Category: music

Music And Character And Rethinking Prison In Georgia

Walker State Prison, home to about 400 inmates, is unique among Georgia prisons. In 2011, the facility became the testing ground for the Georgia Department of Corrections’ new Faith and Character Based program, which focuses on accountability, responsibility, integrity and faith. Inmates in the Faith and Character Based curriculum have all requested to be there and have gone through a vetting process before being allowed to participate in the two-year program.

Opera Houses: Tools Of Cultural Imperialism, Or What?

That’s one theory, anyway, but it’s a bit more complicated in practice. Look at the history of Cairo’s opera house, where Arabic-language works gradually came to coexist with European repertoire. “In the late-19th century, a hybrid Arabic and Turkish (and Greek, Armenian, French and Italian) cultural economy of musical theatre developed. Arabic music made European acting acceptable and contributed to the acceptance of the new performance genre. Arabic operetta developed in ‘low’ and ‘high’ versions that remain alive today.”

As Kansas City’s American Jazz Museum Teeters On The Brink Of Closing, Is The City Pushing It Over The Edge?

The city has gone through various creative processes to fund its other attractions, including Union Station, the National World War I Museum, and the Kansas City Museum. “Why didn’t city officials and museum stakeholders explore progressive options to breathe new life into the American Jazz Museum? It’s puzzling that none of these creative solutions was seriously considered.”

A Vocalist At The Intersection Of Classical And Blues

Nora Fischer, the daughter of the conductor Ivan Fischer and the recorder player Anneke Boeke, is mixing pop, the blues, and classical music in her performances and albums. “Her affinity with experimental classical styles and her sharp dramatic instincts have encouraged composers to tailor works to her,” including entire song cycles.

What It Takes To Be A Festival Director These Days

Preserving a special sense of meaning is pivotal for Jane Moss. “There are lots of festivals around. You need to stay focused on a festival that has meaning of some sort.” She has found that the most successful performing arts events “always have enormous passion attached. For a festival, you need somebody who is an advocate and who is passionate about what they are presenting. Audiences do not want programming based on a focus group. They tend to respond to vision. If you start with the premise: ‘We want an audience of XX and therefore will do YY, because we think we know what they will like’, it almost never works. The audience will respond to a director who has passion.”

Music As Political Activism – Can It Ever Really Work?

“Part of classical music’s conceit (as well as other genres’), even among many contemporary audiences, is the notion of a universal beauty in music, and there’s nothing fundamentally wrong with that … Classical music isn’t alone in this regard (although it does carry the most Enlightenment baggage). … What a conceit can’t do is provide the foundation for concrete political change.”