Sixteen instrumentalists from the contemporary music ensemble Alarm Will Sound were scattered across several states and four makeshift home offices and professional studios, working with Tyshawn Sorey on his “Autoschediasms.” To synchronize everyone’s efforts, each “pod” of musicians was simultaneously logged into two different internet conferencing applications. – The New York Times
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Bay Area Theatre Is Devastated
“This is hitting our sector in a way it’s not hitting any other sector and no one has a plan for it. We are all frantically treading water just to stay afloat… “We have unemployment that is about three times the national average. Because of how the arts work and people having to physically be together, it’s one of the sectors that will be closed the longest and have the longest road to recovery.” – San Francisco Chronicle
How Women Have Made Progress In American Orchestras
Musicians in American orchestras are now generally balanced between the sexes, largely because blind auditions — during which candidates play behind screens — were introduced in the 1970s and 1980s. But stereotypes surrounding which instruments women should play remain. Most harpists are women; brass sections are dominated by men. – Dallas Morning News
How To Hack An Opera
Inspired by ‘hacks’ in the technological sector which often brings together experts in disparate fields to work together to solve a presented problem, usually in a limited amount of time, San Diego Opera’s Opera Hack partnered participants with local universities and tech companies to come up with creative solutions to scenarios presented by San Diego Opera. Forty multi-disciplinary experts from around North America submitted sixteen proposals to a panel of tech and theater-based advisors. – Mowdy
What Happened To Americans’ Inherent Belief In Goodness?
Wallace Shawn: “America’s addiction to believing in its own goodness was quietly fading away, and the old words that President Kennedy used had become increasingly nauseating to a lot of people. People were not inspired, people were not breathing in self-esteem, when they heard the old phrases. And then Donald Trump came along and was elected, and he left that rhetoric far behind. He said goodbye to it.” – New York Review of Books
Reimagining The Art Of Fluxus In 2020
“Fluxus artists looked for value in the commonplace, believing that art can be anywhere and belong to anyone. Rather than eliminating art, they sought to dissolve its boundaries in order to infuse everyday life with heightened aesthetic awareness and appreciation.” – NewMusicBox
Should Rimbaud And Verlaine Be Re-Interred In The Panthéon? (A Very French Contretemps)
Adam Gopnik: “Obsessing as so many are on the small niceties of American politics — i.e., the final confrontation between the forces of light and darkness on which all of humanity’s future depends — let us spare a moment’s thought for a couple of obscure French poets and their fate.” – The New Yorker
Galleries Experiment With Art On Subscription
Even before the silent spring of 2020, a growing number of sellers beyond the art world had already converted to the wisdom of subscription e-commerce. After all, why force your business to secure an endless string of one-off transactions with an ever-shifting consumer base in an uncertain market if you can lock in recurring revenue with a core group of faithfully committed clients? – Artnet
Old Recordings Of Classical Masters Are Sounding Better Than Ever
“The most dramatic evolution in the classical recording industry has also been the quietest — partly because the most glamorous figures involved are long deceased.” David Patrick Stearns looks at labels specializing in historic recordings: the use of advanced technology on crackly old source material means that, for instance, “you [can even] hear what sounds like Furtwängler turning his score pages in the 1949 Ring Cycle at La Scala.” – WQXR (New York City)
Tate Suspends Star Curator Over Guston Show Criticism
According to three sources close to the museum, managers took the decision to discipline Mark Godfrey, a senior curator of international art, after he raised objections on social media to the deferral of Philip Guston: Now, a major show which was due to include around 125 paintings and 70 drawings from 40 public and private collections. – The Art Newspaper