“Invites were extended to a broad range of music creators, including vocalists, songwriters, instrumentalists, producers and engineers. All 900 invitees, who were pre-qualified to vote by the Recording Academy, are female and/or people of color and/or under 39.”
Author: Matthew Westphal
Philadelphia Theatre Company Makes High-Stakes Return From (Semi-)Hiatus
After years of money troubles and more than one near-collapse, the city’s flagship non-profit stage company recruited a new producing artistic director and then took 16 months off, presenting only a few imported events. Now that new boss, Paige Price, has gotten the outstanding $1 million in debt paid off and rearranged operations, and next week PTC returns to main-stage productions with Lynn Nottage’s Sweat. Will the audience return? And what comes afterward?
This Woman Is Trying To Make Arles The Cultural Capital Of The South Of France
With a $175 million arts complex called Luma Arles, Maja Hoffmann (an heir to the Hoffmann-La Roche pharmaceuticals fortune) “is trying to transform [the city of 35,000] through art, much in the same way that the artist Donald Judd reimagined a town called Marfa in Texas, or the Dia Art Foundation rebuilt the upstate New York town of Beacon, using art as a draw and an economic engine.” (Not to mention, of course, Bilbao — and, of course, the architect of Luma Arles is Frank Gehry.) “In doing so, Ms. Hoffmann has taken on a role that was once reserved for public officials and city planners: imagining the future and then building it.”
BBC Philharmonic’s Next Chief Conductor Is Omer Meir Wellber
The 36-year-old Israeli takes over the Manchester-based broadcasting orchestra next season, succeeding Juanjo Mena. He is also chief conductor at the Semperoper in Dresden.
Violinist Leila Josefowicz Wins $100,000 Avery Fisher Prize
When she was given the prize on Thursday night, she was performing with the New York Philharmonic in Stravinsky’s Violin Concerto — which, as reporter Michael Cooper observes, “counts almost as early music for her.”
MacArthur Fellows For 2018 Include Composer, Violinist, Playwright, Choreographer, Filmmaker/Performance Artist
Among this year’s winners of the five-year, $625,000 “genius” grants are violinist/social justice advocate Vijay Gupta, artist/curator Julie Ault, composer/conductor Matthew Aucoin, playwright Dominique Morisseau, choreographer Okwui Okpokwasili, poet Natalie Diaz, media scholar Lisa Parks, and filmmaker/performance artist Wu Tsang.
When ‘Crossworditis’ Was Like Reefer Madness
In a feature introducing The Atlantic‘s new daily online mini-crossword, Adrienne LaFrance looks back to the pearl-clutching that accompanied the appearance, and rapid popularity, of crossword puzzles in newspapers just over a century ago. ” Doctors warned of the dreaded ‘crossword-puzzle headache.’ … Puzzles were banned in courthouses, where distracted public officials played on the job. … Newspapers reported an uptick of women divorcing puzzle-obsessed husbands. … People worried that puzzles would replace literature, that the utility of three-letter words — gnu! emu! eel! — would rewire people’s brains.”
The New York City Ballet Enters a New Era
The future of the company, as it casts around for new leadership, is just another mystery. Meanwhile, to judge from the choreography and performances on display at the season-opening gala, New York City Ballet is in extremely capable hands.
Recent Listening: van Nuis And Luxion
Petra van Nuis & Dennis Luxion, Because We’re Night People (Petra Sings)
Singer van Nuis and pianist Luxion may not be household names outside of Chicago, but their taste and wide range of musicianship have them perennially in demand in the Windy City.
An Opera About Locusts (Yes, Really)
Rocky Mountain locusts, to be specific. In the late 19th century, trillions of them laid waste to gardens, farms, and fields in the Rocky Mountains and Great Plains. Then, by 1902, they vanished completely. Two University of Wyoming professors, an entomologist and a composer, wrote a chamber opera about the ravenous insects’ rise and fall; it premiered last week in Jackson Hole.