A Canadian Soprano Leads The Classical Grammy Pack

Barbara Hannigan’s “star has been rising with performances such as her role in the L.A. Phil New Music Group’s world premiere at Walt Disney Concert Hall of Gerald Barry’s opera Alice’s Adventures Under Ground. She will serve as music director of the Ojai Music Festival in 2019.” The full list of classical winners is at this link, and the full list of Grammy winners is here.

As Two Arthouse Cinemas Close, Where Will New Yorkers Go To Watch Together?

And what does it say about the kind of city New York is becoming? “Places like Sunshine and Lincoln Plaza are among the small delights that give New York its fizz. One by one, they are fading. It doesn’t mean the city has become a total cinema wasteland. … But knowledgeable guides to inspiring, even transformative, cinema are being squeezed out in a town steadily succumbing to real estate cold-bloodedness and gentrified homogeneity.”

Is A ‘Takedown’ Of Young Women Poets Really So Brave?

The poetry world has been rent asunder by fierce arguments, in the past several weeks, over who deserves to be called a poet. Is it young women on Instagram and YouTube reading spoken word pieces? Is it Rupi Kaur, who came to fame with her “period photo” being banned from Instagram (and who has now sold a startlingly large number, inching toward a million, of copies of her poetry books)? Or is it the “serious poetry establishment” that takes them down? Says a publisher, “Poetry is most definitely not a broad church, but nor does it consist of 40 mutually exclusive sects. … One can worship at more than one altar.”