“Despite being at the world’s wealthiest university, institute students receive modest financial aid and leave with a median of $78,000 in debt in exchange for a master of liberal arts degree from the Harvard Extension School.” Said one alum, “Getting this degree basically guaranteed that I wasn’t able to pursue it as a career because I immediately had to get a job to pay for the education I received.”
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NBC News Profiles Rising Young African-American Conductor Roderick Cox
When he was a young man in Macon, Georgia, “it was clear he had a good ear and the passion, but for a while, the furthest point he imagined going in his musical career was becoming a band director. And then his worldview opened up” – thanks to Victor Yampolsky at Northwestern University. “Now two years into his role as associate conductor of the Minnesota Orchestra, he’s come a long way from leading a convocation of action figures.”
Artist Puts Robot Spider On Cathedral – And Some Catholics Denounce It As ‘Demonic’
The animatronic arachnid, called Kumo, was created by French street theater company La Machine and brought to Ottawa for the Canada 150 celebrations. Late last week, it was was installed on the side of the capital’s Notre-Dame Cathedral Basilica – for a visual juxtaposition with Louise Bourgeois’s bronze spider, Maman, just across the street in front of the the National Gallery of Canada. But not all believers thought the sight was cool.
Alan Gilbert Gets Chilly Farewell From New York Philharmonic Musicians At Their Final Concert Together
Things seemed amicable enough at Gilbert’s farewell concerts at Geffen Hall and in the New York City parks. But at a 70th anniversary concert for the Music Academy of the West in Santa Barbara last week, reports Mark Swed,”there was no acknowledgment of its music director from the orchestra during the bows – no tapping of bows on stands, practically no glances from the players at the conductor. … When [L.A.] Master Chorale Music Director Grant Gershon hugged Gilbert the stage suddenly became radiant, despite the orchestra musicians pointedly looking the other way.”
Shakespeare & Company’s Tina Packer Has Now Directed All 37 Of Shakespeare’s Plays
“I never thought consciously, ‘Oh, I’m going to do them all.’ But I started noticing a progression in his writing of the women. In the beginning they’re either shrews or sweet young things, but by the time he gets to his late plays, he says: ‘Guys, you have to go with what the women say. Otherwise we’re all lost.’ That really made me want to keep going.”
Opera Director Lee Blakeley Dies Suddenly At 45
He first got himself noticed with a provocative staging of Handel’s Clori, Tirsi e Fileno in London’s leading gay nightclub. He worked extensively at Covent Garden, San Francisco and Los Angeles Operas, Opera Theater of St. Louis, and especially Santa Fe Opera; his highest-profile project in Europe was directing a series of American musicals (in English) at the Théâtre du Châtelet in Paris.
Israel Arrests Palestinian Antiquities Dealers In Hobby Lobby Smuggling Case
“Authorities arrested five Palestinian antiquities dealers in Jerusalem and confiscated items dating back thousands of years from their homes and shops: papyrus fragments from the Egyptian Book of the Dead, the bust of an Etruscan woman, a fresco from Pompeii depicting swimming fish. They also seized more modern objects – two black luxury Audi vehicles – and more than $200,000 in cash.”
These Folks Won’t Let Tourism And Pricey Real Estate Chase Them Out Of Venice – They’re Squatting
With houses in the city selling for a million euros or so as vacation homes, working- and middle-class Venetians have been getting priced out of their hometown. “Now an organized movement of illegal squatters is laying claim to abandoned, dilapidated housing.”
Netflix Buys Itself A Comic-Book Company
“Netflix has made its first acquisition, buying the Glasgow-based comic book company behind Kick-Ass and Kingsman, as it looks to imitate Marvel-owner Disney’s superhero strategy.”
Philadelphia Orchestra Gets $5 Million To Spotlight Its Concert Hall’s Organ
The program, “which is to begin this coming season, will make the orchestra and the Kimmel [Center] even more organcentric: commissioning new works; programming additional organ concertos and orchestral works that weave organ in and out of the overall texture; holding community concerts, recitals, and postlude concerts; and providing real-time program notes that explain the way the organ works.”