“The graying but still spry grandfather of new-music groups, the Ensemble Intercontemporain, said on Friday that the composer and conductor Matthias Pintscher would become its next music director, starting in 2013.” The Paris-group was founded by Pierre Boulez in 1976.
Author: Matthew Westphal
Angel Corella Bids Farewell To ABT
The 36-year-old star gives his final performance with American Ballet Theater, with which he has been a principal for 16 yuears, Thursday night in New York. He will return to Spain to concentrate on his own company, the Barcelona Ballet.
Richard Florida On How The Creative Class Weathers The Recession
“What I would call the super-creative core, they’re very adept at mixing income. It doesn’t mean they don’t struggle, of course they do, but compared to trauma of a blue-collar worker in Detroit or a construction worker in Phoenix, they’ve been able to mix and match [freelance] income and to somehow survive.”
And What, Exactly, Is Art? Here Are 16 Attempts At An Answer
Maria Popova of Brain Pickings gathers thoughts on the matter from the likes of Aristophanes, Oscar Wilde, Leo Tolstoy, Frank Lloyd Wright, Charles Eames, Thomas Merton and Francis Ford Coppola.
Old Jews Telling Jokes, The Nunsense Of The ’10s (Only Funnier)
The new show – whose title describes the contents more or less exactly (not all the cast is old) – has had so much success in its first month Off-Broadway that plans are already in the works to open versions in other cities.
Occupy Anish Kapoor! Anti-Olympic Protestors Take Over Empty House Owned By Artist
“The group, calling itself Bread and Circuses, a reference to its argument that the Olympics are a means of distracting people from pressing economic and social issues, said it had ‘liberated’ the part-derelict five-storey house on Lincoln’s Inn Fields, one of central London’s most picturesque and expensive garden squares.”
Ray Bradbury May Be Immortalized In An Internet Error Message
“Tim Bray, a fan of Bradbury’s writing, is recommending to the Internet Engineering Task Force, which governs such choices, that when access to a website is denied for legal reasons the user is given the status code 451.”
Artnet Magazine Closes Down
“Artnet magazine, an online publication that has served as the journalistic arm of the German-based tech company by that name, will cease publication today, after 16 years as a leading voice in the field of arts journalism.”
St. Louis Symphony Musicians Sign Four-Year Contract (Ahead Of Schedule, No Less!)
“The St. Louis Symphony Orchestra and the American Federation of Musicians, Local 2-197, have agreed on a new four-year labor contract, 14 months before the expiration of the current one. … That means that the SLSO, which suffered a rancorous, damaging work stoppage in 2005, is heading into five years of labor peace.”
Paul Jenkins, 88, Abstract Expressionist Painter
“Early on he adopted a tactile, chance-driven method of painting that privileged almost every technique over brushwork. Dribbling paint Pollock-like onto loose canvasses, he allowed it to roll, pool and bleed, and he sometimes kneaded and hauled on the canvas … The billowy, undulating results could look like psychedelic landscapes or … ‘Abstract Expressionist rococo’.”