Reading Is Back. Yay! But Let’s Not Put Down Complicated Critiques Replaced By New Enthusiasm

That reading is now a social activity again… might seem cause for optimism. Yet D.J. Taylor regrets the passing of critical arbitration in matters of taste, and is at his most curmudgeonly when describing the “enthusiastic online amateur who protests his inability to ‘relate’ to the central character of the novel under discussion and imagines this to be the fault of the book”.

Salonen, Hannigan, Uchida – Ojai Music Festival Names Directors Through 2021

“The coming directors include Vijay Iyer, the jazz pianist and composer, in 2017, and Esa-Pekka Salonen, the composer and conductor, in 2018 … [as well as] Barbara Hannigan, the soprano and conductor whose star has been rising because of her performances of new works, in 2019; Patricia Kopatchinskaja, the searching violinist, in 2020; and, in 2021, Mitsuko Uchida, the pianist and conductor who was last a co-music director of the festival in 1998.”