Author: Matthew Westphal

When Merce Cunningham Collaborated With A Computer Program

No, it wasn’t to generate random patterns of movement; rather the contrary, in fact. Ellen Jacobs, for years his company’s publicist, recounts how, at age 70, when his body could no longer demonstrate to his dancers everything he wanted, he began using a software program called LifeForms: “He carefully moved the limbs of these avatars — he called them Michelin men — joint by joint, in multiple directions, and wondrous new possibilities appeared.” – The New York Times

There Was An Entire Lost Generation Of Gifted African-American Conductors

“[They] led major concerts by Arturo Toscanini’s NBC Symphony, gave the Philadelphia Orchestra premiere of the Shostakovich Symphony No. 8, and led the Metropolitan Opera’s celebrated rehabilitation of Meyerbeer’s Le Prophète. Most of them were robbed of that over-60 elder-statesman period when the world was likely to more widely celebrate their accumulation of artistic wisdom. But there’s ample proof that Dean Dixon (1915–76) and Calvin Simmons (1950–82) had many great moments well before then. They can be counted among the finest of any generation.” David Patrick Stearns looks at Dixon, Simmons, and their Black colleagues, and at why many never reached that elder-statesman stage. – WQXR (New York City)

Using Greek Tragedy To Make Sense Of The Pandemic

Elif Batuman on watching Theater of War’s online production of Sophocles’s Oedipus the King: “You’ve never really seen Oedipus, I found myself thinking, till you’ve seen it during a plague. The plague hadn’t really stood out to me on previous readings, yet it was the key to everything. … No matter how many times you see it pulled off, the magic trick is always a surprise: how a text that is hundreds or thousands of years old turns out to be about the thing that’s happening to you, however modern and unprecedented you thought it was.” – The New Yorker

Singer-Conductor Claudio Cavina, Major Force In Monteverdi Revival, Dead At 58

He first came to prominence on recordings by Rinaldo Alessandrini and Concerto Italiano, especially their landmark series of Monteverdi’s madrigals. He then broke off to found his own consort of singers and instrumentalists, called La Venexiana, with whom he performed and recorded all of Monteverdi’s operas, madrigals, and major sacred works as well as music of other 16th- and 17th-century Italian composers, winning a pack of awards along the way. – Presto Classical

Why Was There Just A Twitter War Over Van Gogh And Realism?

Way back on August 9, “Margarita” tweeted side-by-side images of van Gogh’s Café Terrace at Night and a rendition of the same scene in Arles by contemporary painter Haixia Liu (not to be confused with Thomas Kinkade); she appended the message “Should expose how overrated Van Gogh is.” It took until this past weekend, but the Twitterverse did notice, and it … reacted. – ARTnews

Atlanta Opera, Pushed By COVID, Moves To New Business Model For Fall 2020

“‘This pandemic has devastated so many lives and businesses,’ [general director Tomer] Zvulun said. ‘But it has also been a major catalyst in accelerating our shift to a business model that we have been discussing for years: creating a company of players, performing in nontraditional spaces,” — for this fall, that means alternating performances of Pagliacci and The Kaiser of Atlantis in an open-sided circus tent — “and developing our video and streaming capabilities.'” – ArtsATL