“Many audiences haven’t seen August Wilson’s plays done well, so my mission is to go out and do the plays well the way the author intended. The celebration of African American life and the way we navigate this landscape.” – American Theatre
Month: September 2019
A Crisis In Leadership At LA’s Top Music Organizations
Mark Swed: “None of this looks good on the surface. But poke a level deeper and what you find are two companies with exceptionally strong No. 2s, trailblazers in their own right who have already proved themselves indispensable in making the L.A. Phil and L.A. Opera what they are today.” – Los Angeles Times
How To Write Classical Concert Program Notes That Actually Engage An Audience
Lara Pellegrinelli writes that, “as a lover of words, I’d once held the opinion that ‘Notes on the Program’ are bound to be mind-numbingly, soul-crushingly boring – or one of the more effective embalming tools for classical music.” After seeing a few – too few – examples of genuinely fascinating notes, she thinks “that this genre of writing about music needs an intervention.” So she provides one, complete with six useful rules. – 21CM
Zombie Malls And Changing America
The Great Recession of 2008 didn’t touch A-grade luxury centers, but it pulverized other tiers of malls. Green Street Advisors, a California-based real estate research firm, says the country’s 37 top-performing malls account for nearly 30 percent of mall value nationwide. – Smithsonian
In Rare Show Of Defiance, Russian Celebrities Rally Behind Jailed Actor
Pavel Ustinov, 24, was sentenced to 3½ years in prison for assaulting a police officer, though video shows that he was simply a bystander who was attacked by police at a demonstration. Many of his well-known colleagues are leading public calls for his release despite the risks to their own careers: most of them work in government-sponsored theatre, television and film. – The New York Times
Moscow’s Pushkin State Museum Will Take Over Nine Regional Contemporary Art Museums
“The Pushkin State Museum of Fine Arts in Moscow will soon take over the running of Russia’s National Centre for Contemporary Arts, whose nine branches extend from Kaliningrad on the Baltic Sea to Tomsk some 4,000km east. … Several new NCCA branches are under discussion for the university cities of Khabarovsk, Tyumen and Novosibirsk.” – The Art Newspaper
Court Rules In Battle Over John Steinbeck Estate And Tells Heirs To Stop Fighting Already
“A federal appeals court attempted to close the book on endless litigation between the relatives of author John Steinbeck in a ruling that upheld a $5 million verdict against his daughter-in-law, but threw out $8 million she faced in punitive damages.” – Yahoo! (AP)
First Arrest Made In Major Old Masters Forgery Ring Case
“There has at last been an arrest in a high-profile string of suspected Old Master forgeries uncovered in 2016. An Italian painter, Lino Frongia, 61, was taken into custody in northern Italy earlier this week, while an arrest warrant has been issued for French art dealer and collector Giulano Ruffini, who sold the works in question.” – Artnet
Merriam-Webster Dictionary Admits ‘They’ As Nonbinary Singular Pronoun
“We will note that ‘they’ has been in consistent use as a singular pronoun since the late 1300s; that the development of singular ‘they’ mirrors the development of the singular ‘you’ from the plural ‘you'” noted M-W on its blog, “yet we don’t complain that singular ‘you’ is ungrammatical.” – The Guardian
The Struggle For Control Of The Salzburg Easter Festival Is Over
“The fight has pitted two strong-willed artistic leaders against one another: Christian Thielemann, the principal conductor of the Staatskapelle Dresden and the Easter Festival’s artistic director since 2013; and the man tapped last November as his successor, Nikolaus Bachler, who is nearing the end of his tenure as general manager of the Bavarian State Opera in Munich.” Thielemann and his orchestra will be leaving Salzburg after 2022, and Bachler plans “to reinvent the festival.” – The New York Times