“The Pushkin State Museum of Fine Arts in Moscow will soon take over the running of Russia’s National Centre for Contemporary Arts, whose nine branches extend from Kaliningrad on the Baltic Sea to Tomsk some 4,000km east. … Several new NCCA branches are under discussion for the university cities of Khabarovsk, Tyumen and Novosibirsk.” – The Art Newspaper
Tag: 09.12.19
Get Politics Out Of Classical Music? Well, Er…
These invectives against “political” music seem to stand out more due to our current contentious climate, which may create the impression that there has been an uptick in the number of modern pieces with a political orientation. But the truth is that there has always been a desire on the part of artists to respond to the issues of the moment. – NewMusicBox
The Internet Is Changing How We Write (For Bad And Good)
The Internet is speeding up the evolution of English by increasing our ability to stay loosely in touch with, and mutually influence, one another. – Washington Post
Music Deserts: What We Need Is Nutritional Music
“Musical malnourishment, with increasing mono-diets and over-consumption of processed, chemically treated/created culture, entails an over-reliance upon intake from manufactured commodities such as loudspeakers, machines, and computers. Thus greater passivity is generated whereby people no longer look to themselves to make music, but simply purchase it via a concert ticket or through a new electronic home entertainment toy.” – NewMusicBox
Twenty Years Ago, Reality Shows ‘Broke TV’ And Paved The Way For Today
Used to be, the U.S. TV landscape had a few reality shows, nothing spectacular, nothing great. But 1999 changed things: “The drama, the spectacle and arguably the artifice of reality television became the main draws. Participants couldn’t simply be regular people anymore; they had to be personalities, or types, perfectly attuned and calibrated to orchestrating the juiciest of drama. Soon reality stars became the new celebrities, celebrities the new reality stars.” One might say it led to a certain election outcome as well. – HuffPost
A Gender Gap In Ballet Leadership Seems Too Weird – But It’s Real
Girls outnumber boys up to 20 to 1 in ballet classes, and so it seems like ballet would be one place – maybe the only place – where women would have the majority of leadership roles. Nope. “A whopping 72% of ballet companies have a male artistic director. Those women who do get the title of artistic director earn only 68 cents for every dollar earned by their male counterparts.” And for choreography, the numbers are far worse. – Forbes
Historian Presenting Lecture On Controversial Musician Gets Shut Down And Banned
“Recently I was asked to present a lecture on composer Julius Eastman and his work at the OBEY Convention, a music and sound festival in Halifax, Nova Scotia. But rather than a fruitful discussion of Eastman’s probing, piercing minimalist music and legacy as an overlooked composer only now getting his due, the situation turned into a referendum on complicated questions: who gets to hold forth on artists of different identities, and on whose terms?” – ARTnews
When Words Fail Us
How serious is the gap between experience and the words we have? Serious. The need to render experience for others is tied to a need for others to understand us, and when unfulfilled, leaves an emptiness that hollows out our sources of motivation. – Nautilus
Flutist Eugenia Zukerman On Dealing With Her Alzheimer’s
Zukerman, 74, has Alzheimer’s. She was diagnosed about three years ago after her two daughters insisted that she get checked. At the time, Zukerman thought nothing of the memory slips… – Albany Times-Union
The Reinvention Of Opera Philadelphia
The refrain “adapt or die” haunts many performing arts organizations, so it’s fascinating to find one that heeds the warning, discovers what it needs to do—and then actually does it. – The Philadelphia Citizen