When the original populist model for Fall For Dance was launched by New York City Center in 2004, there were indeed whispered concerns about whether the rock-bottom ticket price might undermine less well-funded presenters by engendering false expectations. The whispers soon evaporated. Fall For Dance, in both its New York and Toronto iteration, has always been clearly promoted as an event designed to whet an appetite among new, often younger audiences for the full spectrum of dance.
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How Dictionary.com Became A Master Of The Tweet
The website’s Twitter account now goes far beyond vocabulary-building blasts, seizing instead on words embedded in the public discourse–and expounding on not only their meaning but the intent behind them.
Washington National Opera Renews Zambello Contract
Francesca Zambello will remain artistic director of the Washington National Opera. On Friday, the company made a long-expected announcement that the director’s contract has been renewed, for three more years, through the 2020-2021 season. The company will have a new musical leader, as well: Evan Rogister will take over as principal conductor for a four-year term, through 2021-2022.
Tech Was Supposed To Democratize The Playing Field. So What Happened?
Ironically, the digital revolution was supposed to be an equalizer. The early boosters of the Internet sprang from the counterculture of the 1960s and the New Communalist movement. Some of them, like Stewart Brand, hoped to spread the sensibilities of hippie communes throughout the wilderness of the web. Others saw the internet more broadly as an opportunity to build a society that amended the failures of the physical world. But in the last few years, the most successful tech companies have built a new economy that often accentuates the worst parts of the old world they were bent on replacing.
How Joe Frank Pioneered Narrative Radio
Frank showed producers like Ira Glass the possibility of radio as a narrative artform, but Glass adapted that lesson for the rest of the country. Nearly five million people listen to This American Life each week; at its peak, Frank’s shows reached a fraction of that number. But This American Life traffics in the audio equivalent of glossy longform magazine journalism, not Frank’s uncategorizable radio autofiction.
This May Be the Best Monument to Caesar Augustus
Reputedly, the last public words of Caesar Augustus were ‘Behold, I found Rome of clay, and leave her to you of marble.’ Augustus also left us a magnificent, exquisitely carved cameo whose double-narrative all but deifies him.
Memories are made of this
Even as he reaches the age at which names become harder and harder to recall, Terry finds that memories of long ago remain powerfully specific: pop songs of the 1950s, commercial jingles of the ’60s, candy from a vacation destination — and the surprisingly modernist mid-century design of Howard Johnson’s motel rooms.
The Artist and His Audience
The conductor Wilhelm Furtwängler insisted that genuinely great music-making could not occur without a fully engaged audience. After watching Mets games at (D.C.) Nationals Stadium and Citi Field, Joe finds that the same seems to be true of baseball.
Monday Recommendation: Rob Bargad And Others
Reunion 7Tet (Rob Bargad and others), A Field Of You (Barnette)
Once a year, a band of musicians who go back a long way together gather for a two-night gig at a Manhattan jazz club. Last time around, they made a side trip to a recording studio.
Robert Venturi Was Supposed To Design The Philadelphia Orchestra’s New Home. Why Didn’t It Get Built?
Venturi was engaged in the Philadelphia Orchestra concert hall for about a decade while the proposal tried to attract funding. Eventually, Venturi, Scott Brown & Associates was, in effect, dropped. When then-Mayor Ed Rendell, developer Willard Rouse, and philanthropist Sidney Kimmel took control and the project was rebranded an arts center, another firm, led by Rafael Viñoly, was chosen. How is it possible that Philadelphia let Venturi and Scott Brown slip through its fingers without ever having extracted from them a large, public downtown building?