Ben Cadwallader has been executive director of Vermont Symphony since 2015. In 2016, he was one of nine arts administrators selected by the League of American Orchestras for its Emerging Leaders Program. An oboe player, he graduated from the Mannes College of Music at the New School in New York. – Los Angeles Times
Blog
Pharoah Sanders On Finding Your Own Sound
A lot of time I don’t know what I want to play. So I just start playing, and try to make it right, and make it join to some other kind of feeling in the music. Like, I play one note, maybe that one note might mean love. And then another note might mean something else. Keep on going like that until it develops into—maybe something beautiful. – The New Yorker
The Victor Klemperer Case – How Political Language Shapes What Happens
In Hitler’s Germany linguistic habits shaped attitude and culture, and eventually acquiescence to a system of segregation and dehumanization. The language of the Third Reich was corrosive, and contagious. Forced to repeat “the Jew Klemperer” enough times, one thinks of that person not as Victor Klemperer but as “The Jew.” The Jews were in effect deprived of their name, and in turn of their humanity. – The American Interest
What’s Lost With The Demise Of The New York Musical Festival
What’s worth saying with certainty is that there needs to be more opportunities for musicals to be developed and showcased outside the auspices of commercial or not-for-profit producers, with development that benefits the work and the artists first and foremost, rather than a financial imperative or looming production deadline. – The Stage
Why Dialects Improve On A Language’s “Correct” Use
Languages do exist, but they are not necessarily the things we take them for. On the one hand, we each have an understanding of at least our mother tongue that allows us to produce sentences in it according to certain rules. I say “I kicked the ball” not “the ball kicked I.” That knowledge of rules in our brains is one part of the reality of a language. The other part is its existence as an autonomous system, a means of communication whose form is negotiated between speakers. It is not fixed, but changes as it is used in millions of separate interactions. – Paris Review
High Line Curator Named As Next Curator Of Venice Biennale
Cecilia Alemani, born in Milan in 1977, has directed the High Line’s art program since 2011, where she has commissioned large-scale works by artists such as Kerry James Marshall, Carol Bove, El Anatsui and Sarah Sze. – The New York Times
How The Myth Of “Artistic Genius” Has Held Us Back
The Artistic Genius is male because men are most fit to be Artistic Geniuses. The goalposts of greatness are hyper-specific, socially manipulated, and ultimately less interested in the aesthetics of the work produced. And they are seldom scrutinized. – Paris Review
David Lang Didn’t Like How Beethoven’s “Fidelio” Turned Out. So He Rewrote It
“Before you get mad at me for saying that anything Beethoven wrote has problems, you should know that Beethoven himself was unhappy with the opera. He drastically rewrote it several times over the course of many years, each time tasking a new librettist to fix what the last had written. When the opera originally premiered in 1805 it even had a different name – Leonore, or the Triumph of Conjugal Love. Beethoven ended up writing four Leonore overtures; every time he rewrote the opera he wrote a new one.” – The Guardian
UK Puts New Regulations On Art Trade, Combating Money Laundering
Britain, with London as its hub, is the second-biggest art trading nation after the United States, with 21 percent of global auction and dealer sales in 2018, according to the report. But will the new regulatory framework put British-based dealers and auction houses at a competitive disadvantage? – The New York Times
The Peculiar Case Of The Artists Who Lived Like They Were Living 100 Years Earlier
They dressed in Edwardian clothes, drove a 1913 Model-T Ford and eschewed modern conveniences. As lovers, they shared an apartment on Avenue C that lacked a telephone, television or electric lights. – The New York Times