Social media campaigns and protests are putting pressure on artists to cancel shows in Israel over the ongoing Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
Blog
Amazon Tries A Move Into Live Sports Broadcasting
“Amazon has pulled out all the stops to make its $40m (£34m) bet on the UK rights to the US Open – setting up a studio at Flushing Meadows and drafting in former players including Jim Courier, Greg Rusedski, Annabel Croft and Mark Petchey, as the company looks to prove it can match traditional broadcasters and become a credible home for live sport.”
Ontario Government Rescinds Sistema Music Education Funding
“The day the election was called, the previous minister committed funding to this organization without going through the proper approval process. Unfortunately, Sistema does not meet the criteria for this grant and is not eligible for funding. It is unfortunate that the Liberals put Sistema in this position.”
Watch A Real Urban Planner Play ‘SimCity’
“SimCity is one of the greatest video game franchises of all time, if only because it demonstrates something important: Designing a city from scratch is very hard, and it’s impossible to make everyone happy all the time. That’s even more evident thanks to UC Berkeley PhD student Dave Amos, who studies urban planning and whose commentary on the game offers a hilarious criticism of both game design and planning bureaucracy.”
Has Playwright Domonique Morisseau Had A Meteoric Rise? No – She’s Been Around A While
“A respected playwright for years, she is now a name playwright, a rising star. She ranked No. 5 on American Theatre‘s list of the 20 most-produced playwrights of 2017-18 — one spot above Arthur Miller … [and] Broadway is likely next.”
I Avoid Rereading My Old Books, But When One Was Made Into A Movie, I Had To
Meg Wolitzer: “As a rule, I rarely reread my own old writing, but instead I tend to ignore it, much the way someone might sidestep an old flame seen on the street years or even decades after a relationship has ended.” But with the film version of The Wife coming out – and already generating Oscar buzz – Wolitzer realized that she’d have to revisit the book in order to do press interviews. Here’s how she experienced the process.
An Enormous, Thrilling New Art Museum Opens Under An Old Bus Station Parking Lot
“Bulging white mounds rear up out of the ground in the middle of Helsinki, tapering to circular windows that point like cyclopean eyes around the square. Children scramble up the steep slopes while a skateboarder attempts to glide down one, past a couple posing for a selfie at the summit.” Oliver Wainwright visits the new Amos Rex museum in the Finnish capital.
Helpful Hints For Classical Musicians To Keep Press Interviews From Going Bad
It takes serious, intense study to become a professional classical musician – but that study doesn’t usually include media training. And being able to communicate with the press is important: the days of the genius artiste who can get away with doing publicity poorly or not at all are over, and a media misstep can be disastrous for a career. Writer Anya Wassenberg gets some experienced publicists to offer counsel.
The Truly All-Purpose Protest Song (It Comes From, Of All Genres, Heavy Metal)
“‘We’re Not Gonna Take It,’ by the hair metal act Twisted Sister, was once named among the ‘Filthy 15’ songs singled out for offensive content and brought before Congress by concerned parents in the 1980s. It’s also an indelible hit, whose instantly recognizable hook practically invites the listener to shout along.” By now it’s been used by everyone from the striking schoolteachers of Oklahoma to the New York Yankees to Paul Ryan (?!?).
Van Gogh’s Drawing Of ‘Starry Night’, Looted In World War II, Is Still Being Held In Russia
Investigative reporter Martin Bailey: “Vincent had made the drawing in 1889 in the asylum of Saint-Paul-de-Mausole to send to Theo in Paris, to give his brother an idea of his painting … The drawing done for Theo had been donated to the Kunsthalle Bremen in 1918, but it was lost during the chaos of the Second World War. It was seized at a German castle by Victor Baldin, a Red Army officer who took it back to the Soviet Union on a tractor. For decades it remained hidden away and was recorded in the Van Gogh catalogue raisonné as ‘lost’. I can report that it is now almost certainly in a secret Russian government storage facility in Moscow.”