“Joza Karas, 82, a Czechoslovakian-born violin teacher who spent decades tracking down and reviving musical compositions written by Jews in the Nazi concentration camp Theresienstadt, died Nov. 28 at his home in Bloomfield, Conn. He had congestive heart failure.”
Author: Matthew Westphal
Yes, But Is It Art? Ch. 487 – Early Scientific Photography
“Should we consider “Brought to Light: Photography and the Invisible, 1840-1900″ an art exhibition just because the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art has organized it? It surveys photography’s extension of human visual capacities, primarily in the hands of scientists, and it presents us with some pictorially striking images. But artistic intent figured in few, if any, of them.”
NPR Cuts Two Programs And 7 Percent Of Staff
“Faced with a sharp decline in revenue, National Public Radio said Wednesday it will pare back its programming and institute its first organization-wide layoffs in 25 years.” The network will lay off 64 employees, about 7% of its workforce, and eliminate the weekday programs Day to Day and News & Notes.
You Really Do Catch More (Proverbial) Flies With (Proverbial) Honey
“We found that social networks have clusters of happy and unhappy people within them that reach out to three degrees of separation. A person’s happiness is related to the happiness of their friends, their friends’ friends, and their friends’ friends’ friends – that is, to people well beyond their social horizon. We found that happy people tend to be located in the center of their social networks and to be located in large clusters of other happy people. And we found that each additional happy friend increases a person’s probability of being happy by about 9%.”
London’s Holocaust Musical To Close
Fulfilling the predictions of many a dubious observer, Imagine This, a let’s-put-on-a-show musical set in the Warsaw Ghetto (and said show is about Masada, no less) is closing after only a month on the London stage. Producer Beth Trachtenberg blames the press for its “narrow-minded critical belief that musicals are limited in their emotional impact and ability to deal with meaningful subject matter in a powerful and sensitive manner.”
Boos And Bombshells At La Scala Opening Night
A temporary truce between unions may have let opening night at La Scala proceed as scheduled, but that doesn’t mean it went smoothly. A gale of boos and catcalls landed on Daniele Gatti, apparently for his decision to replace the lead tenor 24 hours before curtain. Several of the singers received very mixed reactions from the crowd as well. In keeping with longstanding tradition, this major occasion on the Italian artistic and social calendar featured myriad protests on the plaza in front of the opera house; inside, there was another shocker as society’s grande dames admitted to wearing gowns that weren’t new.
London Gallery (Just) Beats The Financial Meltdown
The Whitechapel Gallery in London’s East End is entering the final phase of a two-year renovation and expansion. “‘Our timing could not have been better,’ Blazwick said with relief. In 2004, when the economy was still robust, she was able to secure about $5.4 million from the Heritage Lottery Fund for the expansion, seed money that encouraged others to give as well. She said the Whitechapel had raised all but about $735,000 of the nearly $20 million needed.”
A Final Book From David Foster Wallace
“While some rumors persist that there’s an unfinished novel David Foster Wallace was working on before he died in September, at least one work from the author is definitely on the horizon. Wallace’s publisher, Little, Brown, is going to release This Is Water in April 2009, which is the address the author delivered at Kenyon College’s commencement in 2005.”
Miami City Ballet Resorts To Taped Music
“Miami City Ballet will forgo live orchestra and perform to recorded music for the second half of its 2008-09 season to save money. Blaming the economy, ballet officials said Tuesday they cut the orchestra because of declining ticket sales and donor contributions. Live music for a full season would cost $480,000, but only $188,280 had been raised as of Thursday.”
Who Says Schumann Couldn’t Orchestrate?
“[P]ut Simon Rattle in front of a period instrument band like the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment and it’s like having one’s ears syringed. There wasn’t a single moment in either Schumann’s 2nd or 4th symphonies where one felt it was down to the conductor’s sleight of hand to ensure the clarity of inner voices. The revelations weren’t just in textural but harmonic transparency. You listened differently, more attentively, you finally heard what Schumann was about.”