Almost 500 music leaders have signed a letter decrying the “anti-intellectualism” of a recently published Guardian feature, which argued children are “locked out” by overly academic music lessons.
Author: Douglas McLennan
The Dictionary And Its Rockstar Tweet Commentary Of Trump’s Words
“This once-staid outfit — who buys a dictionary anymore? — has earned itself a large and devoted following on social media, and no wonder: Trump is literally being trolled by the dictionary.”
20 Years Of Moth Stories
The Moth was founded in 1997 by the writer George Dawes Green — its name comes from his memories of growing up in St. Simons Island, Ga., where neighbors would gather late at night on a friend’s porch to tell stories and drink bourbon as moths flew in through the broken screens and circled the porch light. It has since grown into what its artistic director, Catherine Burns, calls “a modern storytelling movement” that has inspired “tens of thousands of shows worldwide in places as diverse as Tajikistan, Antarctica, and Birmingham, Ala.”
What I Learned As A Music Critic
Sarah Cahill: “Composers and musicians need validation, but more than that, they need to feel their work is understood. I see that hunger when guests come on my radio show and talk about themselves, and I hear it from friends who throw everything they have – emotionally and financially and professionally – into a big new project, only to have it vanish into the ether without a trace. We’re all grateful for the excellent music critics in this country, but still miss the freedom and the space they once had, as we miss the daily ritual of reading a beautifully crafted music review.”
General McChrystal: Don’t Kill PBS – It Makes Us Smarter
“Public broadcasting makes our nation smarter, stronger and, yes, safer. It’s a small public investment that pays huge dividends for Americans. And it shouldn’t be pitted against spending more on improving our military. That’s a false choice. This might seem like an unlikely position for me, a 34-year combat veteran. But it’s a view that has been shaped by my career leading brave men and women who thrive and win when they are both strong and smart.”
Cultivating Art As A “Slow” Experience
“Slow reading” is not to be understood in opposition to “fast reading.” There is nothing per se problematic with speed- or skim-reading; there are occasions when speed is necessary. Slow reading is often characterized by its intensity: it involves a fine-tuned attention to detail and nuance. And openness: “Slow reading is important precisely because it provides us with the attentive quality necessary for openness to occur.”
How To Create A Transcendent Art Experience? The Radical Empathy Of An Audience Of One
“In order to achieve a truly relational exchange between maker and recipient, the group’s founders conceived of a radically new approach: creating elaborately crafted performances for an audience of one. Since its inception in 2001, the group has selected one audience member per year through a call for applications and spent months composing a piece exclusively for her. It’s a provocative idea, and one that challenges some of our most cherished assumptions about art and its purpose.”
Poland’s WWII Museum Just Opened. But The Polish Government Isn’t Happy
The museum’s goal is to show the lives and fates of civilians and soldiers, not just in Poland but in other European countries as well. “We cannot explain Polish history without paying attention to other nations,” the director said. “We are not an isolated island.” But the government isn’t happy. Polish Culture Minister Piotr Glinski has led the charge to merge the museum with a newer one that hasn’t even been built yet, something his opponents say is a way for the government to take over the Gdansk museum and change the exhibits.
EDM (Electronic Dance Music) Was A Huge Phenomenon, But Now It’s Rotting From The Head
“It’s 2017, and EDM, a disposable culture from the start, is rotting in the trash. Battered by its association with bro culture and drug deaths, the genre has become America’s anthem for vomit and sexual coercion. Since the last time I was in Miami, SFX has gone bankrupt, Avicii has retired, and even Skrillex, once the genre’s poster child, is returning to his rock roots and collaborating with Incubus. So what happens to Miami Music Week, once the epicenter of America’s corporate dance music bubble, in today’s post-EDM world?”
Orchestra As Metaphor For Community – What Really Works
The LA Philharmonic’s Youth Orchestra Los Angeles operates in an area where the high school graduation rate is 50%. But kids in this program? “The statistics coming out of the HOLA’s academic enrichment, visual arts and music programs speak to why demand is so high. Of the 63 students in those programs who were high school seniors in 2015, 100% of them graduated, and 97% went on to college.”