Author: ArtsJournal2

The Irish Criminal Who Was Supposed To Reveal Where The Gardner Stash Might Be Has Disappeared

It’s more intense than any spy novel: “Martin ‘the Viper’ Foley, a well-known convicted criminal who has operated on the fringes of gangland political violence in Ireland for half a century, has suddenly dropped out of negotiations, according to Charles Hill, a leading art sleuth. And Foley’s promise to reunite the public with these great works, including Vermeer’s The Concert, the most valuable missing artwork in the world, has vanished with him.” – The Observer (UK)

Writer Elif Shafak On Leaving, And Loving, Your Homeland

Shafak, who says she can likely never return to Istanbul, says, “We do not give up on the places we love just because we are physically detached from them. Motherlands are castles made of glass. In order to leave them, you have to break something—a wall, a social convention, a cultural norm, a psychological barrier, a heart. What you have broken will haunt you. To be an emigré, therefore means to forever bear shards of glass in your pockets.” – LitHub

The TV Show ‘Lovecraft Country’ Goes An Unusual Extra Mile, Writing An Aria For A Show

And, because of the pandemic, soprano Janai Brugger experienced some challenges. “She recorded her part in a makeshift studio inside her home in Chicago, surrounded by noise-dampening moving blankets. She occasionally had to wait for the noise in the alleyway outside her office window to die down in order to get a clean take.” – Los Angeles Times

The Royal Ballet Leaps Back On Stage

“No one was ready, no one could even think that it would be possible that one day they would have to readjust ballet so that it would be social distancing in between,” say some Royal Ballet dancers. And yet, with various bubbles between dancers and “work spouses in the bubbles,” the ballet is going on at the Royal Opera House. – BBC

How Prison Shaped Writer Ngugi Wa Thiong’o

The Kenyan writer, a perennial frontrunner for the Nobel Prize for Literature, saw the committee pass him over once again. But his time in prison in Kenya changed his life. “How come that a post-colonial African government has put me in prison for writing in an African language? … I had written a few plays in English, and novels in English, and I had not been in prison for being critical of the post-colonial system. So why now? And that question is what set in motion my thinking about the unequal and unequal relationship of power between languages. That thinking made me say no — from now onwards, I’ll be writing in my mother tongue.” – NPR

How 92-Year-Old Burt Bacharach Keeps Working During The Pandemic

He does Instagram Live interviews, for instance, and a lot of virtual work: “We write something that we like, then I work by phone with Tim Lauer, who is the keyboard player in the nucleus of the band that Daniel will use. I’ll write out a framework for where this could go. Then Tim puts down a keyboard part and I get a temporary vocal from Daniel. Now you have a piano and a vocal and you start adding things.” – Washington Post

Without The Nutcracker For Cash Flow, Can Ballet Companies Survive?

Not to be crass, but every ballet company in the U.S. and Canada knows the truth: Like bookstores and other businesses relying on high December sales, ballet companies rely on that sweet Nutcracker money. But that’s not the only thing the Christmas perennial provides. “Nutcracker performances are also a crucial marketing tool for dance companies, company directors say.” – CBC