The first five weeks bristled with listener-friendly new music, fresh young performers, diverse older ones, jazz, tango and even contemporary music by Chinese-American composers. And Chamber Music Northwest has pulled this off while holding on to most of its aging core audience, its renowned longtime performers, and a healthy dose of core, classic repertoire. Audience numbers have stabilized—a triumph in the beleaguered classical-music world—and the demographic is gradually growing more diverse.
Blog
Licking Our Plate
I see plate-licking almost every day, which delights me because I do the cooking. (I will not consider the possibility that anything in front of this one would be equally licked.) For “plate,” you may substitute “platter,” “bowl,” even “charger.”
Ayn Rand and Libertarianism
FOR most of my life — I was a kid during the Reagan Revolution — I’ve been puzzled by otherwise smart people falling for Libertarianism and Ayn Rand’s brand of freedom snake oil.
Michael Ondaatje’s Booker Prize Wins Say Much About The Current State Of Global Literature
Ondaatje’s Booker wins are complicated. More than anything, Ondaatje’s Golden Booker win showcases the contradictions of literary value in the current context of the global commodifications of creative goods. His 1992 success can be examined within the broader context of the prize, its relation to postcolonial fiction and the globalization of Can Lit.
What a Beast!
“The Captain” is the best flick I’ve seen in years.If you need to read a review, you might as well read David Edelstein’s. My only demurral is that I see the setup as feral.
Your Mind Is Not Like An Iceberg, With Masses Of Stuff Hidden Below The Surface
Behavioral scientist Nick Chater: “This whole idea of uncovering things from the unconscious and making them conscious has the presupposition that they are of the same type. … The tip of the iceberg is made of the same stuff as the rest of the iceberg, which is an invisible mass. And I think that’s really a mistake. The reality is that the things we’re conscious of — experiences, thoughts, fragments of conversation — are completely different in type from the things we’re unconscious of — all these mysterious brain processes, which lay down and retrieve memories, piece fragments of information together, and so on. The brain is doing lots of unconscious work — but it is not thought in any way we understand it.”
Have We Lost Our Sense Of Moral Rigor And Equivalency?
The outrage over a police shooting of an unarmed black teenager unfolds at the same level of intensity as the outrage over what might or might not be a case of racial profiling by a sales clerk in a small Brooklyn boutique. This is intentional: The general feeling seems to be that distinguishing between degrees of morally repugnant conduct will lead to some sort of blanket pardon of all such conduct; that to understand is always to forgive. Such concern is understandable, but misplaced — it flattens and obfuscates, rather than clarifies.
Art Gets Damaged All The Time – Here’s How It Gets Back To The Market
“Artsy spoke to insurance brokers, lawyers, gallerists, a conservator, and an appraiser to understand what happens to a damaged work, and how it can find its way back to market with its value intact (or not).”
The Theatre Director Who Seeks To Divide His Audiences Rather Than Unite Them
“Dissatisfaction itself has become a commodity. Every day I see the headhunters from Western Europe’s theatres searching for fresh blood from problematic countries. At one point, everybody was asking me if I knew any directors from Ukraine. Then the focus shifted to Syria and Poland. There’s something deeply humiliating and colonial in the reduction of the work of an artist to her or his country of birth and the political problems of that same country.”
Warren Brown, Washington Post Auto Columnist Who Co-Wrote Memoir On Kidney Transplant, Dead At 70
“He described himself as a ‘servant’ to his readers — a representative who looked out for their financial interests while also trying to satisfy car enthusiasts’ passions for details about fuel efficiency, horsepower and torque. But in writing about one of the largest sectors of the U.S. economy, he also challenged readers who might have preferred that he stick to interiors and exteriors, penning columns that could veer sharply into politics and race.” In 2002, he and Post colleague Martha McNeil Hamilton published Black & White & Red All Over, about her donation of one of her kidneys to him.