“There’s been no shortage of controversy and speculation around the Nebra Sky Disk since it was … exhumed illegally in 1999 in Nebra in Saxony-Anhalt, Germany. …”
Author: Matthew Westphal
Kurt Moll, 78, One Of 20th Century’s Great Bass Voices
“[He] was an imposing presence in any opera house; his height appeared greater than the 6ft 2in he claimed, his voice sounded deeper than the booming basso profundo he was billed as, and his personality exuded warmth and charm both on stage and off.”
Denmark May Upend Its Orchestra Ecosystem
Danish culture minister Mette Bock is planning to spin off the national broadcaster’s orchestra, choir and concert hall (possibly to the national opera house) and eliminate the Copenhagen Philharmonic (not the capital’s only orchestra), distributing its musicians and budget among four regional orchestras.
Top Posts From AJBlogs 03.07.17
Essential Gradualism
An occasionally expressed concern about community engagement is that current stakeholders will be driven away by imagined precipitous changes to the organization and/or its offerings. There are a couple of responses to this that … read more
AJBlog: Engaging Matters Published 2017-03-07
Ten Suggestions for Tom Campbell’s Successor at the Met
In December 2008, anticipating the imminent eminence of Thomas Campbell as new head of the country’s premier art museum, I presumptuously posted a to-do list for the director-designate. … read more
AJBlog: CultureGrrl Published 2017-03-07
Other Matters: Losing Robert Osborne
The news of Robert Osborne’s passing was a bad way to start the day. We were friends from the day that our Delta Upsilon fraternity at the University of Washington assigned him … read more
AJBlog: RiffTides Published 2017-03-07
Cello and Kora Epiphany: Sissoko and Segal
The West African kora is iconic all over the continent, so much so that Africa’s international equivalent of the Grammys, held annually in South Africa, is called the Kora Awards. It has taken a while for this remarkable harp to find a way to an appreciative audience in the west, but … read more
AJBlog: OtherWorldly Published 2017-03-07
Trish Arnold, 98, Pioneer Of Movement Training For Actors
When she started teaching at LAMDA in 1955, “traditional movement training might have involved elocution, fencing and a bit of traditional dance … Trish’s genius lay in creating a methodology and approach” – which came to be known as Pure Movement – “that worked from impulse (initial mental, emotional and physical responses) and release (letting go of habits of movement), so that actors could adopt the physical signals that help an audience recognise a character on stage or screen.”
This Director Can Turn Even A ‘Glass Menagerie’ On Broadway Into Experimental Theater
Journalist Sasha Weiss watches as Sam Gold – who won a Tony for Fun Home and set Othello inside a big plywood box – radically strips down Tennessee Williams’s setting and uses casting to upend everything we think we know about the characters.
Hawaii Has A Word That’s Even Stranger Than Philadelphia’s ‘Jawn’
Around this time last year, Dan Nosowitz told us about the City of Brotherly Shove Love’s all-purpose word, jawn, which can stand in for any noun, abstract or concrete, proper or common. Since then, readers have alerted him to an even more flexible term, one that can function as noun, verb, adjective or adverb: da kine.
Weird Al Yankovic Walks Us Through His Process Of Creating A Song Parody
For Vulture‘s podcast about jokes, Good One, Yankovic details how – in a thorough, methodical way – he turned the Pharrell/Robin Thicke hit “Blurred Lines” into “Word Crimes,” about a grammar nerd fighting the good fight for linguistic justice. (audio plus written Q&A)
I Let Ohad Naharin Convince Me To Run Onstage In A Long Blue Dress For 65 Minutes Nonstop
Bobbi Jene Smith of Batsheva spends the entire length of Naharin’s Last Work trotting away on a treadmill upstage. Here she tells Jen Peters how she manages to do it.
For The Country Music Industry, The Subject Of Donald Trump Is Kryptonite
With an audience that’s “polarized as f***,” Nashville has an attitude summed up by one country DJ like this: “Politics is the hottest potato around right now. I think a lot of artists are saying, ‘You know what, I’d rather not catch this son of a bitch; I’ll pass it to somebody else.'”