“A Vermont ballet group brings whimsical performances outside to farms around the state. The Farm to Ballet Project raises money for agriculture while widening the audience for classical ballet.” (video)
Author: Matthew Westphal
Top Posts From AJBlogs 08.10.16
Who wants performance metrics in the arts?
Today we have a story from The Atlantic on schools and tests – or, “assessments” – measuring creativity. With all the problems that come with standard testing, who would want such a thing? Well … read more
AJBlog: For What It’s Worth Published 2016-08-10
Ystad: Joe Lovano, The Bohuslän Big Band & Others
As the Rifftides staff flies home, digital magic allows us to continue reporting on highlights of the 2016 Ystad Sweden Jazz Festival. … read more
AJBlog: RiffTides Published 2016-08-10
Trump’s Partner in Opera
Last fall I wrote a blog, The Operatic Republican Characters, in which I compared the Republicans seeking their party’s nomination for the Presidency. In it I compared Donald Trump to Dr. Dulcamara … read more
AJBlog: OperaSleuth Published 2016-08-10
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Three Saints In One Portrait – It All Depends On Where You Stand
“From the left, Saint Francis of Assisi decked on his Franciscan order habit clutches a crucifix with a hand bloody with stigmata; from the right, Saint Francis of Paola holds a paper that reads ‘Charitas.’ And looking straight on, there’s a weeping Saint Peter looking up at a blue sky where his airy halo mingles with the clouds.” The trick is an effect called anamorphosis.
What’s A Harpsichord For? It’s For Proving Us Wrong, Says Its Newest Star Player
“Think the harpsichord is an inherently limited instrument, too quiet, too inexpressive, too inferior to a modern piano? That, [Mahan Esfahani] argues, implies asking the wrong question to begin with. Think a harpsichordist must naturally align with an early-music movement that awakened so much interest in his instrument? Wrong. … Think that the harpsichord is exclusively an instrument for the music of centuries past? Wrong.”
The Marco Polo Of The Ottoman Empire
“His path crossed Buddhists and crusading warriors, the Bedouin and Venetian sailors, ambassadors, monks, sorcerers, and snake charmers. Along the way he wrote the Seyahatname (‘Book of Travels’), a magnificent ten-volume sprawl of fantasy, biography, and reportage that is utterly unique in the canon of travel literature, and which confirms Evliya [Çelebi] as one of the great storytellers of the seventeenth century.”
An Outsider Artist’s Disneyland-In-Detroit
“[Dmytro] Szylak’s installation is hardly noticeable from the sidewalk in front of his former home, but if one approaches from the alley and garages of Klinger and Sobieski Streets, Hamtramck Disneyland looms like a Cubist carnival.”
‘The Interpretation Of Dreams’, 1,700 Years Before Freud
“Enter Artemidorus of Daldis, the world’s first true dream researcher. He was a citizen of Ephesus during the second century A.D. … He did what any good researcher would do: he went out into the field, and gathered dreams. … Artemidorius made himself into an empiricist of fantasy, and he compiled his findings in a book called the Oneirocritica, or the Interpretation of Dreams.”
Is Putting Shakespeare Into Modern English Really A Good Idea?
Linguist John McWhorter and Rutgers professor Jack Lynch, author of Becoming Shakespeare: The Unlikely Afterlife That Turned a Provincial Playwright into the Bard, discuss the ‘sacrilege” issue. (podcast)
In Weirdest Art Case Of The Year, Painter Says He Didn’t Paint This Work, But Owner Insists He Did And Sues Him For Lying About It
“The artist Peter Doig took the stand here Monday in an odd federal court case in which the owner of a landscape painting is accusing Mr. Doig of falsely denying that he created the work while a young man in Canada.”
‘La Bohème’ At Attica State Prison
“One man perches literally on the edge of his seat, listening with his whole body; his chest seems to swell with the singers’ every breath. Afterward, I’m not surprised when he says that, before today, ‘I didn’t know that Latinos do opera,’ but ‘for a brief fifteen minutes, I was up there, I was singing.'”