“The debate about production style – a lot of time audiences are unhappy about production style – and I am too when I see some work, particularly in Germany, because what I’m detecting is a director saying, ‘I have to make my mark with this piece. I have to do something that will never be forgotten.’ And I think that’s such a dull way of proceeding because I think we should approach the operas with more humility than that. All of us.”
Author: Matthew Westphal
MoMA To Make Thousands Of Archival Images Of Exhibitions Available Online
“Beginning Thursday, after years of planning and digitizing, much of that archive will now be available on the museum’s website, moma.org, searchable so that visitors can time-travel to see what the museum looked like during its first big show (‘Cézanne, Gauguin, Seurat, van Gogh,’ in the fall of 1929); during seminal exhibitions (Kynaston McShine’s ‘Information’ show in 1970, one of the earliest surveys of Conceptual art); and during its moments of high-minded glamour (Audrey Hepburn, in 1957, admiring a Picasso with Alfred H. Barr Jr., the museum’s domineering first director).”
Cleveland Orchestra Launches Flexible Not-Exactly-A-Subscription Plan
“The ‘Members Club,’ a new style of subscription plan …, now active and deployed through a new smartphone app, is open to all but targets young and middle-aged people who would like to attend more frequently but choose not to commit to traditional subscriptions.”
Paul Wolfe, 90, Director Of Sarasota Music Festival And Orchestra
“During his 34-year tenure, Wolfe led countless concerts for the organization now known as the Sarasota Orchestra, performed in what is now the Sarasota String Quartet, co-founded the Sarasota Music Festival and expanded and enthusiastically conducted the organization’s vibrant youth orchestra.”
Diana Vishneva To Retire From ABT
The Russian ballerina Diana Vishneva, a principal with American Ballet Theater since 2005, will give her farewell performances with the company [next June] … Ms. Vishneva, 40, is also a principal dancer with the Mariinsky Ballet in St. Petersburg, and will remain with that company.”
Ballet Parents, *Do Not* Push Your Daughters To Start Dancing En Pointe Too Young
“Performers from the Royal Ballet, the Washington Ballet and the Staatsballett Berlin – who all trained under the Royal Academy of Dance – have joined forces to call on parents not to push their children into starting pointe work just because some of their peers might have.” Says one, “Starting too early can cause enormous damage.”
A Look At Hong Kong’s Enormous In-Progress Arts Center
“A game-changer for global performing arts is certainly the powerhouse taking shape in Hong Kong: the West Kowloon Cultural District. Spread across 40 hectares of land reclaimed in the 1990s as part of the HK$200 billion (£20 billion) Airport Core Programme, the hub is run by the West Kowloon Cultural District Authority and will include 17 core arts and cultural venues, as well as space for arts education.”
Burning Man’s #SoWhite Problem May Finally Be Getting (A Little) Better
Steven W. Thrasher: “In the summer of 2015, … I interviewed about 30 black people and some other people of color at Burning Man (pretty much all the people of color I could find who would talk to me) … When I returned this year, there was a burning question on many people’s minds: did I think there were more black people at Burning Man a year later? In a word: yes.”
Top Posts From AJBlogs 09.15.16
Michael Hersch, 9/11, and the twin towers of light
The way we now live is increasingly unthinkable, with the daily news over the summer carrying accounts of one mass-killing disaster after another. What do you do with that? One answer was to be had at the the Lower East Side venue known as The Spectrum. a tiny, living-room like place … read more
AJBlog: Condemned to Music Published 2016-09-15
Carmen Herrera, 101-Year-Old Overnight Success, Gets Her Whitney Close-Up (with video)
Given her centenarian status, I was astonished by the Whitney Museum’s decision to schedule its Carmen Herrera show to open more than a year after the Whitney had unveiled its new facility. … read more
AJBlog: CultureGrrl Published 2016-09-15
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Zaha Hadid’s Successor Talks About Where The Firm Is Headed Now
“Born in Bonn in 1961, [Patrik] Schumacher worked with Zaha Hadid in her London office from 1988 until her death earlier this year, and rose to become her right-hand man. … Now Schumacher is in charge of the 400-strong practice, with the daunting task of continuing without the impetus that came with her fame and charisma. They have on their books projects such as the Beijing airport new terminal building, due for completion in 2018, a colossal splayed, curvaceous sea creature of a structure that will eventually handle 72 million passengers a year.”