The campaign calls for solutions to the problems that the lockdown has inflicted on musicians. The suspension of live music under lockdown has cut off most artists’ one dependable source of income: gigs. And payments from streaming services such as Spotify are so negligible that they cannot hope to fill the massive hole in artists’ incomes. – The Guardian
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NY Public Library Acquires Martha Graham Archive
“For the dance division, it really was the only significant gap left that we had in telling the story of early American modern dance. We’ve had material belonging to Martha Graham in the archive for a very long time, but Martha herself, throughout her lifetime, had always said that she didn’t want there to be an archive.” – The New York Times
AMC Stock Soars On Rumors Amazon Might Buy Theatre Chain
The stock movement was notable. AMC shares were trading at $5.62, up nearly 40%. They had been up as much as 70% in premarket trade. – Deadline
David Remnick: Little Richard’s Revolution
As Little Richard himself described his effect on body and spirit, “My music made your liver quiver, your bladder splatter, your knees freeze—and your big toe shoot right up in your boot!”
Music in Wartime
Here’s an ingenious 45-minute film by Behrouz Jamali that revealingly juxtaposes the music Shostakovich, Prokofiev, and Stravinsky wrote in response to World War II. The video artist Peter Bogdanoff contributes a singular visual rendering of Stravinsky’s finale, applying pertinent newsreel clips. – Joseph Horowitz
Why We’re Addicted To Nostalgia
Most kinds of longing can be settled in one way or another, if not necessarily to the satisfaction of the yearner. Nostalgia can only be lived in or abandoned: it is yearning distilled to its essence, yearning not really for its own sake but because there is nothing else to be done. – The Walrus
The Productive Value Of Anger
“Anger is epistemically valuable not just for the individual, but also for those around them. When co-opted skilfully by just causes, anger enables victims to identify similarities in their lived experiences, overcoming the superficial differences that drive them apart.” – Aeon
The Role Of Dreams In The 21st Century
Dreams shroud the waking world, dazzling and disturbing it with mystery, perplexity, novelty, anxiety, terror, hope, and possibility. – Cultural Weekly
AI Program Scans Millions Of Historic Newspaper Images And Makes Them Searchable
Assuming the captions are at all accurate, these images — until recently only accessible by trudging through the archives date by date and document by document — can be searched for by their contents, like any other corpus. – TechCrunch
How Might Classical Music Work Differently Going Forward?
What if concerts were announced one or two at a time, just a week or two in advance? The tickets would be sold per concert, not per season, and the marketing would be heavy on social media. Concert programs could be designed to attract different communities in the county, rather than the monolithic subscription crowd. What’s more, it would allow the groups to perform exactly when circumstances allowed, rather than cancel concerts when they didn’t. – Voice of Orange County