It is the first major jazz club in the city to close permanently due to the coronavirus pandemic. – NPR
Tag: 12.02.20
Mysterious ‘Con Queen Of Hollywood’ (Who’s A Man) Arrested In England
Hargobind Tahilramani, a 41-year-old Indonesian man now in custody in Manchester, is believed to be the perpetrator of a years-long scam in which he impersonated major Hollywood executives such as Amy Pascal, Sherry Lansing, Kathleen Kennedy, and Wendi Deng Murdoch and swindled hopeful actors, stunt performers, makeup artists and others out of thousands of dollars each. – The Hollywood Reporter
The ‘Digital Magna Carta’: Section 230, The Law That Made Social Media And E-Commerce Possible
“Much of the modern internet exists thanks to a short section of a 1996 US law dedicated to moderating online porn.” That’s Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act of 1996: it protects websites with user-generated content — and that’s everything from Twitter and YouTube to Amazon and Wikipedia — from legal liability for that content. (It’s the creator that gets prosecuted or sued.) But Section 230 has been under attack from several sides, and the lawmakers that back them, for years — and the latest of those assaults is tied up with, yes, Donald Trump’s attempts to undo the outcome of the 2020 election. – Quartz
Plans For ‘The Black Version Of Lincoln Center’ On Chicago’s South Side
“[Actor Harry Lennix] intends to build both a two-theater complex to house (among others) the Congo Square Theatre Company and a new, nationally focused museum dedicated to Black contributions to the performing arts. Everything from dance to film to music to theater.” – Yahoo! (Chicago Tribune)
Florence’s Soccer Stadium Is A Modernist Masterpiece But Badly Outdated. Preservationists And The Team Are At War.
The Artemio Franchi stadium, designed by Pier Luigi Nervi in 1930, is regularly featured in architecture textbooks and is even on a page in Italy’s passport. But the seats are uncomfortable, some of them are exposed to rain, and there’s no place for revenue-generating shops or eateries. The team’s owner, with the fans on his side, wants to tear it down and build a new one; preservationists are aghast; the culture ministry in Rome will be the referee. – The New York Times
How Hollywood Studios Are Reinventing (Again) For The Streaming Age
“Amid the backdrop of the pandemic and the ongoing, years-long digestion of several mega-mergers, from Disney-Fox to ViacomCBS to AT&T’s WarnerMedia, pretty much every legacy entertainment house in town is in the process of maneuvering a massive ship-turning effort to better point their armadas in the direction of streaming.” – Variety
Camilla Wicks: Towering talent found, lost, and found again
The clear, slipped voice at the other end of the phone was neither astonished nor impressed to learn that her recording of the Sibelius Violin Concerto was a collector’s item whose original LP was then selling for $125. “It’s not that good,” she said, sounding mildly exasperated. Oh, but it is. – David Patrick Stearns
The Rediscovery (At Last) Of Ethel Smyth
“In 1934, all of musical England gathered to celebrate the 75th birthday of one the country’s most famous composers – Dame Ethel Smyth. During a festival spanning several months, audiences crowded into the Queen’s Hall, London, to hear her symphonic cantata The Prison, or settled in at home to listen to the BBC broadcasts of her work. At the festival’s final concert in the Royal Albert Hall, the composer sat beside Queen Mary to watch Sir Thomas Beecham conduct her Mass.” Yet within a couple of decades she was all but forgotten — until just the past few years. – The Guardian
Biden’s Cabinet Needs A ‘Dr. Fauci For The Arts’
Peter Marks: “Now, more than ever, we need a secretary of arts and culture. As President-elect Joe Biden rolls out his circle of close advisers, the notion is gaining momentum among leaders and advocates of nonprofit groups and for-profit companies: that someone should be named to coordinate arts funding, unite assorted agencies and underline the value of arts and entertainment to the nation’s financial, social and psychological well-being.” – The Washington Post