“I have loved my job, but critics shouldn’t go on too long. I feel I’ve had my say and it’s time to stop and put my feet up,” said the 59-year-old journalist on his decision to take early retirement after 25 years with the London-based paper.”
Author: Matthew Westphal
Breathtaking Personal Honesty: A Fellow Critic’s Tribute To Charles Spencer
Mark Shenton: “It is not always appropriate for a critic to put himself at the centre of a narrative about a play he is reviewing, but when a play affects you directly and personally, it is honest to point it out. … I’m very proud of Charlie for doing so with such openness, and I have tried to follow his example.”
Another Milestone For Maestras: Susanna Mälkki Named Chief Conductor Of Helsinki Philharmonic
The 45-year-old Finn, until last year music director of Ensemble InterContemporain in Paris and recently appointed principal guest conductor of Lisbon’s Gulbenkia Orchestra and active throughout Europe and North America as a guest conductor, takes over from John Storgårds in Helsinki at the start of 2016.
Fabio Luisi To Lead Danish National Symphony Orchestra
“The music director of the Zurich Opera and principal conductor of the Metropolitan Opera has a new gig … Mr. Luisi, 55, signed a three-year contract with the [DNSO] from 2017 through 2020, his representatives said, and plans to step up his appearances with the orchestra even before that.”
“The Internet Is A Cargo Cult”: The Fundamental Reason Why Songwriters (Or Any Content Creators) Have Trouble Making Money On The Web
David Lowery of Cracker and Camper van Beethoven: “People worship the Internet like a cargo cult. It’s this thing that they have that brings them free stuff, and they think it’s magic. … They don’t want to hear that behind the way you get this free stuff, some really actually fucked-up things have happened to individuals and their individual rights.”
Rock Festival In L.A.’s Grand Park Was A Grand Experiment In Several Ways
“The decision to close the park for a for-profit event will be redeemed only if the money Live Nation paid the county to rent it out makes it a better place to visit, over the long term, for the public. Luckily, even as concertgoers were tramping across Grand Park’s lawns and through its flower beds, they were also helping demonstrate pretty clearly where its design might be tweaked and improved. They made up a huge and unwitting landscape-architecture focus group.”
Lars Von Trier Returning To TV
“The Danish director Lars von Trier is planning to make his first televisions series in two decades, a producer for the project recently announced. The English-language series will be titled The House That Jack Built.”
Daniel Ezralow Launches New Dance Company
“With this new company of 9 dancers, I want to build a creative home for the huge amount of repertory I’ve developed around the world. Being an eclectic artist means that I’ve been lucky enough to jump from film to TV to stage, but there’s been no way until now to collect everything into a single body of work.” Ezralow Dance debuts this month at the Ford Amphitheatre in Los Angeles.
“The Opera Olympics”, Operalia, Reveals Its 2014 Winners
Tenor Mario Chang and soprano Rachel Willis-Sørensen each won three medals prizes, including the first-place awards for male and female singer. “In a rare occurrence for the competition, the third-place prizes were awarded to four singers whom the judges said received identical scores.”
The Artist Who Reinvented Blue
Maybe Yves Klein was an attention whore. (There was that time he took an empty gallery and called it an exhibition, and the time he had naked models covered in paint roll around on canvas.) But he created (and patented) an ultramarine pigment that countless artists before him had tried without success to stabilize.