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Gustavo Dudamel Has Led The LA Phil For Ten Years: What He’s Done And Will He Stay

“It may now seem inevitable that the world’s most glamorous conductor ended up leading what may be the world’s most admired orchestra, that a young Latin American hero would settle in a Latino-majority city that likes to tell itself it will never grow old. But it could have just as easily not happened at all.” – Los Angeles Magazine

Manchester’s Leading Theatre Builds A Pop-Up Stage To Take Plays To City’s Neighborhoods

“The Royal Exchange is one of Manchester’s best known theatres, the venue resembling a lunar landing craft located inside The Great Hall on St Ann’s Square. … The Den is a lightweight, 180-seat portable auditorium designed to be built and dismantled … by members of each host community who will become its ushers, its box office, technical team and audience.” – BBC

A New Literary Timeline Of African-American History

Yusef Komunyakaa on Crispus Attucks, the first American to die in the Revolutionary War; Jesmyn Ward on the 1808 Act Prohibiting Importation of Slaves; Darryl Pinckney on the Emancipation Proclamation; Rita Dove and Camille T. Dungy on the Birmingham church bombing of 1963; Lynn Nottage on “Rapper’s Delight”; and others. Clint Smith begins and ends the collection, part of The 1619 Project, with poems on the arrival of the first enslaved Africans in Virginia in 1619 and the scene in the Louisiana Superdome after Hurricane Katrina. – The New York Times Magazine

‘For Centuries, Black Music, Forged In Bondage, Has Been The Sound Of Complete Artistic Freedom. No Wonder Everybody Is Always Stealing It.’

“Americans have made a political investment in a myth of racial separateness, the idea that art forms can be either ‘white’ or ‘black’ in character … This country’s music is an advertisement for 400 years of the opposite: centuries of ‘amalgamation’ and ‘miscegenation’ as they long ago called it, of all manner of interracial collaboration conducted with dismaying ranges of consent.” An essay for The 1619 Project by Wesley Morris. – The New York Times Magazine

YouTube Sued By LGBT Video Creators For Discrimination

“Five LGBTQ channels have joined together for the suit, which alleges that YouTube has discriminated against them by hiding their videos, removing subscribers, and denying advertising. They say the platform unfairly targets any video tagged with words like ‘gay,’ ‘transgender,’ or ‘bisexual,’ even when the videos have no mature content.” – BuzzFeed

Five Years On, How Artists, Writers, Musicians, And Theatermakers Have Responded To Ferguson, Missouri

“Their art was not only a response to Brown’s death. It was also a way to bring understanding to issues that had angered and oppressed African Americans for generations.” A package looking at responses to Michael Brown’s death and its aftermath in visual art, classical music, theatre, literature, popular music, and cinema. – St. Louis Post-Dispatch

Trump Postponed Tariffs On Chinese Goods? Not On Art He Didn’t

Among the items imported from the People’s Republic that will be subject to import duties as of Sept. 1 are “paintings, drawings, engraving, prints and lithographs, sculptures and statuary of any material and antiquities more than 100 years old, as well as stamps and collectors’ pieces of archaeological interest.” And that will include Chinese items purchased from third countries. – The Art Newspaper

What The Allegations Against Placido Domingo Could Mean For Opera

Mark Swed: “The ramifications are considerable. If proved true, the allegations would be a tragic ending to one of the great careers in the history of opera, a tenor and now baritone who has sung more roles than any other, as well as a conductor, opera administrator and celebrity. It would also be a sad revelation about the catalyst and voice of opera in Los Angeles.” – Los Angeles Times