Put the word “national” in your name and you become a receptacle for a country’s values. In what you do, the nation will seek to see the very definition of itself; a definition perhaps vaguely articulated, but intensely felt. Change your priorities, by being too regal or not regal enough, and you upset the nation’s sense of its own identity. – Irish Times
Author: Douglas McLennan
Lin-Manuel Miranda Chides Audience Member Without Breaking Rap
“LADY FILMING IN THE 4th ROW, PLEASE STOP IT, I gotta holler just to be heard…” he rapped, according to his tweet. The clever diss replaced the line, “The problem is I got a lot of brains but no polish,” and then he picked right up with the next verse. – CBS News
Study: UK Artists Earn An Average Of £16,150 – Only 1/3 Comes From Their Art
The research has shone new light on the portfolio careers of artists: 20% of respondents work three or more jobs, and of those taking jobs, a third have roles in fields with nothing to do with the arts. Similarly, the report finds only one in five visual artists believe their work/art balance is correct. — Arts Professional
Gary Indiana Didn’t Care About His Village Voice Reviews. But He Had Fun
Sometimes he wrote columns in which all of the proper names had been excised, which rendered them useless as gallery PR; others featured pseudonymous composite characters like “Gaston Porcile Vitrine,” an allegory of art-world fickleness who finds himself suddenly, humiliatingly shunned at downtown hangouts after a season or two in the limelight. – The Baffler
Mark Wigglesworth: Why Singing Opera In English Is A Good Idea
“The idea that opera can only work in its original form is a dangerously small step from saying that Italian or German opera can only be done well by Italians or Germans. Operas are enriched by the breadth of styles that perform them and a variety of approaches is beneficial overall. There’s no one way to enjoy opera, and we should celebrate this inherent diversity. Now is not the time to make it narrower. That’s not accessibility, that’s elitism.” – BachTrack
Is Singing Opera In English An Accessibility Issue? Is So, To Whom?
Mark Wigglesworth wants to make “opera accessible to all” and “all”, by definition, includes riff-raff. He sees this as the ENO’s mission. “Accessibility,” he writes, “is not really about the price of a ticket. For accessibility to be meaningful and long lasting it has to come from the work itself… When Mozart wanted to write for ‘the people’ he did so in their native German. He trusted that if more people understood the piece, more would enjoy it.” – The Guardian (UK)
Famed Louis Kahn-Designed Concert Boat Retires To Florida
It was designed by Kahn for the 1976 Bicentennial and lived in Pittsburgh. But it’s been in disrepair for years and its elderly owner has been trying to unload it. In 2017, cellist Yo Yo Ma wrote an impassioned plea to save it, and the challenge was picked up by Pahokee, an economically-depressed small town in Florida, which plans to restore it and use it as an attraction. – Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
What’s Art Worth? At Heart, It’s An Easy Question
Though the art market is often described as capricious, it has a clear logic: the art that commands the most money at a given moment is that which best reflects its collectors’ view of themselves—pious or powerful, beautiful or deep. Jeff Koons—whose shiny objects, vendor-babble, and dead smile recur like a fugal motif throughout the film—has provided this service for decades, celebrating the crass while flattering his buyers that they are clever and superior for being in on the joke. – New York Review of Books
Recent Listening: Jazz Is Of The World
Paolo Fresu, Richard Galliano, Jan Lundgren, Mare Nostrum III (ACT) This third outing by Mare Nostrum continues the international trio’s close collaboration in a series of albums. – Doug Ramsey
Legacies of Music Makers
The deaths of multi-instrumentalist Joseph Jarman, best known as the face-painted shaman of the Art Ensemble of Chicago, and Alvin Fielder, Alvin Fielder, drums re-conceptualizing drummer, remind us. – Howard Mandel