Reputations, he knew, were built up only to be torn down: “A lot of playwrights become confused by this and they start doing imitations of what they’ve done before, or they try to do something entirely different, in which case they get accused by the same critics of not doing what they used to do so well.”
Author: Douglas McLennan
Buffalo Philharmonic Makes Seven-Year Deal With Its Musicians
“Under the agreement, musicians’ minimum salaries will be raised from the current $48,120 to $54,177 in 2022. The contract maintains a schedule of 38 workweeks and two paid vacation weeks.”
Don Buchla, 79, Pioneering Instrument-Maker, The “Anti-Moog”
“Mr. Buchla was an instrument builder, musician and composer. He conceived his instruments, including a voltage-controlled modular synthesizer, as tools for creating previously unheard sounds and gave them names like the Music Easel, Thunder or simply the Buchla Box.”
How My Jazz Track “Accidently” Got 2 Million Plays
“Enter stage left the “Spotify playlist”. Though I far from realised it at the time, this is the holy grail for independent artists such as myself. Overnight I was lifted out of the musty basement section where men with National Health spectacles hang out, and up on to the shiny new rack next to the checkout counter.”
Highlights From This Weekend’s AJBlogs
So What Exactly Is A “Quantitative” Measure Of The Arts? Arts Council England says it will use a standardized assessment system called Quality Metrics in evaluating the arts it it considers funding. The system has been developed over several years and is an attempt to create … read more
AJBlog: diacritical/Douglas McLennan Published 2016-09-18
Weekend Extra: Three Views Of Thelonious Monk In the early 70s when I was anchoring at Channel 11 in New York, I took a film crew (remember film?) to Lincoln Center to do a feature about the Giants Of Jazz, the group … read more
AJBlog: RiffTides Published 2016-09-18
Understanding The New Audience: Five Stories From This Week’s AJ – Attention Span Theatre This Week: How free museum admission changes audience and behavior… Legislation to battle the ticket bots… Is YouTube making it tougher for live performers?… Detroit Symphony starts an amateur orchestra to get closer to … read more
AJBlog: AJ Arts AudiencePublished 2016-09-18
Across the Water, into the Past Colleen Thomas Dance performs a site-specific work on Governors Island, September 16-18. Colleen Thomas (green skirt) and her family on Governors Island in the 1970s Visiting Governors Island for the first time (yes, really), I … read more
AJBlog: Dancebeat Published 2016-09-18
Madhouse/playhouse When the great Victorian actor Ellen Terry was preparing to play Ophelia, she visited a London asylum to observe young women who might unlock the character. However, the madwomen were, she wrote, useless for … read more
AJBlog: Performance Monkey Published 2016-09-18
Understanding The New Audience: Five Stories From This Week’s AJ – Attention Span Theatre
This Week: How free museum admission changes audience and behavior… Legislation to battle the ticket bots… Is YouTube making it tougher for live performers?… Detroit Symphony starts an amateur orchestra to get closer to its audience… Theatre for short attention spans.
Five ArtsTrending Stories From This Week’s AJ: Are The Arts Falling Into A Measurement Trap?
This Week: The remarkable new National Mall museum that doesn’t look like the rest… An arts council’s risky change in standards… What scientists have learned about the accomplishments of gifted children… Will algorithms take over the book business?… Seven things scientists have learned about creativity.
Playwright Edward Albee, 88
“All art should be useful,” he said. “If it’s merely decorative, it’s a waste of time. You know, if you’re going to spend a couple of hours of your life, listening to string quartets or being at plays or going to a museum and looking at paintings, something should happen to you. You should be changed.”
How Silicon Valley Is Killing Its Non-Profits
“One might then assume that Silicon Valley and the surrounding Bay Area would be the ideal place for a tech-focused nonprofit to set up shop. After all, the region is packed with tech talent, and its local tech companies regularly boast about their commitment to helping nonprofit organizations in their communities, as it helps attract talent and can be good for business overall. But in reality, the skyrocketing cost of living is taking its toll on vital community institutions, while a war for talent continues to drive tech workers’ salaries beyond the reach of the nonprofit sector.”
Seven Things Brain Scientists Have Figured Out About Creativity And The Brain
As it turns out, there’s a major neuroscientific basis for the link between openness to new experience and creative thinking. Exploration is tied to the neurotransmitter dopamine, which also plays a role in motivation and learning (among other things) and “facilitates psychological plasticity, a tendency to explore and engage flexibly with new things,” the authors write.