“El Sistema USA is making this country’s first official coordinated effort to learn from the Venezuelans, but programs with missions sympathetic to the goals of El Sistema have for years been doing inspiring work … What the Venezuelan model adds, beyond a powerful example of reframing the purpose of music education, is an enticement to think still bigger in terms of scale, intensity, and access.”
Tag: 07.25.10
At the Razor’s Edge: Visiting Somerset Maugham’s Old Ashram
In Maugham’s novel The Razor’s Edge, a traumatized World War I vet finds his way to a measure of peace in a small spiritual community in India. The actual ashram which Maugham visited in 1938 is still functioning today, in a small temple town in Tamil Nadu.
Verbing Nouns (Such as ‘Verb’)
Friend. Google. Text. Party. Chair. “It doesn’t matter whether they’re useful, interesting, or entertaining as verbs; to many people, if a word began its life as a noun, then ‘verbing’ it (like I did there) is just wrong. … The history of English, however, suggests that the language is remarkably flexible in terms of what can be verbed.”
Speaking Fluent Early-Sixties on Mad Men
“No show in American television history, it is safe to say, has ever put so much effort into maintaining historically appropriate ways of speaking – and no show has attracted so much scrutiny for its efforts.”
Achieving the Dream: A Pulitzer-Winning Opera’s 32-Year Journey to the Stage
“In 1978, Lewis Spratlan wrote an opera but couldn’t get it staged. In 2000, he won the Pulitzer Prize for the second act of that opera in concert version but still couldn’t get it staged. This summer, Life Is a Dream finally [gets] its world premiere at Santa Fe Opera. Spratlan tells of a work that waited three decades to come to life.”
August Wilson Center Is Full of Promise – and Ambition
“As the August Wilson Center for African American Culture approaches its first anniversary, it can look back on an inaugural year of dreams fulfilled and debt deferred.” The Center’s new CEO wants nothing less than to make it “the pre-eminent institution for African-American arts and culture in the world.”
Decca, Hoping for a Chant-Style Juggernaut, Signs Cloistered Nuns For Record Deal
“The British label announced Sunday that the Benedictine nuns of the Abbaye de Notre Dame de l’Annonciation near Avignon were chosen after a worldwide search for female Gregorian chant performers.”
Arguing Over Inception (Everyone’s Doing It)
A.O. Scott: “If I had to issue a one-sentence manifesto for film criticism, it would be this: Any movie worth seeing is worth arguing about, and any movie worth arguing about is worth seeing. But nothing is ever that simple, as demonstrated by Inception, a movie that makes a show of complicating everything in its path.”
The Tiny Low-Budget Theatre That Churns Out High-Powered Musicals
“Unlike anything now in New York, [London’s Menier] Chocolate Factory is the rare commercial theater operation that pumps out critically acclaimed hit shows on shoestring budgets … Its recent successes on Broadway has inspired [director David] Babani to envision a branch of the Chocolate Factory in New York someday.”
The Little Sondheim Role That Draws Great Senior Actresses
Over less than three decades, Madame Arnfeldt – the elderly former courtesan in A Little Night Music – has been played by an remarkable list of acting legends: Hermoine Gingold, Claire Bloom, Margaret Hamilton, Zoe Caldwell, Vanessa Redgrave, Elaine Stritch, Leslie Caron … Why do they fiud such a small role to be such a plum?