There are blind auditions, special fellowships for Black musicians in particular, prep and financial aid for auditions as well as other programs from the Sphinx Organization. Writer Tim Diovanni looks into the efforts, focusing on the Detroit, Dallas, and Fort Worth Symphonies. - The Dallas Morning News
Whether or not you have a “future-oriented mindset” – in other words, how much money you save and how likely you are to invest in your education – can, he argues, be partly traced to what kinds of crops grew well in your ancestral homelands. - The Guardian
When The Lark's board announced the company's closure last October, they said there was no way to keep the company financially sustainable. Former staffers say the problem was really the departure of some unusually dynamic executives and a well-intentioned experiment in shared management that didn't work out. - American Theatre
I can imagine the internet hot take: Why punish people who can afford to buy books by making them free to read for everyone? Or: Government giveaways: why we shouldn’t let people who can afford books read them for free. - Chicago Tribune
As far as I can tell, most writing about music is built on analogies and cliches. This is understandable; you can’t describe music literally because it wouldn’t give an accurate representation of what it is you’re hearing. - 3 Quarks Daily
China's growing clout in global media extends beyond movies to the entertainment industry generally. Capital investments by U.S. firms in ventures such as the Shanghai Disney Resort and the Universal Beijing Resort give Chinese officials still more levers with which to control U.S. media conglomerates. - Journal of Democracy
The furious response that Yanktonai Dakota artist Oscar Howe wrote when rejected for the 1958 Philbrook Indian Annual competition because the abstract painting he submitted was "a fine painting, but not Indian" still resonates today, while Howe himself went on to produce a very impressive body of work. - Smithsonian Magazine
For the first time in more than a half-century, scientists are in the throes of changing the definition of the second, because a new generation of clocks is capable of measuring it more precisely. - The New York Times
There are ways in which the internet really does seem to work like a possessing demon. We tend to think that the internet is a communications network we use to speak to one another—but in a sense, we’re not doing anything of the sort. Instead, we are the ones being spoken through. - Damage Magazine
The composer, who has accrued reputational capital on the open market, exchanges some of it for an ever-dwindling share of institutional security. The institution in exchange acquires not so much her music or her services as a teacher—though these come in the bargain—as a stake in her brand. - The Baffler
"From automated audiobooks to digital avatars, AI systems are now replacing skilled professional performers" the union says. It warns of "dystopian" consequences unless copyright law adapts. Equity highlights a number of different ways actors' voices and likenesses may be used. - BBC
Following the lead of activist filmmakers and stars—who ran especially hot on social media during the long months of Covid lockdown—the industry has clearly aligned itself with progressive positions on inclusion, racial equity, gender and transgender rights, gun control, border enforcement, abortion... - Deadline
Laurie Anderson, Steve Reich, Dave Brubeck, and Grateful Dead bassist Phil Lesh are alumni. John Cage, Terry Riley, Lou Harrison, Pauline Oliveros, the Art Ensemble of Chicago's Roscoe Mitchell, and Morton Subotnick taught there — not to mention former department head Robert Ashley, who would get stoned before lectures. - The Guardian
For one thing, he's the first executive editor who may be wealthier than the paper's owners. (He is heir to a large retailing fortune.) And, finds profiler Shawn McCreesh (former assistant to Maureen Dowd), Kahn is erudite, disciplined, and very, very earnest. - New York Magazine
Not understanding makes bad things happen. When we don’t understand why lightning strikes or ships sink or babies die, sacrificing virgins might seem a viable approach. - Wired
Behind the bright lights and pulsing music, some dancers say they were sexually assaulted, harassed and manipulated by the company’s powerful founder and famous teachers and choreographers, according to a joint investigation by The Associated Press and the Toronto Star. - Seattle Times (AP)
The donations, the largest in each organization's history, come from the estate of H.F. "Gerry" Lenfest, the board chair who oversaw the Museum's creation and opening and the owner of The Inquirer before he transferred it to the nonprofit Lenfest Institute for Journalism in 2016. - MSN (The Philadelphia Inquirer)
Few places now seem to epitomise Russia’s cultural decoupling from the west better than the large, empty walls of GES-2, created as Moscow’s answer to Tate Modern. - The Guardian
Lucas Mann, an English professor at a UMass branch campus: "For a professor at a school like mine, ... the trick isn't convincing students to drop their dogmas. It's convincing them that the stuff we're talking about could matter in lives already complicated by many other things." - Slate
