Behind the scenes, the media faced a genuine crisis over and above its ordinary instability. Publications folded, mass layoffs ensued, and with months of pre-written content suddenly obsolete, the remaining magazines were left scrambling for new material. A week into the pandemic, editors at every vaguely literary or intellectual outlet seemed to decide it had fallen to them to solicit first-person accounts of quarantine for the benighted historical record. – Drift Magazine
Blog
What Exactly Is Innovation? We Can’t Even Define It
Generally speaking, an innovation is more than an idea and more than an invention. Yet beyond that, things get confusing. We live in a moment when we’re barraged by new stuff every day — new phones, new foods, new surgical techniques. In the pandemic, we’re confronted, too, with new medical tests and pharmaceutical treatments. But which of these are true innovations and which are novel variations on old products? – Washington Post
On Rethinking How To Support The Arts In Canada
“We need to recognize that the business of the arts is not like an automotive assembly line that regularly turns out new homologated “products” for eager consumers. The play is not the thing. The skilled actors, directors, playwrights-in-residence, choreographers, dancers, musicians, designers and technicians of all kinds are the thing and always have been the thing. It is their daily labour that fashions and molds this creative art form we call the theatre.” – AisleSay
John Zorn – Musician Inside The Cracks
Though Zorn has operated almost entirely outside the mainstream, he’s gradually asserted himself as one of the most influential musicians of our time. His projects and endeavors during the past 40-plus years could fill an encyclopedia: from rigorous classical works and radical reimaginations of Ennio Morricone film themes to deep explorations of his Jewish heritage under the Masada banner, whimsical neo-exotica, and sprawling improv excursions, where his sometimes jagged, sometimes supple saxophone playing mingles with the sound worlds of collaborators like Lou Reed and Laurie Anderson. – Rolling Stone
An Opportunity To Restructure How Arts Organizations Are Governed?
For performing arts venues where a high level of public funding is invested, this may be the time to let go of the myth that somehow, a member of the audience of venue A is exclusive to that organisation and not recognised as being a potential participant in all local performing arts. Letting go of protective control over relationships with single customers and integrating sales and marketing functions – including the box office – could yield several hundreds of thousands of pounds in many areas. – Arts Professional
Delivering Songs To Your Home – One House At A Time
Amy Helm: “It’s interesting as a musician to go to so many different places and play for so many different people and have such a direct connection with them. That’s not something you get in a room of a hundred people or several thousand people. It’s nice. And it’s right on time. And then you get a little window into what they’re dealing with.: – NPR
Rupert Murdoch Negotiating To Buy Stake In Art Basel
The event organizer has been badly affected by lockdowns and bans on public gatherings in recent months as governments have tried to restrict the spread of the coronavirus. The MCH group decided to completely cancel its flagship Art Basel show, which was originally scheduled to take place in June, amid worries about health risks and global travel restrictions. – Bloomberg
How To Save American Theatre: Bring It To TV
No, not like the National Theatre Live performances – more like the 1950s style playhouses. “What I’d like to see is both more modest and more ambitious: a TV series that brings together leading nonprofit theatres to stage new plays appropriate to production in studios without audiences. This may discourage broad comedies and musicals, which thrive on laughter and applause, but it would still allow for a wide range of potential material. Protocols are now being established in Hollywood and New York for studio work designed to protect the safety of cast and crew, and these would make production on this scale possible.” – American Theatre
Broadway Theatres Will Stay Dark Until 2021
The Broadway League said Monday that theater owners and producers will refund or exchange tickets previously purchased for shows through Jan. 3. Given the unpredictability of the coronavirus pandemic that has prompted the shuttering of Broadway, the League said it was not yet ready to specify exactly when shows will reopen. – The New York Times
Who Would Go To A “Herd Immunity” Music Festival This Summer?
A three-day “herd immunity” music festival scheduled to take place in Ringle, Wisconsin, in mid-July is taking this energy to the, uh, extreme. With the exception of drive-in concerts and performances streamed online, live music events have largely been cancelled for the foreseeable future. Health experts have warned concerts could be “superspreaders” of COVID-19 and predicted they wouldn’t be feasible till 2021. – Mic