“Last year, when Ruth Mackenzie was appointed director of the Cultural Olympiad, the very concept was at a low ebb. No one seemed to know exactly what it meant.” With the launch this week of the London 2012 Festival, the Cultural Olympiad’s flagship, Mackenzie seems to be sorting things out.
Author: Matthew Westphal
John And Yoko’s ‘Bed-In’ Sign Could Fetch $100K
“Lennon and Ono’s seven-day ‘bed-in for peace’ was held in 1969 at the Queen Elizabeth hotel in Montreal. … The sign (felt-tip pen on foam board), reading Bed Peace, is expected to fetch up to £100,000 at auction.”
Harper Lee Told Her Penpal, ‘Please Don’t Put This On The Internet.’ He’s Selling Her Letters Online
“The 13 letters, all written to a single fan [named Don Salter], are being sold separately. They were written over a span of years, from 1960 to 2009. … Five items are for sale at a fixed price, and eight of the letters are up for auction” at an online auction house.
Lloyd Webber’s West End Theatres Consider Closing For London Olympics
“Andrew Lloyd Webber’s theatre company is considering closing its West End shows during next year’s Olympics, with a massive slump expected to hit tourism bookings during the Games fortnight next July and August.”
Mapping The World’s Tweets, By Language
“It’s as if someone took one of those composite satellite maps – you know, impossibly showing the whole world at night, the darkness broken by hubs and strings of artificial light – and gave it the power of speech. For the riot of colours on these maps correspond to the diversity of languages spoken, or rather: typed, on Twitter.”
Rehabilitating The Russian Constructivists
“What they created was probably the most intensive and creative art and architectural movement of the 20th century, a sourcebook so copious that there’s scarcely any movement since that wasn’t anticipated by something tried and discarded between 1915 and 1935.”
Mikhail Baryshnikov Can’t (Won’t) Stop Dancing
“I’m not dancing in white tights, after all. I’m dancing in street shoes and in jeans sometimes. It’s called dance, too. There are all kinds of movement – look at artists in tango or flamenco or butoh or hula. People dance at any age’.”
Half-Blood Blues Wins Giller Prize
“Calgary-born novelist Esi Edugyan has prevailed against almost 150 other Canadian novelists to win the 2011 Scotiabank Giller Prize, worth $50,000.”
A ‘Life Change’ For Winner Of Canada’s Siminovitch Theatre Prize
“Playwright Joan MacLeod leads a busy life: teaching writing full-time at the University of Victoria – and currently serving as acting department chair – while raising, with her husband, a 15-year-old daughter.” The $75,000 award, she says, “marks the end of full-time teaching for me.”
A Liszt-Hating Critic Begins To Come Around
David Patrick Stearns (before coming around): “I was feeling personally betrayed whenever one of my favorite musicians came out with a Liszt anniversary-year recording. I nearly wept upon seeing Pierre Boulez’s granite-chiseled face appear on the cover of a Liszt piano concerto album with Daniel Barenboim … Yes, Boulez – the high-minded composer/conductor who has no time for Brahms and once thought Verdi was stupid. And now … Liszt?”