Mystery novelists have to write a lot of deaths. Which is their fave? Depends on the author, of course Ruth Ware: “Set on a cruise ship, it’s one of the most coldblooded crimes I’ve ever devised — a murder committed in international waters using a method designed to leave detectives wondering not just whodunit but did it happen at all? It’s a plan predicated on a single driving force: a desire to kill, and get away without even a stain of suspicion.” – The New York Times
Blog
Why The Baltimore Symphony Is In Trouble
Carol Bogash: “One thing is clear to me: The root cause of the financial problems that the BSO has faced over these past five years is directly related to decisions made by the management and board. Budgets have been approved that were built on wishful thinking. Huge amounts of money were spent on guest artists and guest conductors with the hope of being recouped through ticket sales and donations. Major projects were undertaken without sufficient underwriting. They were artistically worthwhile but financially went into the red. These are the business practices that lead to serious systemic problems and debt.” – Washington Post
How Do We Measure What’s Popular In Music?
We used to be able to look to Billboard charts. But there are so many ways people are accessing music it’s become almost impossible to tell what the “top” music is by how many are listening. – The New York Times
How “Famous Birthdays” Became Wikipedia For Generation Z
Is it adult mainstream yet? No, but that doesn’t matter.” The site has 20 million unique visitors a month—more than a million more than Entertainment Weekly, and four times as many as Teen Vogue. – The Atlantic
How To Address Gender/Race Imbalances In Classical Music?
“From art to science and beyond, the work of historically marginalised groups is being gloriously shared. Except within classical music, that is. And to compound matters, the errors of the past are being repeated today.” – The Guardian
“World” Music? What Is That? (Time To Retire The Label)
Founders of the term provided vague justifications for lumping together anything that wasn’t deemed to be from a European or American tradition – “looking at what artists do rather than what they sound like”, as editor of fRoots magazine Ian Anderson said. The World of Music, Arts and Dance Festival, AKA Womad, which was founded seven years before the term gained prominence, similarly used it as a catch-all for its roster of international artists. – The Guardian
Research: How You Watch TV Shapes How You Think
The harm seems to come not so much from the content itself but from the fact that it replaces more enlightening ways of spending time. – The New York Times
Composer Ben Johnston, Who Made Microtonal Avant-Garde Music Sound Sweet, Dead At 93
“Mr. Johnston was an unusual avant-gardist: His music was so melodically engaging, rhythmically vital and structurally transparent that listeners who were unaware of his tuning experiments and their complex theoretical underpinnings heard his works as essentially neo-Romantic.” – The New York Times
Same Old Blah – Why We Need To Reinvigorate Arts Criticism (Get Some New Voices!)
Can anyone argue that our largely white critical contingent in Boston is interested in generating hard hitting debate, controversy, and unconventional ideas? In the hands of these white critics and their editors, arts coverage is shrinking into terminal boredom — in the Globe, ARTery, and elsewhere — as critics embrace the role of diplomat/consumer guides, dispensers of ad-copy happy talk. Reviews that market to the lowest common denominator may sell tickets, and that reassures the powers-that-be. But so what? We need criticism to become critical again. – Arts Fuse
The Metropolitan Museum’s In-House Analytical Chemist
“Where others concentrate on specific paintings or sculptures, [Eric] Breitung … takes a broad approach: ‘My focus is the environment of the whole museum.’ That means preparing the Met for some 60 exhibitions each year, in spaces that range from 100 to 20,000 square feet. Design elements for each exhibit contain chemicals that could be damaging, depending on the art.” – National Geographic