Category: AJBlogs

Noticing before knowing
My favorite books about writing are really books about thinking, and crafting those thoughts into powerful, public form. So, whenever I’m in a thinking thicket … read more
AJBlog: The Artful Manager Published 2016-06-20

Monday Recommendation: Chris Ziemba
Chris Ziemba, Manhattan Lullaby (Outside in Music). His abilities honed by studies at the Eastman School of Music and Juilliard, 29-year-old pianist Chris Ziemba is in demand on the New York scene. His debut recording … read more
AJBlog: RiffTides Published 2016-06-20

The adventure of the bungled capper
Ivy Compton-Burnett admitted in old age that she could no longer read the novels of Jane Austen, which she loved, because she knew them so well that they could no longer hold her attention. Much the same thing happened to me with … read more
AJBlog: About Last Night Published 2016-06-20

Broken Link: Sree Sreenivasan, Metropolitan Museum’s Chief Digital Officer, to Depart
This bombshell (in the form of an internal memo) has just been dropped by Thomas Campbell and Daniel Weiss, director and president, respectively, of the Metropolitan Museum. … read more
AJBlog: CultureGrrl Published 2016-06-17

Jam Sessions
Jam sessions are not exclusive to jazz. They happen in virtually every genre of music — folk, bluegrass, rock, Indian, Afro-Cuban, freestyle rap, sometimes even among highly trained and disciplined classical musicians, when they think they won’t … read more
AJBlog: RiffTides Published 2016-06-17

Anywhere but here
We take the world with us when we go to the theatre. Our private swirls of panic and joy. Whatever public pains have been doled out. I came to Shoreditch Town Hall to see YOUARENOWHERE just a short while after hearing that MP Jo Cox had been murdered. … read more
AJBlog: Performance Monkey Published 2016-06-17

Weekend Extra: Roland Kirk
I once wrote about the Roland Kirk of the days — ”long before he added ‘Rahsaan’ to his name, before he became famous, when he was a tornado roaring out of the Midwest, totally blind and full of insight, playing three saxophones at once, … read more
AJBlog: RiffTides Published 2016-06-18

Painters’ Paintings: Who Owned What When
You never know what might spark the idea for an exhibition, and at the National Gallery in London it was a 2011 gift left to the U.K. by Lucian Freud. He bequeathed a work called Italian Woman by Corot, which he had purchased 10 years earlier … read more
AJBlog: Real Clear Arts Published 2016-06-17

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ARTnews Lives! (former parent company files for bankruptcy)
A lot of confusion ensued from this artnet post today, in which Brian Boucher reported: Artnews S.A., the Polish company that briefly published the New York-based ARTnews magazine and, even briefer still, Art in America, has filed for bankruptcy and liquidation of its assets, according to the Polish website Investments. … read more
AJBlog: CultureGrrl Published 2016-06-16

Singers — Revisited
Spotify, iTunes and other companies streaming music did not exist when the following Rifftides piece [first] appeared. If anything, there has been an escalation of the ability of singers, and of musicians in general, to make themselves ubiquitous. … read more
AJBlog: RiffTides Published 2016-06-17

Musical Films
With our newly released Redes DVD, PostClassical Ensemble completes its Naxos quartet of classic 1930s films with freshly recorded soundtracks. The scores for these four films – the others are The Plow that Broke the Plains, The River, and The City – are among the most distinguished ever composed for film … read more
AJBlog: Unanswered Question Published 2016-06-16

Recent Listening: Iris Bergcrantz
Iris Bergcrantz, Different Universe (Vanguard Music Boulevard). In an impressive display of her talent as a singer and songwriter, the daughter of prominent Swedish musicians Anders Bergcrantz and Anna-Lena Laurin debuts as a leader with her parents as members of the band. … read more
AJBlog: RiffTides Published 2016-06-16

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“What Is an Art Museum?” Some 50 AAMD Members Tell Us (video)
For museum junkies like me, the video below, produced by the Association of Art Museum Directors in connection with its 100th birthday, is a delight – not only for the contagious enthusiasm and astute insights … read more
AJBlog: CultureGrrl Published 2016-06-15

How urgent is diversity?
The subject of the [LAO] conference, as I said, was diversity. … One question not asked, though, was how urgent this journey is. I thought of posing the question, but then thought it wasn’t my role to prod these good people, or to seem to be doing that. … But I will pose my question here. If classical music — orchestras included — needs to be more diverse, how urgent is that? … read more
AJBlog: Sandow Published 2016-06-15

A Music Theater Work in Progress
Truth, or at least the effort to capture it, can be problematic. William Osborne and Abbie Conant have been working for several years on Aletheia, a music theater chamber piece for performance artist and digital piano. … read more
AJBlog: Straight|Up Published 2016-06-15

