“Although Republicans have ripped Obamacare as a disastrous form of taxing-the-rich socialism since it passed Congress in 2010, the act has given struggling Americans a lifeline for buying health insurance, often for the first time. Musicians have been an especially vulnerable segment of this group — just before the law took effect in 2013, the Future of Music Coalition estimated they were uninsured at a rate of almost three times more than the general population.”
Author: Douglas McLennan
Is The Non-Profit Bookstore The Answer To Bookselling?
“The answer may lie with niche-filling shops like Pittsburgh’s new City of Asylum Books, part of a nascent multipurpose cultural center on the city’s North Side called Alphabet City Center. Alphabet City is a consolidated space recently acquired by City of Asylum, a nonprofit arts organization providing sanctuary and forums of expression for exiled writers of all genres from other countries, introducing many unsung voices to the Pittsburgh public through literary community events.”
UK Members Of Parliament Want To Ban Arts Internships, Calling Them “Curse Of The Arts Industry”
The report draws on the evidence submitted from people including outgoing Arts Council England chair Peter Bazalgette, who warned that unpaid internships were “the curse of the arts industry”. He said there was an expectation that young people will work for less than the minimum wage, which he added was a “major barrier for disadvantaged young people interested in accessing jobs in the creative industries”.
The Secret Behind Multi-Tasking (Here’s The Only Way It Works)
“Making multitasking actually work is not a matter of expanding your working memory. It’s the reverse. In order to multitask effectively, you need to decrease the amount of working memory that a task requires. And that’s where habits come in.”
Claim: Brexit Is A Huge Gift To Hollywood
“For American producers, Christmas came early,” says Adrian Wootton, head of the British Film Commission and Film London, who says he has seen a “record number” of inquiries from the U.S. “Suddenly [shooting in the U.K.] became about 20 percent cheaper.”
Jazz Is Hot In Paris. Here Are The Top Ten Clubs
“It remains a flourishing art form that packs out bars, clubs and caverns. With a profusion of styles on offer (from trad, modern and avant garde to bossa nova, jazz-funk and Afro-jazz, not forgetting France’s singular contribution to the genre – gypsy jazz), its freedom-loving soul lives on.”
Simon Rattle Explains Why His Orchestra Needs A New Hall
Rattle was blunt about the limitations of the Barbican. “It is very clear we can do a lot of wonderful work at the Barbican, but it is also clear there is about 20% of the repertoire that we can’t,” he said. “In my wishlist of pieces there is so much which simply would not work there. The stage was beautifully designed for a certain size orchestra. It was not designed for a very large orchestra and it was certainly not made with a chorus in mind.”
Kennicott: Trump Eliminating NEA, NEH And PBS Is Significant Step To Eliminating The Free Public Realm
Phil Kennicott: “The loss of the NEA is mostly about symbolism. But along with the loss of the NEH and privatization of the CPB, these proposed budget cuts are part of a nascent but ominous larger movement to eliminate the last vestiges of a public realm free of the dictates of the market. Privatizing the social safety net and shifting tax dollars away from public schools are essential moves in a longer war on a social contract that preserves faith in the public realm. Academia is another target and is in the cross hairs as well.”
Binge-Watching TV Has Some Downsides
“Binge TV is entering a new phase in which the makers of your shows, in particular at places like Netflix and Amazon, are betting that the satisfaction of gorging on eight to 10 episodes, batch-released, will be enough to glue you to your phone, laptop or, if you’re feeling fancy, your actual television. The joy is in the completion. Neither attention to quality nor narrative structure matter, necessarily. They drop it. You stream it.”
Soprano Roberta Peters, 86
Ms. Peters, who would sing with the Met 515 times over 35 vigorous years, was internationally renowned for her high, silvery voice (in private, she could hit a high A, two and a half octaves above middle C); her clarion diction in a flurry of languages; her attractive stage presence; and, by virtue of the fact that she and television came to prominence at about the same time, her wide popular appeal.