Author: Matthew Westphal

Retired SF Symphony Exec Peter Pastreich To Head Philharmonia Baroque

In his two decades as the Symphony’s executive director, the 71-year-old Pastreich “shepherded an extensive expansion of the orchestra’s budget and endowment, oversaw the construction of Davies Symphony Hall, … and helped establish the Symphony as one of the nation’s leading orchestras.” His and the Philharmonia Baroque board’s goal “is to increase our presence in other markets.”

How Can We Possibly Appreciate Classical Chinese Poetry? Yet We Do.

“[S]o many of the features of the Chinese language” – the vocal tones, the lack of verb tenses, the very fact of words as ideographs rather than groups of letters – “which poets manipulate in complex and subtle ways, are totally untranslatable into English.” Yet there’s an abundance of classic Chinese verse in English: “despite all the barriers, this poetry does communicate, even urgently, to modern Western readers.” How do translators make this communication happen?

A Historical Encyclopedia In Carved Wood

A new wharenui near Auckland “is not just a splendid example of traditional meeting-house architecture, but a three-dimensional ‘reference library.’ The carvings on every surface, including the floor, tell a comprehensive story of the Maori experience, from the earliest times until the present.” (One of the bas-reliefs includes a map of Auckland’s freeway system.)

‘Enhanced Reality,’ Coming To A Smartphone Near You

“Simply, the technology allows you to point a phone at an object and see an enhanced version of reality on the screen – whether a mountain labelled with its height, a person tagged with their name, or celestial objects properly labelled in the night sky.[…] That’s powerful, but there is more to come, especially when these apps start to tap into social websites.”

Invite A Screw-Up To Speak At Your Next Commencement!

“Eminence is the one universal precondition to being a commencement speaker, and an implied (often explicit) theme of the speeches is, ‘Here lieth the path to success and happiness.’ There are two problems with this formula. The first is that any narrative of success is bound to be at least a little bit dull. The second is that successful people are almost never able to pinpoint what it was that made them so. […] Failure, on the other hand, is Harvard, Yale, and the University of Heidelberg rolled into one.”

More Madoff Damage: Arts Scholarships For Young Israelis

The America-Israel Cultural Foundation used to give out about $2 million annually in study grants to promising musicians, dancers and visual artists. “But this year, disaster looms. The foundation’s endowment of about $14 million was in the hands of Bernard L. Madoff and evaporated in his Ponzi scheme. … [The AICF] expects to give around 350 scholarships next year, down from about 800.”

Yet More Job Cuts At WNET

“As individual donations and corporate sponsorship revenue continue to fall short, the public television stations WNET (Channel 13) and WLIW (Channel 21) said Wednesday that they planned to reduce their staffs by an additional total of about 50 people. That will bring the number of layoffs since January, when a first round of reductions was announced, to about 130 people, or nearly 25 percent of the staff.”