“I found that I couldn’t walk steadily and veered, first into a wall, then into a parked car. I placed my hand to my neck, and it came away covered in blood.” In an essay, the playwright recounts the attack, which happened this past Thanksgiving weekend.
Author: Matthew Westphal
Pierre Boulez Dead At 90
“As a young composer he had matched intelligence with great force of mind: He knew what had to be done, according to his reading of history, and he did it, in defiance of all the norms of French musical culture at the time.” As a conductor, “his keen ear and rhythmic incisiveness would often produce a startling clarity. (There are countless stories of him detecting, for example, faulty intonation from the third oboe in a complex orchestral texture.)”
NBC’s TODAY Show Meets The Exciting Young Woman Conductor At The L.A. Phil
“TODAY’s Harry Smith speaks with Los Angeles Philharmonic [assistant] conductor Mirga Gražinytė-Tyla about what it’s like to be a young female in such a traditionally male role.” (video)
What Exactly Does A Book Editor Do? A Lot More Than Before
“These days there is more pressure on editors to acquire best-sellers, and they are much more involved in marketing a book. And that, he says, leaves precious little time for actual editing.” (audio and text)
Frank Lloyd Wright School Of Architecture Raises The $2 Million It Needs To Remain Accredited
“The school, which consists of Taliesin West in Scottsdale, Ariz., and Taliesin in Spring Green, Wis., is seeking to become an independent subsidiary of the [Frank Lloyd Wright] Foundation, which currently runs it. Bylaw changes established by the Higher Learning Commission (HLC) in 2012 required the school to file for independent incorporation as an institution with the primary purpose of offering higher education.”
‘The Beggar’s Opera Of Broadway’ And Its Backwards Birth
That’s what British critic Kenneth Tynan called Guys and Dolls. Matt Trueman write that the musical “taps into that particularly American sensibility of optimism in spite of everything, and furthermore, it’s exquisitely put together. It has no right to be, given its bumpy road to Broadway.”
The Prison Inmate Who Became Buddies With Samuel Beckett And Started Theater Companies In And Outside Of Prison
“In prison, Cluchey received an education on what it was to be on Beckett’s stage. It allowed him to love Beckett’s work. That, in turn, made him into a man Beckett himself could love.”
John Williams’s ‘Star Wars’ Scores Are Far More Sophisticated Than They Get Credit For, Says Alex Ross
With a sharp ear and a sharp pen, er, keyboard, Ross makes his case – and points out Williams’s biggest problem: “After Star Wars, he became a sound, a brand. … He’s been boxed in by the billions that his music has helped to earn. He has become integral to a populist economy on which thousands of careers depend.”
‘If The Bolshoi Is Sick, It’s Because Russia Is Sick Too’
“The Bolshoi is not just a theatre: it’s a cultural brand that is key to Russia’s image of itself … and the Kremlin have been reluctant to leave its running to mere specialists. One of the theatre’s harassed-looking board members claims that 40% of its artistic and managerial decisions have historically been controlled by politicians.”
Does Speaking A Second Language Really Improve Cognition?
“The idea that learning to speak two languages is good for your brain has come to be widely accept as fact, particularly in popular media. … But a handful of attempts to replicate some of these seminal findings have failed to confirm this ‘bilingual advantage’ … [and] a heated debate over this issue now rages in the research community.”