“Humans have an irrepressible desire to be heard and also to experience music at a sufficient dynamic that it can be felt in a visceral sense.” (And that leads to some rather odd challenges for musicians.)
Month: May 2012
Kid Takes History Class, Finds Big Mistake In Map At The Met (Seriously)
“The map purported to show the Byzantine Empire at its largest size in the 6th century, but he noticed that Spain and part of Africa were missing from the depiction.
Benjamin Lerman Coady knew he was right, because he had just studied the empire in school before last summer’s trip to the museum with his mother. He was told to fill out a form.”
Met Live In HD Broadcasts Are Ruining Opera For Everyone
“For all the praise HD deserves, and it deserves a great deal, this disconnect is damning. What the audience in a movie theater experiences is not just the opposite of opera. It is the undoing of opera, an art form in which a present, active audience is fundamental.”
Timing Really Is Everything – In Film, Anyway
“Bam. Pow. Timing. The moral? Wait a beat. Don’t wink. Set up the moment properly. Whether it’s Grodin in deadpan or a computer-animated Marvel taking it out on another computer-animated Marvel, the audience can be putty in the right hands.”
We’re Out Of Touch – Literally – And A Machine Shows Us How
“Siu has created Touchy, a camera-like helmet that renders him blind. That is, until someone touches him. When actual physical contact is maintained for 10 seconds, the ‘human camera’ takes a photo and displays it on the back of the helmet.”
Newly Discovered Draft Pages Could Change Understanding Of The Little Prince
“Believed to date from 1941, the translucent, tissue-thin pages are filled with annotated writing, crossed out and underlined in sections. Saint-Exupéry experts authenticated the pages.” One of the pages contains a scene that never made it into the book.
Playing An Older Man – 50 Years Older – For Laughs
“TAKE a floppy-haired Muppet. Dress it as a waiter. Rearrange its face until its features slope to one side. Throw it across the room. Repeatedly. If that puppet came to life it might look something like the actor Tom Edden in the British comedy One Man, Two Guvnors, now on Broadway at the Music Box Theater.”
Philip Glass: Go Ahead, Fall Asleep During Einstein
Glass has a fair amount to say about Einstein on the Beach, about to be performed in the U.K. for the first time during the Olympics festival. “It was a very avant-garde tradition-breaking piece when it happened in 1976. The odd thing is that theatre’s not changed that much since then – if anything most theatre has become more conventional, probably because of the influence of television and film.”
Together Again: Choreographer, Composer, And Collaboration At New York City Ballet
Benjamin Millepied: “I think every time it has been about what we are in the mood to make. We start discussing it, go from simple feelings or descriptions to some complicated place, then take it back”
Nico Muhly: “The big question about making a ballet is: What is the emotional heart of the thing?”
Completing Audubon’s Work, Thanks To A Broken Heart
“Her father sold subscriptions to the works that Gennie completed. Among those who signed up were Rutherford B. Hayes, the former president, and Theodore Roosevelt, then a student. Soon, Gennie and her helpers were circulating lithographs of such quality and precision that some top American ornithologists took notice.”