“From the start, the organization has built jazz awareness from the bottom up. Yet there’d be no Jazz at Lincoln Center were it not for the ability of its artistic director, trumpeter Wynton Marsalis, to win support for jazz from the top down.”
Author: Laura Collins Hughes
In Broad Daylight, Thieves Steal Magritte’s Olympia
“Masked thieves stole a painting by the Belgian surrealist René Magritte today in an armed daylight raid on a museum dedicated to his life and works. The security breach at the Musée Magritte on the outskirts of Brussels came at around 10 am this morning.”
For Female Conductors, The Tide Is Turning
“The number of young women studying to become conductors still lags far behind female instrumentalists, singers or even composers, which is another traditionally male-dominated area. … According to the League of American Orchestras, not even 12% of American orchestras of any size are headed by women.” But that seems to be changing.
NEH Head Fights Against The Culture Wars
“In this era of Internet blasts and ornery town-hall meetings,” National Endowment for the Humanities chairman Jim Leach “wants to buck what he considers one of the 21st century’s most insidious trends: the end of civility. It’s something he’s been harping on since the mid-1990s. ‘I am appalled by the notion of cultural wars,'” he says.
At San Francisco’s Presidio, Disney Museum Honors Walt
“Too many people associate the name only with the business he built, Walt Disney Co., and forget the man behind it, said Diane Disney Miller, 75, a daughter of Walt Disney and a board member of the foundation that funded the $110 million museum,” which opens Oct. 1.
Authors And Readers Face A Glut Of E-Book Formats
“The options are proliferating quickly for readers and the authors they love. While devices like the Kindle, the Apple iPhone and the Sony Reader get much of the attention, practically any electronic device capable of displaying a few lines of text can be adapted as a reader.”
Nonprofits Suffering From Their Risky, Boom-Era Behavior
“Those struggling now include the full range of nonprofits, including museums, colleges, orchestras and small local social service providers. … While debt is the not primary reason for these institutions’ woes, the need to service it eats into their dwindling financial resources, forcing near Faustian choices.”
Where Did Our Cultural Incivility Begin? Stand-Up Comedy.
“Sometime in the late 1950s, the taste for comedy based on edgy political satire (think Lenny Bruce and Mort Sahl) mutated into shtick based on insult (think Don Rickles and Jackie Mason). People, as it turned out, found it highly entertaining to watch other people being insulted.”
Spielberg To Do Broadway Musical TV Series?
“DreamWorks TV and Showtime are in the early stages of developing a scripted series that will chronicle the development of an original Broadway musical, from its creative inception through its opening night. The intention is to then mount the tuner on [Broadway] after the series airs.”
A Trendy Dance Contest, With Benefits All Around
“It would be easy to dismiss the Global Dance contest as a gimmick. But simply by offering a prize of £2,000 and the chance to perform in the theatre’s 2010 Sampled programme, [Sadler’s] Wells has arguably come up with a fabulous scheme for flagging up its own cool credentials – and, more importantly, for diverting punters to its own website.”