Author: Douglas McLennan

How A Great Berlin Theatre Is Stepping Away From Great Theatre

“The stage of spoken-word theatre is indebted to a sense of the world that is centred on the human. On the stage of the 21st century, however, we find a new distribution of power, a new dynamic of creatures, ghosts, machines, objects. The things we once invented to define identities or let them manifest themselves on stage have lost all traction. The [human] subject – is that even a topic anymore these days?”

What Makes A Good Conductor?

Angel Gil-Ordóñez: “Authority through knowledge. People respect you if you know what you are asking them to do. Then you have to be able to convey what you want. All simply. Through gestures and communication that goes beyond language. I think the orchestra is the most extraordinary achievement of humanity. Can you imagine something more sophisticated than that? One hundred people without verbal communication playing together for one hour? That goes beyond everything. Beyond thinking. To me [it] is the most incredible achievement. People making music together. It’s a miracle.”

LA County Museum’s New Home Won’t Just Be About A Building; It Seeks To Change The Ways We See Art

“In its new home, expect LACMA’s permanent collection to break all the rules. The permanent collection won’t exactly be permanent. LACMA instead plans to install the collection as a continuing series of temporary exhibitions — cross-cultural and interdisciplinary. An impermanent permanent collection, the scheme is unprecedented.”

Neuroscientists Say Listening To This Song Will Significantly Reduce Your Stress

“Sound therapies have long been popular as a way of relaxing and restoring one’s health. For centuries, indigenous cultures have used music to enhance well-being and improve health conditions. Now, neuroscientists out of the UK have specified which tunes give you the most bang for your musical buck. In fact, listening to that one song — “Weightless” — resulted in a striking 65 percent reduction in participants’ overall anxiety, and a 35 percent reduction in their usual physiological resting rates.”

What Exactly Is Going To Happen In “The Shed”?

“The opportunity for us to design a ground-up building for the arts forced us to ask the question: ‘What will art look like in 10 years? 20 years? 30 years?’ And the answer was that we simply could not know. Artists today are working across disciplines, in all media and all sizes. That will continue to change. The one thing that we could always be certain of is that there would always be a need for space, a need for structural loading capacity, and a need for electrical power.”

Roger Tomlinson: Measuring An Audience? But What Are You Measuring?

“I have been a champion of audience data for a long time. I conducted my first year-long audience survey at the Vic in Stoke on Trent in 1969, supervised by Keele University. I have been commissioning research surveys for over 40 years and the Arts Council published my book ‘Boxing Clever’ on turning data into audiences in 1993… So, I ought to be welcoming the concept of quality metrics and what Culture Counts proposes to deliver for Arts Council England… But I am left with a lot of uneasy questions, mostly methodological.”

Scotland’s National Orchestra Gets A New Music Director

Danish conductor Thomas Søndergård first appeared with the RSNO in November 2009 as a last-minute replacement for a sick conductor and went on to lead lauded performances of Shostakovich’s Symphony No11 in Edinburgh and Glasgow. He was appointed to the position of Principal Guest Conductor in 2011 and since then has appeared with the RSNO up to four times each season.”