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This Week In Audience: A Rotten Tomatoes Model? A Netflix Model? Or Maybe A Little Live Streaming Will Do The Trick
With traditional delivery/distribution for the arts changing, we’re looking at new models: Maybe Rotten Tomatoes or Netflix, anyone? We definitely have to change our ticketing model (and “Hamilton” is trying). A rethink of program notes. And some evidence that making “augmented activity” in movies leads to increased demand for the arts. … read more
AJBlog: AJ Arts Audience Published 2016-06-13

Tweets in search of a context: soft disunion
Never before have I felt so strongly that Americans are talking past instead of to one another. It is, I fear, our future and our fate – which is why I have come to believe that I will live to see Red and Blue America negotiate a “soft disunion.” … read more
AJBlog: About Last Night Published 2016-06-14

Ruing Roulin: MoMA Lends (or rents?) Some 150 Works to National Gallery of Victoria
The National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne, recently announced that it will be the exclusive venue for a multi-disciplinary installation of some 150 MoMA masterworks, June 8, 2018-Oct. 7, 2018. Fans of the home team are going to miss these heavy-hitters by van Gogh, Dali and Lichtenstein, among many others. … read more
AJBlog: CultureGrrl Published 2016-06-14

Redefining Wilderness in Music and Dance
Choreographer Brian Brooks and composer Jerome Begin collaborate at The Kitchen. … read more
AJBlog: Dancebeat Published 2016-06-14

Monday Recommendation (A Day Late): Matt Wilson
Matt Wilson’s Big Happy Family, Beginning Of A Memory (Palmetto) The title belies the pain of the loss that inspired Matt Wilson’s essentially jovial – even jocular – album. The drummer assembled a dozen of his musical colleagues to celebrate his wife Felicia, who died of leukemia two years ago. … read more
AJBlog: RiffTides Published 2016-06-14

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South Africa’s Citizen Artists: Malcolm Purkey and Johannesburg, from Soweto to Hillbrow
This is the fourth and final essay in a series of “We the Audience” posts designed to introduce my readers to the citizen artists working in some of South Africa’s most challenged areas. … read more
AJBlog: We The Audience Published 2016-06-13

A lesson from Hamilton
So on Friday I zipped down from DC to Baltimore to attend the League of American Orchestras conference. Whose theme this year was diversity, aka “The Richness of Difference.” … But one thing I’m sure of. Symphony orchestras — or just about any major classical music institution — can’t match the diversity impact of Hamilton ..., [impact] which, with all respect, the League can only dream about.  …read more
AJBlog: Sandow Published 2016-06-13

Correspondence: When Miles Sat In With Mel
Saxophonist Bill Kirchner writes: For several years In the 1980s I used to sub on occasion in the saxophone section of drummer Mel Lewis’s Jazz Orchestra – originally the Thad Jones-Mel Lewis Orchestra. … read more
AJBlog: RiffTides Published 2016-06-13

Propwatch: the sock in Phaedra(s)
British audiences are no longer scared of European theatre. It has taken us years – decades – to feel relaxed about non-representational stagings, actors stripped of plummy tones, the fourth wall not only breached but blown to smithereens. … read more
AJBlog: Performance Monkey Published 2016-06-13

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Let’s Change to The Positive At the Met–Something “Divine”
Flash back to 1984, and to this excerpt from an article–no, a brief, really, which in itself says something–in The New York Times: Also of interest this week: ”The Flame and the Lotus: Indian and… …read more
AJBlog: Real Clear ArtsPublished 2016-06-12

 

Sunday With Adams And Shorter
This morning’s cycling expedition took me across a freeway overpass whose height allowed a perfect view of Mount Adams sixty miles to the southwest. When I decided to share it with you, I wondered what… … read more
AJBlog: RiffTidesPublished 2016-06-12

 

Once Upon a Time. . .
American Ballet Theater mounts Alexei Ratmansky’s The Golden Cockerel. It occasionally happens that a ballet from another era comes to us tangled in its own history, even as it tries to make sense of… … read more
AJBlog: DancebeatPublished 2016-06-11

 

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Shock and ‘Eh’
I’ve been to enough ‘creative economy’ presentations to know how they generally flow: They draw a big circle and then flash a big number. The big circle includes lots of creative industries — from nonprofit … read more
AJBlog: The Artful Manager Published 2016-06-09

At the League conference
In this post: I’ll be at the League conference. My thoughts on the conference theme, diversity. classical music institutions don’t do enough planning, when they look for a new audience. … read more
AJBlog: Sandow Published 2016-06-09

Emerging from, Returning to Dust
Yvonne Rainer’s The Concept of Dust: Continuous Project — Altered Annually. … read more
AJBlog: Dancebeat Published 2016-06-09

