A new study says that you can improve your health (mental and physical) by working out to certain kinds of music. “According to the journal Heart & Lung, a team of Ohio State University researchers has found that exercising to music — at least to Antonio Vivaldi — not only improves physical conditioning, it also improves mental conditioning. People get smarter if they work out while listening to certain music.”
Tag: 04.04.04
Utah Museum Returns Looted Painting
The Utah Museum of Fine Arts has returned a small painting – “Les Jeunes Amoureux” by François Boucher to the son of the man it was looted from in Paris. It was “part of a collection of hundreds that disappeared after a Jewish art dealer, Andre Jean Seligmann, fled with his family to the United States. The painting was donated to the Utah Museum of Fine Arts by a collector in 1993.”
Fleisher: Of Pianos, Hands And Botox
Leon Fleisher is back playing the piano two hands. And how did he cure his famous hand malady? “His worldwide search for a cure ended in the mid-1990s when an injection of Botox, of all things, relaxed his fingers, allowing him to play two-handed piano for the first time in decades. (Botox, a toxin that causes botulism, is better known for its cosmetic use as a muscle relaxant that smoothes the wrinkles of aging celebrities, among others.) Now in the middle of a worldwide tour, Fleisher has just signed with Vanguard Classics to record his first two-handed album in 40 years.”
Shakespeare To The Masses
The National Endowment for the Arts’ Shakespeare tour is the largest tour of Shakespeare in American history. Since September, seven professional companies have been presenting five plays around the county, and will have been seen by audiences in 100 cities and towns, as well as on 16 military bases. “Later this month, the NEA will announce the addition of 21 professional nonprofit theater companies to the tour as part of Phase II. They will do a range of the Bard’s plays. By the time both phases are complete, at the end of next year, ‘We hope to have introduced 1 million children to Shakespeare’.”
The Gore! The Horror! (We Love It)
We seem to be more and more fascinated by images of gore and mutilation. The raw aftermath of violence and death is increasingly captured in images that many people find both repelling and compelling. “The contemporary iconography of carnage is unprecedented and unique in its visceral force.”
Tinkering With Edinburgh (It’s What Makes It Great)
Brian McMaster has been programming the Edinburgh Festival since 1992. He’s constantly tinkering with ways to bring in unlikely audiences. “It is this engagement with the audience that makes the International Festival seem so alive. McMaster’s tenure has coincided with increasing collaboration between all the festivals, so that there is growing self-assurance to the city. Once, almost every resident would meet August with a scowl, fleeing if they could, but now only the most curmudgeonly swears at the thesps on the high street. McMaster has brought us in, and without dumbing down.”
Journalist Charges Nabokov Plagiarized Lolita
Lolita is nothing if not controversial. Vladimir Nabokov’s “relatives and supporters have rejected a claim that her character was plagiarised from a 1916 novel by a German journalist who went on to support Hitler. Michael Marr, a German literary scholar, suggested that a novella, Lolita, written in 1916 by Heinz von Eschwege, may have provided the foundations for the 1955 Nabokov novel.”
The Arabization Of Europe?
Europe’s population is getting older, more secular and smaller. It’s a model that cannot sustain its current level of social services such as retirement and health care. Where to get a flush of new blood? Neighboring Arab countries have rising propulations…
The Amateur Cliburn
Time once again for the Amateur Van Cliburn piano competition. It’s actuallt called the International Piano Competition for Outstanding Amateurs, and 75 pianists from eight countries and 27 states will compete in Fort Worth from May 31 through June 5. “The field of competitors, once again heavy on people from the medical professions, will perform in a three-part, elimination-style competition at Texas Christian University’s Ed Landreth Auditorium. The 75 were selected by the foundation from 110 recorded applications and written statements from amateur pianists age 35 and over.”
In Iraq: Destroying The History Of Civilization
“Protecting antiquities remains a low priority for both the Iraqi and the occupation authorities, according to Iraqis and foreigners involved. Archaeological sites in Iraq have been looted since the end of the Persian Gulf war in 1991, often with the involvement of the government of Saddam Hussein. But in the lawless aftermath of the current conflict, thieves invaded Iraq’s archaeological sites in large numbers and stole artifacts from the ancient buried cities of Mesopotamia. Almost a year later, thieves continue to plunder the sites and to erase the tangible record of the world’s earliest civilizations.”