“Going over a passage describing the Western landscape, he suddenly looked up and said, ‘I’m sorry I can’t take you there.’ I just smiled, for somehow he had already done just that. Without a word, eyes closed, we tramped through the American desert that rolled out a carpet of many colors – saffron dust, then russet, even the color of green glass, golden greens, and then, suddenly, an almost inhuman blue. Blue sand, I said, filled with wonder. Blue everything, he said, and the songs we sang had a color of their own.”
Author: Matthew Westphal
Can Private Funding Save Public-School Music Education?
In Philadelphia, they’re trying: after-school programs like Play On, Philly! are now well-established, and both local musical institutions like the Philadelphia Orchestra and the Mann Center and major foundations are directing energy and money specifically to music and arts education. Yet, Peter Dobrin reminds us, there are dangers to look out for.
Dirty Dancing: Choreographer Trajal Harrell Shakes Things (Ahem) Up
“The voguing balls of Harlem, the hoochie koochie dances of rural America, the elaborate, prancing gait of runway models – these aren’t influences that routinely feature in contemporary dance. Yet for the American choreographer Trajal Harrell they’ve proved extraordinarily fertile. … His pieces might feature a man posing semi-naked in a pair of Hermès scarves, a woman encased in a small black cube meticulously removing her swimsuit, or a man in a gaudy oriental skirt, gravely shaking his booty.”
Israeli Artist Claimed She Stole Items From Auschwitz For Her Work
Ten days before her art school’s graduate exhibition opened, Rotem Bides claimed that the objects in her installation in the show had been taken from the museum at the Auschwitz-Birkenau prison camp. All hell broke loose, and her work was about to be removed – then she released a statement swearing that the items had not been taken from the Auschwitz museum itself.
Seattle Voters Reject Sales Tax For Arts
“Proposition 1, which requested a 0.1 percent sales tax – or a penny for every $10 spent – was being rejected by 55 percent of [King County] voters, with 45 percent approving.”
Anger Over Gov’t Funding For Emma Rice’s New Theatre Company
Gosh, and everyone had seemed to be on her side. Wise Children, the troupe Rice is starting after she leaves Shakespeare’s Globe, was awarded roughly £2 million (£475,000 per year) by Arts Council England, even though it didn’t exist even on paper until eight days before the application deadline. What’s more, Wise Children received money earmarked for southwestern England, which the company claims it will serve, even though it’s registered in London and will be resident at the city’s Old Vic. Following a furious denunciation in the industry press last week, controversy over the grant is mounting.
Judith Jones, Who Edited Anne Frank, Julia Child, And John Irving, Dead At 93
She launched her career by rescuing The Diary of Anne Frank from a reject pile in Paris and insisting to her boss that it must be published in English. While she worked on literary books throughout her decades at Knopf, overseeing works by Irving, Anne Tyler, and many others, she made her biggest impact on American life with cookbooks: she discovered and shepherded Child’s Mastering the Art of French Cooking as well as volumes by the likes of James Beard, Lidia Bastianich, Madhur Jaffrey, and Edna Lewis.
Channeling A Gay Black Avant-Garde (And Crazy) Composer In, Of All Places, The United Arab Emirates
Seph Rodney sees a music-and-video project about the late Julius Eastman at the Sharjah Biennial.
Top Posts From AJBlogs 08.02.17
Who’da Thunk?
I don’t like spending money. I’m leery of signing up for ongoing contracts for service unless I really, really have to (want to). So when we bought a new “pre-owned” car that came with a three-month trial subscription to SiriusXM™ satellite radio I was not overwhelmed with joy. But here’s what happened. … read more
AJBlog: Engaging Matters Published 2017-08-01
Bard SummerScape’s latest operatic resurrection: Dvorak takes Boris Godunov many steps further
Dmitrij is an opera that keeps growing before your very ears. And growing. And growing, until you have some of the most dramatically apt music Dvorak ever wrote for the stage. … read more
AJBlog: Condemned to Music Published 2017-08-01
Why Using Shame As A Management Tactic Is A Bad Idea – The Ultimate Example
Lila MacLellan takes a terrifying recent near-miss at SFO as a departure point for a discussion of what’s called “just culture” or “psychological safety” in the workplace. “It turns out that no one wakes up in the morning and jumps out of bed because they can’t wait to get to work today to look ignorant, intrusive, incompetent or negative.”