Author: Matthew Westphal

Top Posts From AJBlogs 04.20.17

Smart Move In Brooklyn
A lot of people today are interested in “design.” Unless they are furnishing a home, not all that many are interested in “decorative arts.” They are, of course, fraternal if not identical twins. … read more
AJBlog: Real Clear Arts Published 2017-04-20

Miles, Cleanhead, Sonny And “Four”
“Four” is one of the best-known jazz tunes attributed to Miles Davis. He may actually have written it, although a substantial number of musicians maintain that the composer was the alto saxophonist … read more
AJBlog: RiffTides Published 2017-04-20

 

Championing Etiquette In An Age That Can Seem Hostile To The Very Idea

Laura Miller meets Lizzie Post and Daniel Post Senning, two 30-something great-great-grandchildren of Emily Post and the heirs to her etiquette empire, to talk about the challenges of promoting good manners in “a time when jeering, insults, and other forms of impoliteness emanate in a steady stream from the highest office in the land” – and of resisting the desire of (some of) the public to peg them as finger-wagging schoolmarms.

The 93-Year-Old Jazz-Singing Nun Of Ethiopia And Her Extraordinary Life

She was the first Ethiopian girl to be sent abroad to study, the first woman in the country’s civil service, and the first female to sing in an Ethiopian Orthodox church service; she raced a horse and carriage around Addis Ababa and sang for Haile Selassie; she was thoroughly trained in Western classical music, but spent a decade as a barefoot nun at a hilltop convent; she fled from the Communist junta and settled in Jerusalem, where she’s spent decades creating music like no one else’s. Meet Emahoy Tsegué-Maryam Guèbrou.

Pitching Your Movie To A Jury With A $1 Million Prize To Give Out

“It was the chance of a lifetime. It was a terror like no other. Five promising filmmakers, most young and all hungry, were competing for a $1 million grant to make a feature that would have its premiere at the Tribeca Film Festival next year. The money came from AT&T, and the setup was very ‘Shark Tank’: They would have 10 minutes to pitch their movie to a jury whose members included Lee Daniels, Jeffrey Wright and Anthony Mackie.”

Previous Director Of Shakespeare’s Globe, Dominic Dromgoole, Adds To Emma Rice’s Open Letter To Successor (And He’s Not Happy, Either)

Dromgoole, whose tenure as artistic director (2006-16) was widely admired, comments publicly for the first time about the controversy around his successor: “Sadly the negativity doesn’t only come from without [the Globe], there is also a fair sum within. There are structural problems, there are personality problems, there is too much fighting for territory, and there are too many who feel free to comment on work without ever taking the risk of making it.”

At Pompeii, ‘There Will Be Regular Maintenance At Last’

In 2010 and 2014, a series of collapses and crumbled ruins at the site had many people worried for the survival of what’s left of the ancient Roman resort town. Now EU officials hail the turnaround and restoration there – called the Great Pompeii Project – as “a model for Europe.” Here’s a Q&A with Massimo Osanna, the archaeologist who oversees the entire site.