“If you want to see sparkling comedy and compelling drama, you’d have much better luck staying home, curled up in front of your TV set instead of hiring a baby-sitter and fighting traffic getting to the multiplex. … But why? Is it TV that has stepped up its game? Or is it Hollywood that gotten into the habit of stooping to conquer? “
Tag: 04.12.10
Corin Redgrave’s Funeral Draws London Luminaries
“The service included Fugue For Tinhorns from Guys and Dolls – which Redgrave had always wanted to be played at his funeral – and a recording of him singing Goodbye from his 1969 film Oh! What A Lovely War.”
Arnold Spohr, Who Long Led Royal Winnipeg Ballet, Dies
“Saskatchewan-born Spohr earned his place in Canada’s cultural pantheon by transforming the Royal Winnipeg Ballet (RWB) from a struggling provincial troupe into a company that won medals, ovations and critical plaudits in major capitals around the world.”
Boston Public Library Needs A Savior: The Private Sector
“It’s the right thing to do, and it’s priceless PR. Companies always tell us they need an educated workforce. They’re right, and much of that workforce is created in the petri dish of our libraries.”
In Oral History Project, Composers Speak For Themselves
Aaron “Copland’s voice, with its Brooklyn tinge, can reveal different perspectives than notes or words crafted for the page. That’s the point of some 2,000 interviews that make up Yale’s still-growing Oral History of American Music,” which “was founded 40 years ago by librarian Vivian Perlis, and [is] still the only project of its kind.”
Rae Armantrout Wins Pulitzer Prize For Poetry
Armantrout, who was diagnosed with a rare cancer in 2006 while she was writing her prize-winning book, “said she ‘actually was expecting to die during the second half of the book’ but she also found the act of writing consoled her.”
Art Institute Curator To Head U of Michigan Museum of Art
“Joseph Rosa, the John H. Bryan Curatorial Chair of Architecture and Design at the Art Institute of Chicago, … will take over at one of the leading collegiate art museums in the country, which recently completed an expansion designed by Allied Works Architecture.”
Jennifer Higdon Wins Pulitzer Prize in Music
“Higdon’s Violin Concerto is the first orchestral score by a self-published composer to receive this accolade which also includes a cash prize of ten thousand dollars.” (With a video interview from the archives.)
In Praise Of Non-Nutritive Reading
Peter Plagens: “NNR is based on the scientifically established dietary principle of consuming piles of non-nutritive fiber, so that the stuff can speed through your system like thousands (or tens of thousands, or millions, or whatever–I’m not too good at organic chemistry) of whisk brooms and keep your pipes slick and clean for the processing of healthful food.”
Next To Normal Is Surprise Winner Of Drama Pulitzer
“Few observers expected such a seeming downer of a show to survive on Broadway, let alone pack in audiences for more than a year.” (With video.)