The not-for-profit Brass for Africa “has delivered 800 brass instruments to both Uganda and Liberia and reaches over 1000 children weekly. … The children involved include those living in extreme poverty (living either as street children or in a slum), as well as children living in orphanages and rehabilitation centres, living with physical or mental disability, or coping with HIV/AIDS. These children each have two training sessions a week, which include music theory, and … the bands each have at least three performances a year,.”
Author: Matthew Westphal
America’s Poet Laureate Takes Poetry Down America’s Back Roads
“[Tracy K.] Smith, the fifth African-American to hold the title, has put an unexpected spin on it. She is taking poetry on the road around the nation, focusing primarily on rural areas where most writers are unlikely to visit.” She say, “This is a strange period where, nationally, we’re being reminded or convinced of the great divisions that separate coastal and urban communities from the central and rural communities. I’ve always distrusted that. I think there are lots of places where we have something very clear, compelling and welcome to say to one another.”
Trove Of Inscriptions In Sub-Saharan Africa’s Oldest Written Language Discovered
“Archaeologists in Sudan have uncovered a large cache of rare stone inscriptions at the Sedeinga necropolis along the Nile River. The collection of funerary texts are inscribed in Meroitic, one of Africa’s earliest written languages.”
Bayreuth’s Other Opera House Restored To Its Glittering Baroque Glory
The Margravial Opera House, built in 1478 by Frederick the Great’s sister and now one of the best-preserved 18th-century theaters in Europe, is reopening after a six-year, €30 million renovation with one of the operas performed when the house was new, Johann Adolf Hasse’s Artaserse.
Paris Opera Ballet Dancers Condemn Leadership And Complain Of Harassment In Internal Survey
“The complaints were compiled in a survey conducted by Paris Opera Ballet’s internal ‘artistic expression commission’ and sent to 132 dancers. It found that some 77 per cent said they had either been a victim of harassment in the workplace or seen a colleague mistreated … The survey was also damning for dance director Aurélie Dupont as it found that almost 90 per cent of dancers felt that they ‘did not have a quality management’. ‘The current director doesn’t seem to have any management skills or any desire to acquire such skills,’ reportedly wrote one dancer.”
Novelist John Ehle, 92
“Mr. Ehle, who had been married to the British actress Rosemary Harris since 1967, wrote radio dramas, biographies, a nonfiction account of student civil rights protests at Chapel Hill, a history of the Cherokee Nation and a guide to French and British wines and cheeses. But he is best known for his seven Appalachian novels, which were partly inspired by stories he heard from his mother’s family, whose roots in the mountains went back several generations.”
Stop Fussing About The Berkshire Museum’s Sale Of Paintings As If The Place Were A Sacred Temple To Art
Christopher Marcisz makes the case that people don’t go to the Berkshire Museum for art (the area has better art museums already) and barely remember the paintings they see there. People – schoolkids and families, mostly – go for the natural history and science exhibits, and money from the paintings sold will give those exhibits a facelift they desperately need.
Producer Of Broadway ‘To Kill A Mockingbird’ Files Angry Countersuit Against Harper Lee’s Estate
Responding to the suit filed last month by Tonja Carter, Lee’s attorney and executor, arguing that Aaron Sorkin’s script deviates too much from the novel, a $10 million countersuit filed Monday argues that “the Agreement did not give Ms. Lee approval rights over the script of the Play, much less did it give her a right to purport to edit individual lines of dialogue. It certainly did not give such rights to Ms. Carter, who is not an author, editor, literary agent or critic, and has no known expertise whatsoever in theater or writing.”
Pillars At Taj Mahal Destroyed In Violent Storm
Two decorative turrets were blown off the old gates to the site during a storm with heavy rains and winds up to 80 miles per hour. No damage to the white marble mausoleum was found.
Merce Cunningham Trust Plans Worldwide Celebration For His Centennial
“More than 60 presenting organizations and dance companies from around the world are expected to participate, and the Royal Ballet in London will be one of several to tackle Cunningham for the first time. … A highlight of the centennial will be a ‘Night of 100 Solos’ to be performed on the evening of Cunningham’s 100th birthday, April 16, 2019. One hundred dancers will perform anthologies (called Events) of solos from the 1950s to 2009” in Paris, London, New York, and Los Angeles.