Author: ArtsJournal2

Danish TV Is So Popular, Denmark Can’t Keep Up With The Demand

The boom in streaming has led to massive content demands – and nowhere is that more obvious than “in Denmark, where thanks to years of rising demand, there are many more critically-praised series and movies being made than ever before. But what there isn’t, in this country of just 5.6 million people, is enough skilled professionals to produce them all. Help-wanted ads are popping up all over industry Facebook groups. Certain shows have had to postpone production by six months, or indefinitely.” – The New York Times

It’s Come Time For The End Of U.S. Cultural Hegemony

After WWII, “the past century was undoubtedly an American century. … America was positioned as the global emblem of progress, liberty and modernity. This chimera was largely achieved through the might of American culture, with Hollywood films, television shows, and music that spread far and wide.” But now, at the turn of the second decade of the 21st century, “the pop culture being produced out of India, Turkey and South Korea – to say nothing of China, which is a separate story altogether – exposes the twentieth century Western cultural tsunami as receding and revealing the seashore.” – Time

How Composer Lei Liang Won The Grawemeyer Award

Breaking down his award-winning “A Thousand Mountains, a Million Streams” – and hearing from the composer himself: “It’s a challenge to see myself as a vessel, as an imaginative and creative force that has a place in history — so that you create while you preserve at the same time. Today, in a different world, that encompasses the environmental, cultural and spiritual responsibilities an artist has.” – The New York Times

Culture Writer Scott Timberg Has Died At 50

Timberg was a beloved and ferocious reader, writer, and arts lover. He was a Los Angeles Times reporter for years “before writing Culture Crash: The Killing of the Creative Class, a 2015 book that examined how digital technology and economic polarization were damaging American cultural life. The book was energized by the author’s deep, broad enthusiasm for the arts, from the poetry of W.H. Auden to vintage guitars, but its roots were in Timberg’s own career reversals.” – Los Angeles Times

The Metropolitan Opera Conductor Who Originally Wanted To Be The Pope

Yannick Nézet-Séguin says that after many years of wanting to conduct the Mass, he decided one day when he was 10 to play-act at conducting Mozart’s Symphony No. 40. That day, everything changed: “At that moment, my fascination with reli​g​ion was transferred to music and the liturgical aspect of the church became the ritual of the concert.” – The New York Times

Better To Be Cautious When Giving Books As Presents

There are really only two rules, says a man who knows a particularly painful story of an inscribed book that had been passed on. “‘The first is, always save a receipt’ – the reason being, if a book has jumped into your mind as the perfect present for someone, it has doubtless occurred to someone else. … And the second rule? ‘Never write an inscription in a book, unless you’ve written it yourself.'” – The Guardian (UK)

Elizabeth Sifton, Editor And Tamer Of Literary Lions, Has Died At 80

Sifton was also an author, including of a memoir that cemented her father, Reinhold Niebuhr, as the author of the Serenity Prayer. The authors she edited – burnished, as The NYT puts it – included “Isaiah Berlin, Don DeLillo, Ann Douglas, Susan Eisenhower, Carlos Fuentes, Philip Gourevitch, Michael Ignatieff, Stanley Karnow, Stephen Kinzer, J.R. MacArthur, Robert MacNeil, Peter Matthiessen, Jules Witcover and Victor S. Navasky.” – The New York Times