His four-volume, 3,600-page biography of Mahler made him the world’s pre-eminent expert on the composer. His collaboration in countless concerts, festivals, exhibitions, and documentaries played a huge part in establishing Mahler’s place in the modern concert repertoire.
Author: Matthew Westphal
Top Posts From AJBlogs 02.08.17
Svend Asmussen, RIP
He was one of the handful of violinists who in the 1930s proved the instrument capable of swing and emotional expression at the highest jazz level. He may well have been the only man still alive in the new century who had played with Fats Waller, Django Reinhardt, Stéphane Grappelli, Stuff Smith, Benny Goodman and Duke Ellington. … read more
AJBlog: RiffTides Published 2017-02-08
Willpower – A Bad Idea That It’s Time To Get Rid Of
Cark Erik Fisher: “As a practicing addiction psychiatrist and an assistant professor of clinical psychiatry, I’ve become increasingly skeptical about the very concept … More fundamentally, the common, monolithic definition of willpower distracts us from finer-grained dimensions of self-control and runs the danger of magnifying harmful myths.”
How A Psychotic Little Girl In World War II Japan Made Herself Into The World’s Top-Selling Living Female Artist
The young Yayoi Kusama was plagued with visual hallucinations, mental health problems, and a mother who violently disapproved (literally) of her interest in art. Today, at 87, she’s more productive than ever, even as she continues to live in the psychiatric hospital she checked herself into 40 years ago. Darryl Wee tells us about Kusama’s journey.
Time Is Contagious
The experience of time, that is. “As we converse with and consider one another, we step in and out of one other’s experience, including the other’s perceptions (or what we imagine to be another’s perception, based on our own experience) of time. Not only does duration bend, we are continuously sharing these small flexions among us like a currency or social glue.” Alan Burdick explains how this works.
Why Public Libraries Are Finally Giving Up Fines For Overdue Books
“Now some libraries are deciding that the money isn’t worth the hassle – not only that, but that fining patrons works against everything that public libraries ought to stand for.” Ruth Graham explains the reasoning and the results.
The New Yorker Picks This Year’s Best And Worst Super Bowl Ads
Ian Crouch: “In other times, the [Anheuser-Busch] commercial – a cinematic, and partly fictionalized, depiction of the journey that the company’s co-founder, Adolphus Busch, made from Germany to St. Louis in the mid-nineteenth century – would not have drawn much attention.
But these are not other times.”
Broadway Is Finally Addressing Its Bathroom Problem
“Theater owners, confronted day after day by long lines of women (and, sometimes, men) clogging lobbies and snaking down stairwells while nervously waiting for an available bathroom, are excavating, annexing, converting and renovating their buildings to remedy the chronic inconvenience. The biggest landlords are also retraining ushers, experimenting with new methods of crowd control, and even reversing the genders on restrooms.”
How Dael Orlandersmith Built A One-Woman Show About Ferguson, Mo.
Rosalind Early reports on how the Repertory Theater of St. Louis sent the playwright-performer on a “listening tour” and how her work there is and is not like that of Anna Deavere Smith.
Ravel Museum In France Abruptly Closes After Several Months Of Weirdness
Last year the government of the town where the museum (in the composer’s former house) is located forbade France-TV to film there; last month a local official called the police on Charles Dutoit and Martha Argerich while they were visiting; last week the custodian, on the job for 30 years, was fired; there are concerns that objects and archives are missing. Sanjoy Roy looks into the situation and explains why losing the museum permanently would be a tragedy.