“[A package exploring] how fear informs the culture that we consume. … Chronicle classical music critic Joshua Kosman tells us how music can stoke terror in us with just a few notes. Chronicle theater critic Lily Janiak shows us how fear can be used to our advantage. And Chronicle movie critic Mick LaSalle explains how we’ve been living in a time of fear for 20 years, with a two-decade span of film that’s been reflecting the concerns around us.” – San Francisco Chronicle
Author: Matthew Westphal
Facing Closed Buildings And Budget Cuts, Schools Find Ways To Teach Kids Music Despite COVID
“For luckier, specialized schools, … planning for this unprecedented fall semester has boiled down to some common themes, including online vs. hybrid instruction, space constraints, and technological considerations. But for music education programs like the Brooklyn Conservatory of Music and the Harmony Program, planning has hinged on a more urgent question: How can we continue to provide music education to kids whose schools can no longer afford it?” – WQXR (New York City)
Some Of Cinema’s Earliest Experiments, Preserved With The Simplest Of Technology, Are Now Restored
Moving picture clips by Georges Méliès and Alice Guy-Blaché from the 1890s, long thought lost, were discovered over the last decade in the form of flipbooks, originally produced for people who couldn’t get to or afford tickets for a picture show. Now researchers have gathered some of those books and restored their images to film. – The Guardian
Philadanco Names Successor To Founder Joan Myers Brown
Brown, now 88, has been artistic director of the contemporary dance company for its entire 50-year history and, until last year, functioned as its executive director as well. Succeeding her will be the current assistant artistic director, Kim Bears-Bailey. – The Philadelphia Inquirer
Marge Champion, Dancer, Choreographer, And Live Model For Disney’s Snow White, Dead At 101
“Fame arrived in the late 1940s, when she and Gower Champion began a professional dance partnership that continued through the next decade. … In television appearances and a slew of Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer movie musicals including Show Boat (1951), they produced a chemistry that recalled for many viewers … the earlier performances of Ginger Rogers and Fred Astaire.” And yes, as a young woman she modeled movement for Walt Disney’s animators, not only as Snow White but also as Dopey the dwarf and the hippo in Fantasia. – The Washington Post
Carlos Acosta’s Genius Idea: Socially-Distanced Tutus
For Lazuli Sky, the first new work Acosta has presented at Birmingham Royal Ballet since becoming artistic director at the beginning of this year, “we wanted a piece where nobody would touch each other and so the dancers will be wearing elongated structures” — in this case, more than six feet wide — “that are not static but are constantly moving and creating different shapes, evoking your imagination.” – BBC
Don McLean Explains ‘American Pie’
That’s not to say he finally tells us what the lyrics mean: “Carly Simon’s still being coy about who ‘You’re So Vain’ was written about. So who cares, who gives a fuck?” But he does discuss the song’s structure as a fusion of folk, rock, and old-school popular song and about the roots of its inspiration in his suburban New York upbringing and family tragedies. – The Guardian
Ruth Falcon, Soprano Who Became Leading Voice Teacher, Dead At 77
From the mid-1970s through the ’90s, she had a career at most of the world’s top opera houses, but in 1991 she began the job for which she’ll be remembered: teaching singing at the Mannes College of Music in Manhattan. Among her students, there and in her private studio, were Deborah Voigt, Sondra Radvanovsky, Nadine Sierra, Kate Lindsey, and Danielle de Niese. – The New York Times
Piet Mondrian Heirs Sue German Museum In U.S. Court For $200 Million Worth Of Paintings
“The suit has been filed [in federal district court in D.C.] against the Kunstmuseen Krefeld, which is located in a western German city near Dusseldorf, by the three U.S.-based children of American abstract artist Harry Holtzman,” who was the sole inheritor of Mondrian’s estate. “The heirs are attempting to recover four paintings by Mondrian that are currently held by the museum and damages for an additional four Mondrian works which the museum no longer has.” – ARTnews
Planet Word, New Museum Devoted To Language, Opens In D.C.
“The interactive museum fills three floors of the historic Franklin School with play spaces, games and videos screens — lots of video screens — that invite visitors to think about the origins and evolution of English, to explore the unique qualities of other languages and to play with words by reading, singing and speaking. … With a decidedly middle-school-students-on-spring-break vibe (most obvious in its bathroom humor), it is a descendant of science centers rather than the Smithsonian facilities that line the Mall.” – The Washington Post