“The four-year extension … maintains what has proved a winning formula: the pairing of a conductor whose fame extends beyond the classical music world and is a powerful audience draw with an orchestra that has developed perhaps the strongest reputation in the country for innovative programming and community outreach.” – The New York Times
Author: Matthew Westphal
When Piet Mondrian Painted Landscapes
“Decades before becoming New York’s Pied Piper for nonobjective art, he had established a reputation in Europe for navigating and remaking realism in his own image.” – Hyperallergic
New Year’s Manifesto
The New Year seems to be a good time to try to set down some of my basic thoughts about the need for and the path to effective community engagement. As often happens on this blog, this is a very rough first draft. Refinements will follow. – Doug Borwick
Intimacy Coordinators Are Making Sex Scenes Sexier As Well As Safer
On stages and film/video sets alike, the practitioners of this new profession help actors feel secure physically and emotionally — which, naturally, help the actors do their jobs better. What’s more, the intimacy pros are able to choreograph and describe the movements to be done better than directors can. Writer Lizzie Feidelson reports on how exactly they work. – The New York Times Magazine
‘Reality Is The Better Writer’: Why Gabriel García Márquez’s Journalism Is Even More Important Than His Fiction
“In fact, while his novels and stories may have won him global renown, journalism was his first calling. Not only was it foundational to his development as a writer, but it also remained integral to his work and public persona throughout his life, from his early days as a cub reporter in Colombia until his death in Mexico in 2014.” – The Nation
After Losing Parts Of Three Fingers, Pianist Is Back At The Keyboard
“As he lay bleeding on his kitchen floor in Bedford, the snow blower that lopped off the tips of three of his fingers still sputtering outside, the same question kept rattling around in Murray Daniels’s head: Will I ever play piano again?” – The Boston Globe
Nancy Lewis, Who Brought Monty Python To America, Dead At 76
After having worked as a publicist for some of rock’s all-time greats, she discovered two of the English comedy troupe’s LPs and began encouraging her contacts at FM radio stations to play the records. Then, once Monty Pyton developed an American fan base, she convinced a reluctant PBS to air their television series — and later encouraged them to bring a lawsuit against ABC that set a key precedent in copyright law. – The New York Times
Bollywood’s Female Stars Speak Out In Support Of Protesters As Male Stars Keep Mum
“Unlike Hollywood, where actors and filmmakers have [frequently] spoken out against governments, A-listers in Bollywood — the world’s second-best paying film industry — have largely remained apolitical public personas. … Now, as protests spread across India over a controversial new citizenship law and attacks on students, Bollywood women are breaking with that pattern even as the biggest male actors … stay quiet.” – OZY
Why Do The ‘Star Wars’ Films Keep Bombing In The World’s Second-Biggest Movie Market?
“One after another, Star Wars movies have flopped in China, defying efforts to bring one of the most successful franchises in history into a market that has printed money for the heroes, monsters and robots of other films. … Avengers: Endgame made more in its 2019 opening weekend in China than all the Star Wars premieres combined.” Why? You could think of it as an accident of history. – The New York Times
Why Wasn’t ‘Goodnight Moon’ One Of The Ten Most Circulated Books At The New York Public Library? One Reason
“Goodnight Moon, by Margaret Wise Brown, would have made the Top 10 list and might have topped it, the library notes, but for the fact that ‘influential New York Public Library children’s librarian Anne Carroll Moore disliked the story so much when it was published in 1947 that the Library didn’t carry it … until 1972.’ Who was Anne Carroll Moore, and what was her problem with the great Goodnight Moon?” Dan Kois looks into the matter. – Slate