“The Boston Symphony Orchestra and music director Andris Nelsons have agreed to a three-year contract extension, … ensuring he will lead the symphony through the 2024-25 season and possibly beyond: An evergreen clause allows his commitment to stretch well beyond the new term. … Nelsons has signed a similar contract extension with the BSO’s sister orchestra, the Gewandhaus Orchestra of Leipzig.” – The Boston Globe
Author: Matthew Westphal
Paris Opera Ballet Finally Starts Reconsidering Blackface And Other Racial Issues
Following a manifesto signed by nearly one-fourth of its employees, the world’s oldest ballet company, and perhaps its most tradition-bound, has invited a pair of outside experts to write a report and make recommendations about matters onstage (eliminating blackface, dying tights to match dancers’ skin tones, reworking the traditional ballets blancs that use only white tutus) and off. – France 24 (AFP)
Scottish Gov’t Orders Edinburgh Int’l Festival To Diversify Artists It Presents
“The government has revealed that the festivals has ‘accepted’ there were a lack of ‘female artists, artists with disabilities and artists from non-white backgrounds’ in [this year’s] online programme, which was announced in early August. … The event is to be closely monitored in future to ensure it makes improvements and meets official ‘obligations’ on equality, diversity and inclusion.” – The Scotsman
Philip Guston Bluster: Why It’s Wise to Postpone a Show Depicting Cartoonish Ku Klux Klan Figures
Knowing that I’m sticking my head into a lion’s mouth, I strongly disagree with sanctimonious art critics, artists and scholars who have piled on against a decision by four museum directors to postpone (not to cancel) their Philip Guston Now retrospective. – Lee Rosenbaum
The Ethics Of Euphemism In News Reporting
“What some studies have found is that people are actually more likely to use euphemisms to save face socially than in consideration of the feelings of others. This, coupled with the desire to sound neutral, objective, and authoritative, can lead journalists to use euphemistic language to reframe a story obliquely, even when the facts themselves are indisputable.” (For instance, collateral damage or officer-involved shooting or misrepresentation.) “Such tentative reporting not only reveals hidden biases and value judgments, it also can fall into ethical traps that have real-world and legal repercussions.” – JSTOR Daily
Taking The ‘Ology” Out Of Musicology: A Dozen Scholars Talk About Where The Field Is Headed
“Ever since the 1980s, and the 1985 release of Joseph Kerman’s hallmark Contemplating Music, the traditionally separate fields of musicology and ethnomusicology have been undergoing a reinvention. Today, music scholars (note the conspicuous absence of terminology) are grappling with the field’s complex, colonial history, its purpose and articulation, and even its name in novel ways. Their work is a reflection of the field’s proverbial coming of age.” – WQXR (New York City)
Quino, Who Created Spanish-Speaking World’s Favorite Cartoon Character, Dead At 88
“She was a wise and idealistic young girl, a cartoon kid with a ball of black frizz for hair, a passionate hatred of soup and a name, Mafalda, inspired by a failed home appliance brand. Although her creator, a cartoonist [named Joaquín Salvador Lavado Tejón and] known as Quino, drew her regularly for just nine years, the Argentine comic strip Mafalda became a cultural touchstone across Latin America and Europe, examining issues such as nationalism, war and environmental destruction just as Argentina’s democracy was giving way to dictatorship.” – The Washington Post
How Exactly Should We Define ‘Book’ In 2020? (Or Anytime, For That Matter?)
“[Considering] this great variety of materials and uses that define books over some 5,000 years and in every part of the globe, … how adventurous can we be in attributing to material objects — from clay to digital tablets — the characteristics which make them books? … And as forms of print and print in conjunction with script and illustration increased in complexity, how catholic does our definition of ‘book’ become? Do we include maps and sheets of music, fold-out panoramas, and gathered-together illustrations and prints?” – Literary Hub
NPR Wants To Broaden Its Audience. What Could It Learn From The BBC?
“The BBC eventually had to succumb to the public’s demands to hear what it wanted, not what [BBC founder John] Reith wanted them to hear. … In the United States, public radio never attracted an audience near as diverse as NPR’s founding purposes hoped. Public radio sincerely welcomed all, but those who chose to listen represented such a narrow type that ‘NPR listener’ became a meaningful term.” – Current
Unheard Recording Of Ella Fitzgerald’s 1962 Berlin Concert Rediscovered
“These tapes” — of Fitzgerald’s return to Berlin two years after her 1960 debut there, a concert which became a Grammy-winning bestseller — “come from impresario and Verve Records founder Norman Granz’s private collection. As Ella’s manager, he had a habit of recording Ella live – sometimes for radio broadcast, sometimes for later release, sometimes just to have. He also had another habit of focusing on his next project rather than harnessing what he had just recorded, thus the tapes being lost.” – Glide Magazine