What is American music? And, perhaps more to the point, why do we care so much? “I remember being asked in Prague not so long ago, ‘What is your obsession, you Americans, with American music?’ ” said Robert Spano, the music director of the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra, which will perform at SHIFT on March 31. “The only answer I could give . . . was: It’s because we don’t know who we are, and so we’re endlessly fascinated, because there are so many things that make up America . . . so much to wrestle with and balance and try and understand. . . . I was kind of defending our self-obsession.”
Author: Douglas McLennan
While US Considers Killing Federal Arts Funding, Canada Proposes $1.8 Billion Increase In Arts Budget
“The federal government will devote $1.8-billion more to culture and recreation spending over the next decade, “modernize” the Broadcasting Act and Telecommunications Act, and spend more on official and Indigenous languages, according to the budget delivered on Wednesday by Finance Minister Bill Morneau. But anyone looking for details of the extensive cultural-policy overhaul promised by Heritage Minister Mélanie Joly since the government took office in 2015, will find scant evidence for it in the budget papers.”
How Netflix Is Becoming A Global Media Company
“Netflix has morphed into an international service that streams in nearly every country around the world. This fast-paced growth has meant that the company’s dedication to improving models now extends to just about everything it does. Another reveal at Labs Day was that it has even created an online translation test, called Hermes, that helps it recruit the best foreign talent to dub its shows and movies.”
End Of History? The Much-Maligned Francis Fukuyama Was Right About Our Current Political Circumstances
Rarely read but often denigrated, it might be the most maligned, unfairly dismissed and misunderstood book of the post-war era. Which is unfortunate for at least one reason: Fukuyama might have done a better job of predicting the political turmoil that engulfed Western democracies in 2016 – from Brexit, to Trump, to the Italian Referendum – than anybody else.
Looking For A Theatre Response In A Time Of Trump
“Since the election, I have been urgently seeking direction from dramatists in the way a cardiac patient might turn to nutrition and meditation after a heart attack. I have been thinking not just of Chekhov but of Harold Pinter, who is an even better guide to Trump’s brutal relativism and canny opportunism. Pinter’s plays throw into relief the territorial nature of human beings — the way reality, both present and past, is a turf war in which the will to dominate supersedes all other considerations.”
This Building Would Be A Stunning Addition To Manhattan’s Slyline
Described as the ‘longest building in the world’, the project’s concept drawings reveal a skyscraper reaching an apex then curving back down. And featuring an elevator system that can travel in curves, horizontally and in loops.
Patti Smith Buys Arthur Rimbaud’s House
The dwelling, which is located near the French border with Belgium in a small town called Roche, is a reassembled version of Rimbaud’s childhood home. It was here that the late 19th-century French poet wrote his most famous piece, A Season in Hell, when he was merely 19 years old.
Inside Mirriam-Webster’s Version Of The 21st Century Dictionary
There are only about 50 lexicographers working at dictionary companies in the United States today, Kory Stamper estimated. But their work, she believes, remains as vital as it was in Noah Webster’s day. “There’s something to having a bunch of nerds sitting in an office dispassionately reading lots and lots of material and distilling the meaning of a word as it’s been used in lots of places,” she said. “It really is this weird democratic process.”
How English Has Created A New Caste System In India
“Fluency in English is endemic of the deep class-based divisions that continue to plague Indian society. A 2014 report from the Centre for Research and Debates in Development Policy in India found that only 20 percent of the population speaks English, and only 4 percent of the population speaks the language fluently. The report emphasizes that men in India who spoke fluent English earned 34 percent higher wages than those who had some fluency.”
Carey Perloff To Retire From San Francisco’s American Conservatory Theatre After 25 Years
Perloff, who will leave after the end of next season, plans to write and direct on a freelance basis. One of the few women leaders in the still male-dominated American theater, the indefatigable Perloff first came to the 50-year-old ACT back in 1992 when the theater was in disarray both physically, in terms of the massive earthquake damage at the Geary, and in terms of its artistic reputation, which had stumbled in the wake of the volatile Bill Ball era.