On the 1940 morning when the invasion began, “one of [the] Nazi officers had the misfortune to pass an elderly gray-haired lady on the street, who responded by remarking on his rudeness and smacking his hat off his head with her cane. After he apologized and fled, she chuckled to herself: ‘Well, we’ll each have to fight this war as best we can; that’s the fourth hat I’ve knocked into the mud this morning.'”
Author: Matthew Westphal
Top Posts From AJBlogs 08.15.16
When All The Culture Around Us Starts To Look The Same
One of the biggest comforts of fast food is its familiarity. Generic from location to location, you know not only what the food will be and how it will taste, but that the ritual of the experience will be familiar too. … read more
AJBlog: diacritical/Douglas McLennan Published 2016-08-15
Monday Recommendation: Bill Charlap Trio
Bill Charlap Trio: Notes From New York (Impulse!) … read more
AJBlog: RiffTides Published 2016-08-15
Second and Fourth
Young composers are frequently pointed to late Beethoven as an example of the highest achievement of their art, and late Beethoven indeed rewards repeated study. But there are lessons in late Beethoven that have little bearing … read more
AJBlog: Infinite Curves Published 2016-08-15
Gospel (not my usual bag) keyboards revelations
I’ll never be an avid fan, much less an aficionado, of gospel music — but Lift Me Up, Chicago Gospel Keyboard Masters, new from The Sirens, a local independent label, is clearly full of joy and inspiration. … read more
AJBlog: Jazz Beyond Jazz Published 2016-08-15
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So, Is The Design At The Rio Olympics Any Good?
“The collapsed sailing ramp has been hauled out of the water, a Russian diplomat has heroically killed a carjacker (or maybe not), and 450,000 condoms await action in the leaky athletes village. Beset by construction problems and delays and with preparations decreed the ‘worst ever’ by the International Olympic Committee, how is the architecture and design of the XXXI Olympiad shaping up so far?”
The World’s Largest Collection Of Braille Music Is Finally Being Digitized
“Digitizing braille music isn’t as easy as just scanning the page. The tactile notations require multiple steps for accurate transcription, and their history of touch means the dots are sometimes smashed or otherwise unreadable.”
Tunisia’s Religious Jazz, And The Dangers It Faces After The Revolution
“Stambeli, a uniquely Tunisian hybrid of musical genre, healing practice, and religious ceremony, [is] deeply rooted in the history of a specific community: the descendants of slaves brought to the region from sub-Saharan Africa during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. It also has close links to Sufism.” But the changes in the country since the Arab Spring (notably the Saudi-funded spread of Salafism) are combining with older ethnic prejudices to put a lot of pressure on stambeli‘s remaining practitioners.
‘Cloud Atlas’ As Published In US Is ‘Astonishingly Different’ From UK Version
“Shortlisted for the Man Booker prize in 2004, Cloud Atlas is already complicated enough: telling the story of six interlocking lives and hopping back and forth across centuries and genres. But differences between the US and UK editions highlighted by [a professor] in a journal article published on Wednesday on the Open Library of Humanities run to 30 pages of examples.”
Serial Drama Made The Age Of Peak TV; Why Is The Genre Running Out Of Steam Now?
Matt Zoller Seitz: “Every revolution has casualties. In this one, it’s the hour-long, serialized drama that unveils its story over multiple seasons, and that fueled the so-called Golden Age of serious-minded, scripted TV; a form that, until recently, moved the needle on TV as an art form and dominated the cultural conversation. When discussing the serial drama in 2016, you can feel a sense of fatigue settling in.
Hollywood (And Jared Leto) Have Ruined Method Acting
“Leto’s stories [of his behavior on the Suicide Squad set] show how going to great lengths to inhabit a character is now as much a marketing tool as it is an actual technique – one used to lend an air of legitimacy, verisimilitude, and importance to a performance no matter its quality. Leto’s Joker is the latest evidence that the prestige of method acting has dimmed – thanks to the technique’s overuse by those seeking award-season glory or a reputation boost, as well as its history of being shaped by destructive ideas of masculinity.”
Meryl Streep Explains Our Fascination With Florence Foster Jenkins
“In 1944 at the age of 76, Foster Jenkins sold out Carnegie Hall – more than 2,000 people were turned away from the door – with a recital of opera arias that she performed off key. Listen to Streep recount this history in the audio above and watch the entire interview in the video below.”
Could Software Generate Journalism (Or Even A Good Facsimile Of It)?
“What about telling a story? Not like cookie-cutter data chunks turned into sentences, but a tale with a lot of context and information. Could an algorithm someday write a breezy 2,000-word article like this one? Nobody can currently claim that throne, but one company that appears to be closer to that goal than most is an Israeli firm called Articoolo.”