Author: Matthew Westphal

Arts Professionals Eye Brazil’s New President Warily

“[Jair] Bolsonaro has said that he wants to dissolve or merge various government bodies, including the ministry of culture, and has expressed little support toward rebuilding the devastated National Museum in Rio de Janeiro, telling the Associated Press earlier this year: ‘It caught fire already. What do you want me to do?’ … Few [arts professionals] would speak about their concerns on the record, perhaps because of Bolsonaro’s apparent sympathies with authoritarianism, or the fact that government funding supports a significant part of Brazil’s cultural production.”

Arts Orgs Have Big Social Impact In Metro Seattle, Finds Study

The ArtsFund study of King County, Wash.,”finds that ‘arts are a viable and proven — yet often underutilized and unacknowledged — strategy to positively transform and benefit our communities.’ Translation: A robust arts scene with well-funded arts organizations isn’t just ‘nice to have.’ … This study proves the arts can help solve serious problems facing this region in particular, including homelessness, inequitable and inadequate education, and general divisiveness. The only problem? Well, there’s a couple problems.”

NYT Dance Critic Alastair Macaulay Gives His First Exit Interview

“Q: Did you ever write something that you later regretted or reconsidered?
A: I’m not complacent. I regret commas, adjectives, clumsy turns of phrase, even if nobody else is bothered by them. Worse, I’m dismayed by the factual inaccuracies I’ve committed. Opinions I regret less. So what if you hated the world premiere of The Rite of Spring or Waiting for Godot? Those are tough pieces that are easy to misunderstand even now.”

Boston Ballet Opens New Project For Female Choreographers

“[Artistic director Mikko] Nissinen [has] established the new ChoreograpHER Initiative. It begins Thursday and Friday with sold-out performances in the company’s BB@home series — a showcase hosted at Boston Ballet’s South End headquarters — that, for the first time, will feature six emerging women choreographers who are dancers within the company.”

There Are Better Ways To Measure A Publisher’s Success Than Money

“How do we measure commercial success? There seem to me to be five measures, all important but all with shortcomings.” Richard Charkin, former head of Bloomsbury Publishing and former president of the International Publishers Association, argues that “building up cash reserves is not in itself an indication of success. What really matters, in my opinion, is the building up of publishing assets.”

How Steve Reich Came To Be Writing For Orchestra Again After Three Decades

“I was in L.A. because we go to L.A. every January or February … And I was looking at the orchestral setup here [at the L.A. Phil] and I thought, ‘Hmm, those first desk strings are really in a tight semicircle.’ They could hear each other very well. And the first two flutes and first two oboes and first two clarinets are ditto, also close in. If I were to add two vibraphones and two pianos, I’d have exactly the piece I was working on at the time, Runner … This is the ensemble that is [already] sitting there in most orchestras.”