One of the US Works Progress Administration’s projects in the 1930s was a collection of interviews of the last surviving freed slaves from the American South. Some 27 of those interviews were caught on tape (including one conducted by Zora Neale Hurston), and the Library of Congress has now made those recordings available.
Author: Matthew Westphal
Network TV Is Now 60 Years Old, And It’s Hardly Changed A Bit
“Critics are forever spouting off about TV’s ‘golden age.’ Not a few of them think we’re in the middle of it right now. But the fact is that virtually all of TV’s formulaic programming genres were in existence 60 years ago, and that some had already been perfected.”
Detroit Symphony Ends Strike-Plagued Year With $1.8M Deficit
The Detroit Symphony Orchestra ran a $1.8-million deficit on an operating budget of $17.4 million in 2011 … DSO executive vice president Paul Hogle said it was a miracle that the deficit wasn’t as high as $5 million or more considering the [year’s] extraordinary tumult.”
Meet The BBC’s Next Kenneth Clark
James Fox: “Some of my students apparently wrote to the BBC, asking it to employ me as a new arts presenter. I knew nothing of this note, but a year later I received an email out of the blue from the BBC arts commissioner inviting me to go in for a meeting. I went, clueless, of course. A few months later I was out filming my first programme.”
How One Author Self-Published A Hit Novel Without Selling Any Actual Books
This past spring, Darcie Chan “bought some ads on Web sites targeting e-book readers, paid for a review from Kirkus Reviews, and strategically priced her book at 99 cents to encourage readers to try it. She’s now attracting bids from foreign imprints, movie studios and audio-book publishers, without selling a single copy in print.”
Rodgers and Hammerstein’s Only TV Musical Finally Headed For Broadway
Cinderella, the only work the pair created specifically for television, first aired in 1957 with Julie Andrews in the title role. The piece has since been staged many times in the US and abroad (including at New York City Opera), but never on Broadway – until next season.
Matthew Bourne On Where He Gets His Imagery
“Not coming from a classical ballet background has been really good for me … My early loves were film and theatre and that’s really where I get all of my imagery from. And … I think it connects with audiences in a much stronger way because of that.”
Hugh Jackman, The Bi-est Guy On Broadway
“Eight times a week he clefts himself in twain for the delectation of largely female audiences who love him just for his selves. Let’s face it. Mr. Jackman is, unapologetically and triumphantly, the bi-est guy in town: bicultural, bimorphic, binational, biprofessional and, for entertainment purposes, bisexual.” (Emphasis added.)
The Story Of The Scrapheap Orchestra
“Driven by the idea that we take the highly evolved sound of an orchestra for granted, [the BBC] challenged skilled instrument-makers to recreate the sections of the orchestra with nothing but freely available junk. They then challenged the BBC Concert Orchestra to get a beautiful sound from this wreckage, and asked Charles Hazlewood to conduct them in a Prom.”
Don’t Drill Into That Vasari Fresco! Not Even If There’s A Leonardo Behind It
“More than 300 scholars have signed a petition to Florence’s mayor and that city’s top art authority to stop a project that hopes to find a Leonardo da Vinci masterpiece behind a fresco by Giorgio Vasari in the Palazzo Vecchio, now city hall.”