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Why Orchestras Play Behind The Beat

Here’s the simple response: When an orchestra plays behind the conductor, it has the room to produce a more expressive sound. “It works so well because the musicians can take in a great deal more information before they play,” said Falletta. Waiting a tick allows the ensemble to take in the trajectory, speed and style of a conductor’s beat, which helps them determine what kind of sound the conductor is hoping to achieve. “It gives them a chance to prepare that sound. So the downbeat comes, and the sound opens after that.”

The Perils Of Collecting Art That Deteriorates And Goes Away

Some collectors have responded to the resulting existential malaise by deliberately collecting art that is difficult to live with, refusing the notion of art-as-investment and embracing work that is not easy on any level, art that until recently would only have found a home in a well-financed institution that had the resources to maintain it. These are works that are difficult not merely in a conceptual sense but in reality as well, works that require as much time and energy as they do money, works that are ephemeral and unwieldy and often extremely messy. This is the sort of art that can die, rot, dry up or just disappear.

Audio Book Sales Are Soaring. And Publishers Are Calming Down About It

“The good news for publishers, looking forward, is that much of the audience for digital is young. Almost half of those who say they listen to audiobooks were under 35. And it’s a hungry audience. While only 24 percent of Americans say they listened to at least one audio book in 2016, the average listener in that category consumed 15 books in that same period, mostly on a smartphone. You have to figure that the average reader of physical books did not buy 15 books last year, much less read that many.”

A Botched Book Review Prompts Consternation At (And About) The NY Times

Many journalists and media observers have sympathized with Grigoriadis, who appears to have suffered an authors’ worst nightmare—she spent years writing a book only to sustain an unfair skewering at the hands of a reviewer who didn’t appear to fully comprehend the work. But the review of Blurred Lines has itself set off a drama within the halls of the Times, where the hand-wringing this week has been considerable, sources there told me. “It’s being talked about a whole lot,” said one. Another said, “It’s sloppiness, and also a question of whether or not the public response was adequate. It’s a significant error.”

Studies: People Rate Computer-Generated Art Less Appealing

“Images that were categorized as computer-generated were rated as visually less pleasing,” the researchers report in the journal Psychology of Aesthetics, Creativity, and the Arts. This held true whether participants appraised their quality before or after classifying its likely genesis. (They were pretty bad at guessing: The mean accuracy rate was only 52.5 percent.)

A Harrowing Play That Gets New Life Thanks To The Administration’s Anti-Immigrant Policies

Sure, Alex Alpharoah’s play about coming to the U.S. as a baby in his then-15-year-old mother’s arms was powerful, and sure, it sold fine during its six-week run at Ensemble Studio Theatre. But its name – Wet: A DACAmented Journey indicates what had everyone from politicians like Adam Schiff (D-Burbank) to the ACLU and the Human Rights Watch showing up, and what has the theatre planning for another run: It’s about DACA, the “Dreamers” program that the president kept saying he would end.

Six Years Ago, Jennifer Egan Won The Pulitzer For An Unconventional Novel, But She’s Changed Her Ways

Why is her new, 400-page historical novel a linear piece, complete with a heroine in the Brooklyn Navy Yards during WWII? The author says that’s just the way it worked, and her writing group agreed: “There’s nothing inherently exciting about any narrative move: it’s only exciting if it works, and if it couldn’t be done any other way. Everything else is gimmickry.”

One Of China’s Most Popular Directors, On A Pre-Release Victory Tour, Sees His Film Abruptly Canceled

Did Feng Xiaogang delay the film – a romance set against the Cultural Revolution and China’s brief war against Vietnam – himself, because of poor ticket sales, or did party officials make a decision to delay it in advance of the Communist Party congress? Probably the latter: “Youth had already passed the scrutiny of Chinese censors, and was shown at the Toronto Film Festival this month. But the memories and themes evoked by the film may have prompted senior officials to reverse approval for its release during this sensitive political season.”

A Painting Of James I’s Lover, Long Thought To Be A Rubens Copy, Turns Out To Be The Original

This is what happens when you let dirt – and overpainting – obscure the original. “The portrait showing George Villiers, the first Duke of Buckingham, thought to have been James VI and I’s lover, had been hanging in a National Trust for Scotland property and was believed to be a copy of the lost original, which had been missing for almost 400 years.”