Authors Guild president Douglas Preston: “Counterfeiting, author ‘doppelganging,’ title cloning, ebook piracy, cut-and-paste plagiarism and other rip-offs … the variety and cleverness of these cons is breathtaking.” And they’re difficult to police. – Los Angeles Times
Author: Matthew Westphal
Kraftwerk Wins Two-Decade-Long Copyright Case In EU Court
“The long-running case — which carries potentially large ramifications around the use and licensing of samples in the wider music industry — revolves around a two-second drum sequence from Kraftwerk’s 1977 song ‘Metall auf Metall’ (Metal on Metal), which producers Moses Pelham and Martin Haas sampled and looped in Sabrina Setlur’s 1997 song ‘Nur Mir.'” – Billboard
New York City To Arts Orgs: We Both Know You Have A Diversity Problem — How Are You Going To Fix It?
“After years spent measuring and analyzing the problem, the city is now asking organizations to work on fixing it. In recent months, 33 cultural institutions on city-owned property submitted plans to boost diversity and inclusion among their staff and visitors; if they failed to do so, the city warned, their funding could be cut.” – The New York Times
One-Third Of All England’s National Arts Funding Goes To London
“The £215m given to London organisations in 2018/19 is a much smaller proportion of total Arts Council England (ACE) funding than they received in 2012/13, when 82% went to the capital. But it is still almost 10 times more per capita than some other areas get.” – Arts Professional
Verbier Festival Founders Launch New Festival In Georgia (The Republic)
Avi Shoshani and Martin Engstroem are the joint artistic directors of the Tsinandali Festival, whose house ensemble, conducted by Gianandrea Noseda (music director of the National Symphony in D.C.), is an orchestra of specially chosen young musicians from the three republics of the Caucasus (Georgia, Armenia, and Azerbaijan) as well as Turkey, Kazakhstan, and Ukraine. – Bachtrack
Re-Thinking Aaron Copland
How did Aaron Copland’s film music attempt to counteract the Hollywood influence of Erich Korngold? To what degree did he draw inspiration from the master Mexican populist Silvestre Revueltas? How did the Red Scare change Copland’s style in the 1950s? – Joe Horowitz
30th anniversary treats at Garsington Opera
I’ve been to every single 2019 production at the stupendous opera house facing the Getty family’s cricket ground at Wormsley. The Garsington/Wormsley experience is thrilling, partly because, in addition to the high musical standards, there’s a remarkable level of service. – Paul Levy
Ferruccio Busoni: “A Fresh Gust of Air”
Preparing an August 15 PostClassical Ensemble program for The Phillips Collection in DC, I discovered myself newly entranced by one of the most magical figures in the history of Western music. – Joe Horowitz
Composer Ben Johnston, Who Made Microtonal Avant-Garde Music Sound Sweet, Dead At 93
“Mr. Johnston was an unusual avant-gardist: His music was so melodically engaging, rhythmically vital and structurally transparent that listeners who were unaware of his tuning experiments and their complex theoretical underpinnings heard his works as essentially neo-Romantic.” – The New York Times
The Metropolitan Museum’s In-House Analytical Chemist
“Where others concentrate on specific paintings or sculptures, [Eric] Breitung … takes a broad approach: ‘My focus is the environment of the whole museum.’ That means preparing the Met for some 60 exhibitions each year, in spaces that range from 100 to 20,000 square feet. Design elements for each exhibit contain chemicals that could be damaging, depending on the art.” – National Geographic