“A growing contemporary art scene has begun to refresh the city’s cultural profile. Private initiatives in museums and the market are accelerating the pace of change.”
Tag: 08.25.09
Guilt And Shame: They’re Good For Kids
“Guilt in its many varieties – Puritan, Catholic, Jewish, etc. – has often gotten a bad rap, but [in studies,] psychologists keep finding evidence of its usefulness. Too little guilt clearly has a downside – most obviously in sociopaths who feel no remorse, but also in kindergartners who smack other children and snatch their toys.”
Does Your Brainpower Shrink As Your Waistline Expands? (This Is Not A Rhetorical Question.)
“Brain regions key to cognition are smaller in older people who are obese compared with their leaner peers, making their brains look up to 16 years older than their true age. As brain shrinkage is linked to dementia, this adds weight to the suspicion that piling on the pounds may up a person’s risk of the brain condition.”
How Much Does It Matter What Classical Music Sounds Like?
When he was young, Frank J. Oteri was taught that, unlike Broadway tunesmiths, “classical composers did [their orchestration] themselves since timbre was as important a concern to them as pitch and rhythm. … [But I’ve] grown to realize that despite claims to the contrary, the sanctity of classical music’s timbres is not something that most performers or listeners place on the same level as the accuracy of pitch and rhythm. Otherwise why would so many concert pianists play the music of Johann Sebastian Bach or even Debussy, whose preferred Érard sounds noticeably different from the ubiquitous Steinways in today’s concert halls and recording studios?”
Overnight, Guerrilla Sculpture Appears In Seattle Park
“In what was advertised as a gift to the citizens of Seattle, a gold-colored sculpture by an unknown artist turned up in Gas Works Park overnight Monday. The papier-mâché guerrilla art sculpture consists of several pieces: a full-size gold-colored man standing on the waterfront surrounded by what appear to be shells, some with the heads of people emerging from them.”
North Shore Music Theatre Assets Up For Auction
“The property and assets of the North Shore Music Theatre will be auctioned off to the highest bidder at an upcoming foreclosure auction, according to the theater’s former chairman. David Fellows said four groups with theater backgrounds have expressed interest in buying the property and continuing to operate it as an arts center.”
Energizing Ravinia By Fusing Tradition With Adventure
“Welz Kauffman, a classical and jazz pianist who also happens to be Ravinia’s unconventional 48-year-old president and CEO,” a position he’s held since 2000, “broke Ravinia’s attendance record” in his first year, “and he has continued to build on that almost every season–attendance for the past several summers has regularly exceeded the 600,000 mark.”
ABT Packs Its Bags For Beijing
“American Ballet Theater has announced that it will make its first trip to Beijing in November. Its six-performance engagement will be the first by an American ballet company at the new National Center for the Performing Arts, also known as the Egg.”
To Save Money, Minnesota Orchestra Drops Some Guest Artists
An October program featuring L.A. Opera music director James Conlon has been changed to an “Inside the Classics” concert led by staff conductor Sarah Hicks; February performances with conductor Robert Spano and violinist Nadja Salerno-Sonnenberg have been shelved in favor of an orchestral program led by a former student of MinnOrch music director Osmo Vänskä.
Broadway’s West Side Story Loses Some Of Its Spanish Lyrics
The current revival, directed by Arthur Laurents (who wrote the show’s book), “had been touted for the fact that some songs and dialog performed by its Puerto Rican characters would be delivered in Spanish.” But as of this week, “A Boy Like That” has reverted to the original English, as have parts of “I Feel Pretty.” Laurents says that the use of Spanish in the show “was an experiment …an ongoing process of finding what worked and what didn’t.”