“A composer and arranger of church music, Ledger is much loved for his recordings with the Choir of King’s College, Cambridge, including a Christmas favourite, the Festival of Nine Lessons and Carols. … He was a close associate of composer Benjamin Britten and worked with Peter Pears at the Aldeburgh Festival.”
Author: Matthew Westphal
Pitch Battle: Watch Four Starchitects Compete For A Big Manhattan Commission
“You’ve seen them posing in magazines, performing in lecture theatres and maybe even shouting across the office. But it is unlikely you’ve ever sat behind a boardroom table and given Richard Rogers, Zaha Hadid, Rem Koolhaas or Norman Foster a grilling.”
India’s Town Full Of Architects
Auroville, a settlement in the southern state of Tamil Nadu named after the yogic philosopher Sri Aurobindo, has somewhere between 25 and 100 architects out of a population of 2,000. And it’s a place where they can, at least on a small scale, put some of their more daring ideas into practice.
Ryan Murphy, TV’s Auteur Of Camp
“‘The kind of people who always go on about whether a thing is in good taste invariably have very bad taste,’ the playwright Joe Orton once wrote. That motto might be stitched into the silk pillowcase of the TV creator [of Glee, American Horror Story and The New Normal], whose taste is called into question nearly every week.”
Trapped In A Life Of Irony (The Hipster’s Predicament)
“The ironic frame functions as a shield against criticism. The same goes for ironic living. Irony is the most self-defensive mode, as it allows a person to dodge responsibility for his or her choices, aesthetic and otherwise. … Somehow, directness has become unbearable to us.”
Relax – Irony Is Not Going To Overpower Us All
“The seesaw of earnest to irony is something that’s been a part of life, a part of humor, a part of entertainment for centuries, even if it appears differently over time. It’s not a Gen X or Gen Y or Gen Next ‘thing’; it’s a seesaw that need not end even when twentysomethings who currently live in Bushwick and play the ukelele have reached middle age and are getting their tattoos removed by laser.”
Papyrus Sends A Message To Paper: Stop Obsessing On Your Own Obsolescence
“We all feel for you – my pals parchment, clay tablet, cave walls, the whole gang. But as technology marches on, it’s time to move out of the way.”
Peter Greenaway Says Film Has Missed Its Calling
“It is Greenaway’s long-held belief that cinema has somehow missed its calling. It’s a visual medium in thrall to the written word. ‘Whether you’re Godard or Almodovar or Scorsese, it’s text, text, text. Everything begins with the text and this is a source of great anguish to me. So please let cinema get on with doing what it does best, which is expressing ideas in visual terms.'”
Met Museum Sued Over Admission Fees
“Two members of the Metropolitan Museum of Art have sued the museum, contending that it misleads the public into thinking that its admission fees – $25 for adults, and less for seniors and students – are mandatory and not simply suggested.”
Can Carlos Acosta Revive Cuba’s Stillborn National Dance Academy?
“It has the ring of a modern Cuban fairy tale: A handsome ballet star returns to his native land and discovers an abandoned dance school, which he vows to restore to life. Yet Carlos Acosta’s dream of founding a dance center in one of Cuba’s most storied but neglected revolution-era buildings has touched off a bitter squabble.”