“It surprises me that I didn’t get left behind. I’ve always managed to keep up. In the process of keeping busy, I’ve always stayed relevant. And that is a surprise to me. Because they still will allow me to get out there – particularly in the theatre – it’s total illusion. If you can sell that you’re 50, the audience will believe you.”
Author: Matthew Westphal
How David Zinman Got The Idea Of 10PM Concerts For Young Adults
The conductor recounts how he asked his 16-year-old son, “‘You like classical music, but why don’t you go to concerts?’ He said ‘but none of my friends go to concerts’. I said ‘why don’t they go to concerts?’ He thought about it and said ‘they don’t want to be seen with their parents’. A little light bulb went off in my head: Let’s have late concerts where parents aren’t allowed.”
Opera News Stops Reviewing Met Opera Following Pressure From Met Boss
The magazine, published by the Metropolitan Opera Guild (a fundraising and support organization) and the most widely circulated classical music publication in the US, made the decision following strenuous objections by Metropolitan Opera general manager Peter Gelb to negative reviews in recent issues.
Star Of UK’s Coronation Street Musical Says It’s ‘Bedlam’
“Paul O’Grady has spoken out for the first time about his experiences working on the ‘postponed’ musical Street of Dreams, labelling it ‘bedlam’ and calling on the show’s producers to pay all of the cast and crew involved immediately.” O’Grady, who plays the narrator of the show based on the long-running soap opera, called the show’s producers “incompetent, inept and unprofessional.”
A New Showplace For African Art In Johannesburg
“A former gas station, car dealership and dental school building are helping to transform central Johannesburg from a hotbed of crime to a hub for art. The repurposed buildings make up the Wits Art Museum, which open[ed] Saturday as a showcase for African art.”
Can Cable-Style Edgy Drama Series Work On Major Network TV?
For all the high-profile success of shows about urban grit (The Wire, Boardwalk Empire), serial killers (Dexter), and vampires (True Blood), “there is no guarantee the mass audiences that tune into broadcast networks – or their advertisers – will be as enthusiastic.”
Houghton Mifflin Files For Bankruptcy Protection
“Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishers Inc, whose textbooks have been a staple in American schoolhouses for decades” – and which publishes such evergreens as the Curious George series and Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings trilogy – “filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection on Monday after agreeing with creditors to eliminate $3.1 billion of debt.”
Philip K. Dick, Visionary (This Is Not A Metaphor)
Beginning in 1974 (following dental surgery), the science-fiction author “experienced and indeed enjoyed a couple of nightlong psychedelic visions with phantasmagoric visual light shows. These hypnagogic episodes continued off and on, together with hearing voices and prophetic dreams, until his death eight years later at age 53. … Now, was this just bad acid or good sodium pentothal?” (Or something else altogether?)
Long Upheaval In Nepal Changes Country’s Art Scene
A ten-year civil war, the end of monarchy and subsequent political turmoil have begun to transform what had been Nepal’s tradition-heavy and somewhat stultified visual arts. For instance, one recent, and representativce, mural added to mountain peaks and curlicue winds a gas pump, a retreating bus, and a visa to somewhere abroad.
Paris’s Shakespeare & Co. Perks Up, Thanks To Next-Generation Owner
Sylvia Beach Whitman, whose father, longtime owner George Whitman, died in December at 98, now hosts readings, small concerts, and festivals at the legendary little English-language bookshop. She still lets young writers and artists sleep there (at what they call “Hotel Tumbleweed”), but she has the place cleaned properly, and she’s put in (just imagine!) a cash register.