Author: Matthew Westphal

Pennsylvania Ballet Names Interim Executive Director From National Symphony And Curtis Institute

“[Elizabeth] Warshawer’s most recent high-profile role was as executive vice president, chief operating officer, and chief financial officer of the Curtis Institute of Music. She held the post until 2015, overseeing such major initiatives as the development of strategic plans, the launch of major online initiatives, and construction of a new building with dorms and rehearsal spaces. She is currently interim executive director of the National Symphony Orchestra in Washington.” Current executive director David Gray leaves this month.

‘Trout Fishing In America’ – Minor Masterpiece, Silly ’60s Relic, Or Both?

“Richard Brautigan’s first novel sold less than 800 copies. His next novel sold 4 million copies. Trout Fishing in America turns 50 this year, and while most novels of that age now seem dated, Brautigan’s work seems particularly so: playful, goofy, fragmentary, optimistic. Trout Fishing in America is worth revisiting for exactly its status as an artifact of that time, a book that reveled in language, and made its writer into an imperfect legend.”

‘We Never Really Left High School At All’ – How Popularity Matters Throughout Adult Life

“Study after study … suggest[s] the ways that popularity imprints itself on people’s lives, far beyond the teenage years, through both its presence and its absence. Popularity affects people’s ability to find success in their careers, regardless of their intelligence or their work ethic. It affects their ability to find fulfilling friendships and romantic relationships. … [It’s] much like class in America: It divides people. It defines people. Yet we generally treat it as a relic of the past – as something that was, once, but that thankfully is no more.”

Making Sense Of Isadora Duncan’s Life (And Her Less-Than-Reliable Autobiography)

Amelia Gray: “Isadora spent her whole life straddling the gap between public perception and private reality. In writing Isadora, a novel set during a particularly dark year and a half of her life, I found myself having to pick through that reality, reality as Isadora wished to create it, and a third, emotional reality, which aspired to contain recognizable truths.”