“Courtesy of Google, in collaboration with the Israel Antiquities Authority, the new Leon Levy Dead Sea Scrolls Digital Library is now home to detailed digitized photographs of thousands of biblical and non-biblical manuscripts.”
Author: Matthew Westphal
US’s Only Arts TV Network Dropped By Second-Largest Cable Provider
“Time Warner Cable plans to drop the small Santa Monica-based channel Ovation from its programming lineup at year’s end – a blow to the independent network that has attempted to elevate TV coverage of the arts and contemporary culture.”
Unsilent Night – Composer Phil Kline On The World’s Favorite Christmas Sound Installation
“Advent is about expectation and longing, and I started by asking how that applies to somebody in the big city who, like so many of us, comes from somewhere else. You can be alone here in the middle of eight million people. I felt somehow with music I could put something into that void. … [It’s] the whole accretion of a lifetime of befuddled spiritual pursuits.”
World’s Oldest Recordings Of Family Christmas Discovered
“Curators at the National Museum of London have discovered what they believe to be the first ever recordings of a family Christmas. They were made 110 years ago by the Wall family who lived in New Southgate in North London. There are 24 clear recordings on wax cylinders which were made using a phonograph machine between 1902 and 1917.”
Catching Up With Sergei Polunin, Ballet’s Most Famous Runaway
The prodigiously gifted young Ukrainian made headlines back in January when he abruptly quit the Royal Ballet, the company that trained him and made him a principal at age 19, and mused about leaving dance altogether and opening a tattoo parlor. Well, for now, he’s safely in Moscow and still dancing …
Study Confirms That Being A Rock Star Can Shorten Your Life
“The conclusion: If longevity is your objective, choose another line of work. And if you must be a pop musician, join a band. Solo performers were twice as likely to die early as members of a group were. … Lest anyone miss the point, [the co-authors] titled their paper ‘Dying to be Famous’.”
If Salman Rushdie Blurbed His Own Books
Well, the man has provided a pull-quote for his own screen adaptation of Midnight’s Children – “I am very proud of this film” is right there on the posters. So one blogger suggests how he might do the same for his novels.
Japan’s Strangest Christmas Tradition: A Bucket Of KFC
“Christmas isn’t a national holiday in Japan … yet a bucket of ‘Christmas Chicken’ (the next best thing to turkey – a meat you can’t find anywhere in Japan) is the go-to meal on the big day. And it’s all thanks to the insanely successful ‘Kurisumasu ni wa kentakkii!’ (Kentucky for Christmas!) marketing campaign in 1974.”
La Scala Ballet Dancers Declare Strike Over Raked Stage
“The heavily unionised dancers are fighting the use in a production of Romeo and Juliet … of a stage with a 10-degree slope which they say gives them backache, while chorus members are refusing to obey the choreographer’s request that they move in time to the music.”
Dutch Broadcasting’s Jazz Orchestra Saved From Oblivion
Just last week, the Metropole Orchestra, a hybrid pops-orchestra-and-jazz-big-band, had been told that its state funding was to be eliminated and it would have to shut down by next August. But the new coalition government has provided a €7 million grant to support the Metropole to 2017, though the ensemble will now have to earn or raise about half its budget on its own.