“Installing and tuning the Earth Harp is a two-day process. On this day, [inventor William] Close is getting ready to drop 42 strings, weighted by water bottles, off the edge of the 700-foot building. His tech, Jonathan Golko, will catch them and attach them to the harp’s main resonating chamber. The following day, Close will tune the harp, a process that he’s got down to a science. He can vibrate four notes out of each string.”
Author: Matthew Westphal
What It Was Like At Brooklyn’s Women-Only Screening Of ‘Wonder Woman’
The Alamo Drafthouse chain’s plan to offer no-boys-allowed screenings of the new superheroine hit made news when certain men on the Internet flipped right out about them. Cara Buckley, the Times‘s “Carpetbagger” during awards season, paid a visit to the screening at the Alamo Drafthouse in downtown Brooklyn to check out the (excited) vibe.
Auditioning A Whole New Pool Of (Non-Equity) Actors For L.A.’s Smallest Theaters
Now that Los Angeles-area theaters with 99 seats or fewer must pay Equity actors minimum wage – which the tiny-budget theaters insist would bankrupt them – they want to see SoCal’s enormous pool of non-Equity talent. Jessica Gelt sat in on open call auditions held by a group of ten small theater companies.
Art Basel Sues Adidas For Trademark Infringement
“Art Basel and its Swiss parent company MCH are suing Adidas over limited-edition trainers that the German sportswear giant designed using the art fair’s trademark and distributed during Art Basel Miami Beach last year. It is the first time that Art Basel has filed a lawsuit in the US, according to national records.”
Two Billionaires Battle Over Proposed Performance Space Floating In Hudson River
Barry Diller – backed by pretty much every politician with jurisdiction over the spot – wants to replace, at his own expense, a crumbling pier at 13th St. in Manhattan with “an undulating platform featuring pathways, lush lawns and three venues for dance, theater and musical performances.” Real-estate mogul Douglas Durst is leading the (seemingly rather small) opposition to the project.
Male Dancers Need To Eat A Lot To Get The Energy To Lift Bigger Ballerinas, Says Mariinsky Theater’s Director
That would be Valery Gergiev, the general director of the storied St. Petersburg house as well as a compulsively globe-trotting conductor who’s found himself caught in controversy before. This time, in addition to opining on male dancers’ diets and female dancers’ size, Gergiev discussed the preference for small breasts on ballerinas and dissed the Mariinsky’s Moscow rival, the Bolshoi.
Brooklyn’s Bargemusic Gets A New York Times Op-Ed
“There is so much new life and affluence crowding the Brooklyn waterfront that traditionalists like Mark Peskanov, the master violinist who runs the Bargemusic concerts of chamber music aboard a handsomely converted coal barge, hard by the Brooklyn Bridge, might be tempted to move. Which he has no intention of doing.”
For The Sake Of The Planet, Arts Groups Should Stop Accepting Money From The Koch Brothers, Argues Philip Kennicott
Yes, Charles and David Koch “have given hundreds of millions of dollars to institutions such as Lincoln Center and New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art,” but they’ve also “used their fortune to sow doubt about climate science and undermine the nation’s faith in basic science. … They have undermined a critical set of our most important human capacities, and some of the same ones that the arts are often thought to enhance. These include things such as critical thinking and deference to reason and evidence, but also empathy and fellow feeling, and a sense that we are connected to other people.”
Chicago’s Goodman Theatre Cancels ‘Pamplona’ After Star Stacy Keach Falls Ill
“The Goodman Theatre has canceled the entire run of Pamplona, the highly anticipated world premiere of the one-man show about Ernest Hemingway starring Stacy Keach that was to run through June 25 … Performances were canceled on a day-to-day basis since this past Tuesday when the 76-year-old actor fell ill midway through the opening night performance of the show.”
What The Philadelphia Orchestra Got Up To In Mongolia
Okay, it ended up not being the full orchestra, and “plans changed almost by the hour,” as David Patrick Stearns reports. But there was a performance and workshop for kids in the impoverished ger district, a master class for the national military band, an unannounced visit by the entire Mongolian State Philharmonic Orchestra to a rehearsal, a read-through of a Mongolian ballet score, and an outdoor concert by the brass players in (yes) Beatles Square.