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How The Right Conductor And The Right Orchestra Can Make A Statement

Alex Ross: “For the most part, the classical-music world is in need of conductors with broad horizons, who can guide audiences from a passive worship of the past to an active awareness of the present. The rote repetition of Mozart, Beethoven, Brahms, and Mahler ultimately does those composers no favors. But we also need conductors who know how to revitalize the grand tradition—and orchestras that can respond in kind. At the moment, Pittsburgh is one of the few places on the international scene where that alchemy regularly happens.” – The New Yorker

If Hits Can Be Built With Data, Won’t Everything Be A Hit? Well…

“If there are benefits to humans using data to assimilate this kind of information and attempting to make it actionable, the results have yet to impact the production-to-hit ratio of major studios in any meaningful way. That said, I expect that to change very soon as AI models trained to maximize engagement start to show up in video production departments.” – Shelley Palmer

America’s First Drag Queen, And First Gay Resistance Leader, Was A Freed Slave

“His name was William Dorsey Swann, but to his friends he was known as ‘the Queen.’ … Beginning in the 1880s, he not only became the first American activist to lead a queer resistance group; he also became, in the same decade, the first known person to dub himself a ‘queen of drag’ — or, more familiarly, a drag queen.” – The Nation

Data: Pop Songs Have Become Sadder. Why?

English-language popular songs have become more negative. The use of words related to negative emotions has increased by more than one third. Let’s take the example of the Billboard dataset. If we assume an average of 300 words per song, every year there are 30,000 words in the lyrics of the top-100 hits. In 1965, around 450 of these words were associated with negative emotions, whereas in 2015 their number was above 700. – Aeon

The Remarkable Caroline Shaw

Some composers deal with the threat of boredom by cramming their scores full of drama and extreme sounds. Others embrace it, stretching time and indulging in trancelike repetition. Shaw describes her approach as the avoidance of both extremes. “I know what I don’t like,” she says: “plain harmonies that don’t ever change. What makes me sad is hearing a sequence of interesting chords — and then it goes to vanilla. That’s the worst.” – New York Magazine

Thanks To The Claw, Philadelphia Has Become A Literary Hotbed

The Claw, founded by authors Carmen Maria Machado and Liz Moore, “is comprised of 19 published and professional fiction and nonfiction writers. Not unlike a book club, it meets roughly once a month, usually at one of the members’ homes. Over glasses of wine, the women ask for advice, offer feedback, and discuss what they’re writing at the moment — or just whatever’s occupying their minds.” Says one member, “What you see in Philly’s literary community is that women have decided to take the lead here.” – Philadelphia Magazine

A First Look At The New, Non-Robbins Choreography For Broadway’s ‘West Side Story’

“Though her work has evolved beyond the minimalist choreography that first garnered her critical notice in the 1980s, [Anne Teresa] De Keersmaeker remains a formalist. Throughout this production, she makes ingenious use of traveling wedge formations, each gang shaped loosely into a triangle with their leader at the point, as they circle, stalk, intimidate, and prepare to pounce. [Director Ivo] van Hove says that De Keersmaeker’s facility in moving groups of bodies around a stage is partly why he chose her to choreograph this musical, as it is one in which ‘groups are really important.'” – American Theatre