically, you may have to be willing to jettison your career to break through these behaviors that have been in place for a very long time." - The Hollywood Reporter

The Elusive Search For The Perfect Recording

Tom Port believes that records are like snowflakes — no two are the same. So many things can impact the pressing, including room temperature, the split second the stampers are pressed onto the hot, vinyl biscuit, and unknown factors no human can understand. - Washington Post

Bayard Rustin Wasn’t Just A Civil Rights Hero, He Was An Early Music Geek

He taught himself to play the lute while imprisoned as a conscientious objector during World War II, collected antique instruments, and recorded, as a singer, an LP that featured English lute songs alongside African-American spirituals.  He even composed a lute song that he passed off as "Elizabethan." - Early Music America

Was King Charles Actually Right About Modern Architecture?

"If you read his 1984 'carbuncle' speech in full, what follows might come as a surprise. Far from issuing a decree for more Corinthian columns and pumped-up pediments, he outlines principles that are now found in practically every best-practice design guide." - The Guardian

How A Texas Court Ruling On First Amendment Could Break The Internet

A state compelling social-media companies to host all user content without restrictions isn’t merely “the most angrily incoherent First Amendment decision I think I’ve ever read.” It’s also the type of ruling that threatens to blow up the architecture of the internet. - The Atlantic

The Court Cases Over Texas’s And Florida’s New Anti-Moderation Laws Could Save, Or Destroy, Social Media As We Know It

"If these laws take effect, platforms will be forbidden from prohibiting or deprioritizing certain kinds of content — creating the potential for a future Twitter landscape" — or Facebook, Instagram, TikTok — "filled with hate, porn, terrorist recruitment, Holocaust denial, and really outlandish trolls." - Slate

Is Endless Choice Ruining Your Love Of Music?

“That was the problem. Using music, rather than having it be its own experience … What kind of music am I going to use to set a mood for the day? What am I going to use to enjoy my walk? I started not really liking what that meant.” - The Guardian

Clapping Back At The No-Clappers

What's up with the no clapping between movements - and, in 2022, is it time to make a compromise between the rowdy 18th century and the decorous 19th in order to ensure the music's survival farther into the 21st? - MSN (Boston Globe)

Documenta Is About To End, Perhaps Forever

"This Documenta, unlike any before it, was not about art, or ideas, but about the friends we made along the way — the friends and, indeed, the enemies." - The New York Times

Confessional: My Job Was To Keep You Bored And Endlessly Clicking

"I was privy to the click maps provided by newsletter services like Mailchimp; I added up likes and comments and shares and divided them by the number of literal eyeballs sliding over a post and thought I’d go crazy as I chased after “key performance indicators,” otherwise known as KPIs." - The Baffler

We’ve Made Idols Of Tech Innovators. We Were Wrong

Our nation once idolized astronauts and civil-rights leaders who inspired hope and empathy. Now it worships tech innovators who generate billions and move financial markets. We acclaimed the power of technology, and so technology has gained the most power.  - The Atlantic

The New Arts Censorship

‘Art is about allowing people not to have limits on their imaginations. So if audiences are starting to look for something political in the work that may or may not be there, and then they are interpreting it in those narrow terms, that’s a dangerous direction for art to be heading. It’s reducing art to propaganda.’ - ArtsHub
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