Jeremy Steig, 1942-2013
Flutist Jeremy Steig died on April 13 at his home in Japan. He was 73. His death was confirmed days after the fact. “He didn’t like to read about musicians’ deaths in newspaper obituaries,” his wife … read more
AJBlog: RiffTides Published 2016-06-09

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Not so much power?
I’ve read some things about what Yannick might do as the Met’s music director, when finally he starts that job. … In some of what I’ve read, there seems to be an assumption that Yannick will have a lot of power. … read more
AJBlog: Sandow Published 2016-06-08

Warhol Damaged, von Rydingsvard Caressed: My Storify on Unexpected Encounters at the New SFMOMA
As you’ve probably guessed if you follow my Twitter feed, I’ve neglected the blog because I’ve been traveling in the San Francisco area, where I spent two rewarding, if exhausting, days (Friday and Monday) … read more
AJBlog: CultureGrrl Published 2016-06-08

MoMA’s Hidden ‘Electro-Library’ Show
It’s only a couple of vitrines, and they seem like overflow storage — as though they’ve been placed out of the way in the downstairs mezzanine of the Museum of Modern Art’s education building  … read more
AJBlog: Straight|Up Published 2016-06-08

Black and white and gray all over
Twitter, like the world itself, is populated partly by thoughtful, open-minded people and partly by knee-jerking robots of flesh and blood who are incapable of reacting other than automatically and reflexively to the external stimuli …read more
AJBlog: About Last Night Published 2016-06-08

Bach on the Piano
I have a good friend who’s a magnificent pianist, maybe sixty years old. Some years ago, my friend remarked: “You know, when we were young, there were a lot of major pianists. … They were all different, of course. But in every case you could understand why they were major pianists.” “Except for Pollini,” I said. “Except for Pollini,” he agreed. “Nowadays,” my friend continued, “anyone can be a ‘great pianist.’” read more
AJBlog: Unanswered Question Published 2016-06-08

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Are You Getting Enough Bang for Your Buck?
In the National Center for Arts Research’s Edition 3 report on the health of the U.S. arts and cultural sector, we include insights on trends as well as updates on seven performance indices … If we look across two of these indices — Response to Marketing and People per Offering – together they tell a story about supply, demand, and the tension between marketing and engagement. … read more
AJBlog: Engaging Matters Published 2016-06-07

A plan for diversity
in this post: Why diversity means more than simply selling tickets to diverse people. And why that might be impossible to do. And then – most happily – a bigger, more productive way to get diversity. … read more
AJBlog: Sandow Published 2016-06-07

Tuesday Recommendation: Ted Gioia’s New Book
Ted Gioia, How To Listen To Jazz (Basic Books).  Opposite the contents page of this concise book is a quote from Duke Ellington: “Listening is the most important thing in music.” It seems an obvious … read more
AJBlog: RiffTides Published 2016-06-07

Ten years after: on the giving of prizes to artists
From 2006: Of the giving of prizes there is no end, and it’s hard to think of a single one, however ostensibly prestigious, that hasn’t been devalued by the promiscuity and/or lack of discrimination … read more
AJBlog: About Last Night Published 2016-06-07

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Sorry – A (Respectful) Dissent On A Well-Meaning Statement On Arts Equity
I would say based on the thousands of stories we sift through every day at ArtsJournal, diversity and cultural equity (along with funding) are right now probably the biggest issues being talked about in the … read more
AJBlog: diacritical/Douglas McLennan Published 2016-06-06

The Ax Falls At The Met, Again…More to Come
Today the Metropolitan Museum announced a significant layoff: Cynthia Round, the senior vice president of Marketing and External Relations – who was hired by Thomas Campbell, the director, only in 2014. Her department, remember, was … read more
AJBlog: Real Clear Arts Published 2016-06-06

Why The Cornet? (Revisited And Revised With Video)
Because of circumstances too complicated and mundane to relate, there will be no Monday Recommendation today. Stuff happens. Maybe there will be a Tuesday Recommendation tomorrow. In the meantime, here is a Rifftides post that … read more
AJBlog: RiffTides Published 2016-06-06

What’s Happening Here? The Enigmatic Bhupen Khakhar
Tate Modern is holding the first international retrospective of the interesting Indian artist Bhupen Khakhar (1934-2003). Their publicity says … read more
AJBlog: Plain English Published 2016-06-06

Silent retreat
On Saturday afternoon I went directly from Penn Station to New York’s Center for Italian Modern Art to see an exhibition of some forty-odd paintings and works on paper by Giorgio Morandi. His work has… … read more
AJBlog: About Last Night Published 2016-06-06

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