Remembering and Re-imagining an Era
Danspace Project’s Platform 16: Lost & Found revisits and examines the decades when HIV/AIDS felled so many. … read more
AJBlog: Dancebeat Published 2016-11-07
An ideal concert
Anderson and Roe, the piano duo, at the National Gallery in DC, on October 30. And why was it ideal? Well, first, … read more
AJBlog: Sandow Published 2016-11-07
Otis Redding at the Whisky — Revisited
You can never really have too much Otis Redding. The great R&B singer and songwriter died in a plane crash in 1967, at just 26 years old, and just about everything he recorded … read more
AJBlog: CultureCrash Published 2016-11-07
Monday Recommendation: David Baker
Buselli-Wallarab Jazz Orchestra, Basically Baker, Vol. 2 (Patois) … read more
AJBlog: RiffTides Published 2016-11-07
The unstructured room where it happens
In my last post I noted that, when I look at an orchestra’s structure, I don’t see anything that parallels a musician’s practice room. Scaled for an organization, what would a workshop like that look like? … read more
AJBlog: SongWorking Published 2016-11-07
Born in Vail
Vail Dance Festival: Re-Mix NYC performs at City Center, November 3 through 6. … read more
AJBlog: Dancebeat Published 2016-11-06
Home is the wanderer
Luciana Souza and I go back a long time. The first posting on this blog was about her. We’d met a year before that, in the summer of 2002. A friend told me that she’d … read more
AJBlog: About Last Night Published 2016-11-07
Bob Cranshaw, 1932-2016
Bassist Bob Cranshaw succumbed to bone cancer yesterday at his home in New York City. He was 83. He may be best remembered as Sonny Rollins’s bassist for more than half a century, but Cranshaw’s … read more
AJBlog: RiffTides Published 2016-11-05
Lit Crawl L.A./ North Hollywood
The other night I ventured out to Los Angeles’s North Hollywood neighborhood for the latest installment of Lit Crawl L.A. This annual night out has been going since 2013, but … read more
AJBlog: CultureCrash Published 2016-11-04
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Author: Matthew Westphal
American Adolescence Is Now Extending Into The 20s, And That’s Good For The Brain
The key words here are “neurobiological capital” and “metaplasticity.”
America Invented Adolescence (And America May Soon See The End Of It)
“In addition to the conventional scope of childhood from birth through to age 12 – a period when children’s dependency was widely taken for granted – Americans moved the goalposts of childhood as a democratic ideal by extending protections to cover the teen years … [and creating] institutions that could guide adolescents during this later period of childhood” – the juvenile court system and the democratic high school.
Octavia Spencer Beat The Hollywood Odds – And Now She’s Actively Changing Them
“Ms. Spencer is African-American, female, in her 40s and not twig-shaped – Venn-diagram those traits atop the circle marked ‘Available Parts,’ and the overlapping area shrinks to pea-size.” Yet she’s carved out a career, earned an Oscar, and now branched into producing.
How Tchaikovsky’s First Piano Concerto Got Its World Premiere In Boston, Before The Boston Symphony Even Existed
It’s a story of rejection, ambition (artistic and municipal), and the poor guy that Cosima Liszt dumped to run off with Richard Wagner. (includes audio)
Maybe It Made Sense For Shakespeare’s Globe To Part Ways With Emma Rice
Terry Teachout argues that the London press’s “general meltdown” over Rice’s sacking sudden resignation as artistic director is misguided, and that the Globe’s press release was basically telling the truth. But that doesn’t mean the Globe hasn’t treated Rice badly.
The Ballerina Who Got Away – From New York, From Seattle, From Ballet – Comes Back (For Now)
Carla Körbes became a professional at New York City Ballet, but left because she wanted a greater variety of repertoire; she went to Pacific Northwest Ballet and had a brilliant career, but retired at age 33. (“I wasn’t having fun anymore,” she says.) But up at Vail, Damian Woetzel got her back onstage, and she’s about to dance Martha Graham in New York.
Chinese Conglomerate Pays $1 Billion For Dick Clark Productions
“Dalian Wanda, a real estate and entertainment corporation owned by a billionaire who has aggressively pursued US film companies in recent years, … already owns AMC Theaters, which it bought in July for $650m, and the production company Legendary Entertainment, which it bought in January for $3.5bn.”
How Akram Khan Turned His Most Famous Solo Into A Children’s Work About Ancestral Tales, A Locked Cellphone, And A Call Center
“The man in the photograph at right is angled slightly to one side, his arm curved and his fingers – held together, sharply separated from the thumb – pointing down into what appears to be an upside-down fish. Above him floats a bee, and a snake curls languorously over a branch, appearing to watch his activities with interest.”
2016’s Word Of The Year Is ‘Politics’ Most Important Contribution To The English Language Since Watergate’
Actually, there will be several Words of the Year: Collins Dictionaries is just the first to announce; we’ve yet to hear from Oxford and Merriam-Webster. We wouldn’t be surprised, though, if they all choose this word.