He produced, directed, and acted; he co-authored, among other projects, Paris, Texas; and “played a key role in launching the careers of fellow Texans Wes Anderson and Owen Wilson.”
Author: Matthew Westphal
What American Orchestras Are Playing This Season: Crunching The Numbers
“[We] gathered data on the 2014-15 seasons that have been programmed by 21 major American orchestras … [and] created a database.” Here are some early stats on how much music by female composers and American composers are being performed and which composers (living and dead) the orchestras are playing most.
“Dance Is An Intellectual Art Form”: Wayne McGregor On Choreography, Creativity, And Cognition
“We have this idea, partly because of the past, of choreographers just coming and dancers just doing as if they’re not thinking. We know that dance is as much a cognitive act as it is a physical act. That’s why I’ve been very interested in physical thinking. If it’s a cognitive act, how is it that you can inspire people to be more creative cognitively?”
Mindfulness, Shmindfulness – Zoning Out Is Good For You (Within Reason)
“One of the biggest misconceptions people have about mindfulness is that you can train yourself to stay in this mindful state all of the time. … Even if you spent 20 years in a Tibetan monastery, you would not be able to stay in a mindful state. We are not, evolutionarily, designed to stay in this blissful, present-moment awareness state.”
The Johnny Rotten Of Soviet Dissidents
That’s how Edward Limonov described himself. He was “at once a rebel and a totalitarian, a salacious writer of semifictionalized memoirs who, after years in the West” – as a drugged-out thug in New York and a celebrated author in France – “stood with the Serbs in the Bosnian war and then returned to Russia to become an ultranationalist political agitator.”
Franco Zeffirelli Threatens To Sue La Scala For Selling His Super-Deluxe Production Of “Aida”
The 91-year-old director is furious that the Milan opera house packed off his gold-covered extravaganza, which opened La Scala’s 2006-07 season, to the opera in Astana, Kazakhstan. (Never mind that Zeffirelli is getting a share of the proceeds, or that La Scala can borrow it back for free whenever it wants.)
Top Posts From AJBlogs 10.29.14
Engagement Research: Talk to Them
AJBlog: Engaging Matters Published 2014-10-28
Finding My Chowder — Part 2
AJBlog: Out There Published 2014-10-29
Farewell to Poet Galway Kinnell
AJBlog: CultureCrash Published 2014-10-29
Bad News: NY Times as Insert for Christie’s Advertising Section (plus: me at NYU)
AJBlog: CultureGrrl Published 2014-10-29
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Met’s “Death Of Klinghoffer” Is Selling Tickets
Despite protests, weak advance sales, interruptions, and all the other mishegas, the John Adams opera “has sold more tickets than any other opera currently at the Met. General manager Peter Gelb “expects the opera ultimately to earn 70 to 75 percent of its potential ticket revenue, about average for recent seasons.”
This Pianist Is About To Turn 90, And She Still Does Concert Tours – Alone
She still learns new music, too, and she rides the New York subway, and she carries her own luggage. “I walk around with my 60-year-old friends and they tell me to slow down.” Meet Ruth Slenczynska.
Philadelphia’s Prince Music Theater Calls It Quits
“Having received no offers for a takeover, the organization that occupies the Prince Music Theater on Friday terminated its lease with the owners of the building on Chestnut Street just west of Broad Street. American Music Theater Festival, founded in 1984, also intends to dissolve. The future of the building is uncertain.”