Nowhere else in North America can you find two symphony orchestras (as opposed to chamber orchestras) with touring schedules and substantial discographies led by conductors of international repute. Both enjoy government and corporate support. And if they attract different audiences, this dynamic can be taken as complementary rather than adversarial. – Montreal Gazette
Blog
Do What You Love? There’s A Dark Side To That Idea
Nothing exemplifies the promises and perils of self-actualised work better than the cultural conversations around ‘do what you love’. The injunction to ‘do what you love’ has had no shortage of critics, who point out its classist nature, advocate for a clearer delineation between work and life, and remind us that burnout might just be the flipside of self-actualised work. Not all agree that work should be a calling or that we should devote ourselves wholly to work. – Aeon
Why Some Artists Are Participating In Saudi Arabia’s DesertX
The murder of journalist Jamal Kashoggi at the purported direction of crown prince Mohammad bin Salman in 2018 led several prominent board members to withdraw from the government-backed event. Now, the participants who remain are left wondering whether the world will be able to see through the shadow of the crime to the art. – Artnet
How Cleveland Ballet’s Partnership With A Local Hospital Works
“How is their pelvis shifting? How is their back moving? Is their foot collapsing in as they’re plieing? Is their weight over as they jump onto one foot?” They’re finding points of weaknesses before they turn into problems. – News 5 Cleveland
Oregon Shakespeare Festival’s Plans To Be A National Leader
New OSF director Nataki Garrett has big plans. In the next few years, she plans to push technology-driven initiatives, like the launch of a digital archive and an OSF app. She’s also developing a residency for artists across different mediums as well as forging an alliance of West Coast theatres. As she marches toward her one-year anniversary, Garrett continues to think about OSF’s expansion and catalyzing larger shifts in the American theatre. – Playbill
How Greenland Developed A National Theatre Company
The National Theatre of Greenland stages three to five productions per year, adapting material ranging from traditional lore to contemporary Greenlandic literature to Shakespeare, at its home in the capital and on tour all over an island the size of Western Europe, most of whose towns and villages have no roads in and out. – The Stage
Phil Kennicott’s Ruminations On The Power Of Music Amidst Grief
“When grief loosens its hold, you return to the world you once knew, only to find it transformed by the thing that is missing; when, at the end of the Goldberg Variations, Bach repeats the aria with which it began, it is utterly transfigured. It is like the river in which one can never step foot twice, and Bach seems to say: ‘You’ve never heard this thing you think you know so well’.” – Van
Should The Classical Music World Just Cancel The 19th Century?
Musicologist Doug Shadle introduces his new blog/newsletter by suggesting that both the professional concert ecosystem and conservatory education can’t modernize, as everyone seems to think they should, because of “nineteenth-century elitism designed to exclude and punish rather than help students thrive. These values are so pervasive that we often can’t see them for what they are.” – The Classical Alternative
Disney’s “Hamilton” Movie Strategy: A Lucrative New Franchise
The modern retelling of founding father Alexander Hamilton’s life is a full-blown cultural phenomenon, one that has rolled out like a well-planned military campaign. The target? The hearts and minds of America, and the world, as part of that thing every studio executive wants: hilariously lucrative branded IP. – IndieWire
When Dorothy Parker Got Fired From Vanity Fair
She had been the magazine’s theatre critic for less than two years, and in trouble with her editor for much of that time, when one column enraged both David Belasco and Florenz Ziegfeld so much that libel suits were threatened. Her dismissal became a minor cause célèbre in the press, made her famous enough to maintain a freelance career ever after, and launched the Algonquin Round Table on the road to renown. – The Public Domain Review