“The Kennedy Center’s expansion project, now with a $250 million fundraising campaign, will open Sept. 7, 2019 — more than two years late and $100 million over its original cost. Arts center officials offered the first glimpse of the building Tuesday at a hard-hat tour for community members. Under construction on 4.6 acres south of the original facility, the building will encourage interaction between artists and audiences with glass-walled classrooms and studios, Kennedy Center President Deborah Rutter said.”
Author: Matthew Westphal
Two Rediscovered Rembrandts Unveiled In Amsterdam
“The Leiden Collection, owned by the US billionaire Thomas Kaplan and his wife Daphne Recanati Kaplan, has unveiled two paintings newly attributed to Rembrandt at the Rembrandt House Museum in Amsterdam. The Special Guests display, which opened last month, marks the return of the Portrait of Petronella Buys (1635) and Man with a Sword (around 1640-44) to the Netherlands for the first time in a century.”
Chicago ‘Rock-A-Blues’ Star Eddy Clearwater Dead At 83
“Often performing with a large American Indian headdress or a wide, flat-brimmed Stetson hat, Mr. Clearwater commanded the crowd’s attention. He duckwalked across the stage and liked to wade into the audience with his guitar. Though classified as a Chicago bluesman, his mostly original repertoire combined elements of gospel, soul and rock-and-roll — particularly the music of Chuck Berry and Louis Jordan — into a boisterous musical stew that he termed ‘rock-a-blues.’ The Blues Foundation inducted him into its hall of fame in 2016.”
Inside New York’s Number-One Saxophone Repair Shop
“The shop — in the heart of the Diamond District, on West 47th Street — is crowded with used instruments and the whimsical sculptures that [Perry] Ritter creates during his downtime from spare saxophone parts. … His workbench is nestled in one of the densest commercial hives in the city, in a building largely occupied by jewelry merchants.”
Chinese Censors Cancel Australian Play Over – Salty Language? Or Subject Matter?
David Williamson’s The Removalists, written in 1971 and now a standard part of school curricula, was to receive its Chinese premiere as part of an arts festival in Beijing. The playwright says that the official reason for the ban – which comes as relations between China and Australia are at a low point – was “that the language was too salty and that the play was too violent … [But] there’s some speculation that that mightn’t have been the real reason. Because the play does depict police authority well and truly overstepping its mark, which is a sensitive issue here in China at the moment.”
Top Posts From AJBlogs 06.05.18
Changes
This month I reach what the Social Security system thinks is my “full retirement” age. Knowing this was coming, I have been reflecting on the future of both Engaging Matters and of my business, ArtsEngaged. … read more
AJBlog: Engaging Matters Published 2018-06-05
Brubeck And Desmond Through Fresh Ears
A new Rifftides reader, Orsolya S., joined us recently. Now and then she sends comments, an activity we encourage among all readers. Her latest communique concerns a recording that has been exciting … read more
AJBlog: RiffTides Published 2018-06-05
The Moody Splendor of the Moors
I was corresponding by email recently with Jay Jeff Jones, an American expat playwright, journalist, and poet, who is working on a new edition of Jeff Nuttall’s Bomb Culture, a long-out-of-print classic about British counterculture … read more
AJBlog: Straight|Up Published 2018-06-05
More delight
In my last post, I called out with great delight a performance of Scheherazade, conducted by Leif Segerstam, in which Segerstam and the orchestra shouted at the climax. Exhilarating! I blogged about it, not to … read more
AJBlog: Sandow Published 2018-06-05
The Vermont Town That Has Way Too Many Organs
“In its heyday, the Estey Organ Company factory was the beating, bleating heart of Brattleboro, Vermont. It produced more than half a million organs in total and, at its peak, employed more than 500 people. On a fateful day in 1960, however, the assembly lines shut down and workers departed. After nearly a century in operation, the organ factory had gone silent. And then, like the most improbable boomerangs, the organs started coming back.”
What’s Radical About This New Translation Of The New Testament
“[David Bentley] Hart’s stated aim is to offer an ‘almost pitilessly literal translation’ that is ‘not shaped by later theological and doctrinal history’, with the intention of making ‘the familiar strange, novel, and perhaps newly compelling’. … One of his most pointed observations relates to the stark contrast between the conservative and socially compliant nature of many modern Christians and the disturbing character of the first converts … These are people, he wryly observes, whom ‘most of us would find fairly obnoxious: civically reprobate, ideologically unsound, economically destructive, politically irresponsible, socially discreditable’.”
When Allen Ginsberg Went Off On RFK Over Pot
When the Ginsberg showed up at Senator Kennedy’s office without an appointment, the senator heard the poet out “on everything from the plight of heroin addicts to federal drug policy to global warming to the war in Vietnam to the invention of LSD to the degraded state of New York City.” Then Ginsberg asked RFK if he had ever smoked marijuana, and Kennedy said no. Uh-oh. (And before he finally left, Ginsberg insisted on singing Kennedy the Hare Krishna mantra.)
So Where’s All The Argument Over The NY Times List Of 25 Greatest American Plays Of The Last 25 Years?
“Apart from stray quibbles over which plays should and shouldn’t have made the list …, there has so far been extraordinarily little chatter, let alone pushback, about this audacious stab at canon-making. Ten years ago there would have been blog posts galore, perhaps a piss take in Time Out New York …, a snarky side-eye from Michael Riedel.” Rob Weinert-Kendt has a none-too-cheerful answer to the question.