Author: Matthew Westphal

What’s The Purpose Of Book Reviews? A Book Critic Speaks

Charles Finch: “For me, books evoke a feeling first, and then you have to try to feel lucidly in words. … That’s the art of criticism to me: trying to explain emotions, which, in a way, all art forms are trying to do through different means. … The best reviews often have an essayistic quality. They’re trying to say, what is this telling us about our moment of life?” – Slate

The Art Of Musical Thinking: Using Melody As Metaphor For Moving Through Life

“The art of musical thinking offers a perspective and a context for composing our experiences. It provides a philosophical foundation that embraces dissonance alongside harmony, and casts sound and silence as equal protagonists in a democracy. … In the same way that we don’t have to practise botany to appreciate the lessons of balance and replication in the beauty of nature, we don’t have to be professional musicians or professors of theory to engage in the art of musical thinking.” – Psyche

Theater Workers On What It’s Like To Be Back In The Theater (In Places Where They Can Do That)

“Cautiously, with six-inch cotton swabs and four-gallon drums of hand sanitizer, theater is creeping back — on the side of a cliff in Cornwall, England; on stoops in Montreal; even, in a few cases, in New York. … We asked artists and audiences — even an usher and a critic — to reflect on what it was like to return to shows across the world.” – The New York Times

Jeremy O. Harris, Katori Hall, And Matthew López On How Broadway Must Change And How Theater Can Change The World

Harris: “I’ve always felt this responsibility that if I was going to be in the theater, I had to do theater the way the Greeks did it. The theater of the Greeks was as much about civic responsibility as it was about anything else. It’s about people witnessing the world, responding to that world, and then maybe doing something to change it. That’s why the only people who could see it were people who could vote.” (video or audio) – Variety

Scientist Discovers Drawing Hidden Beneath Paint In ‘Mona Lisa’

“The faint traces of a charcoal underdrawing, visible thanks to multispectral analysis, are evidence of the spolvero technique, in which the artist pricks tiny holes along the outlines of the drawing and uses charcoal dust to transfer the cartoon to canvas. The discovery, published by scientist Pascal Cotte in the Journal of Cultural Heritage, was more than 15 years in the making.” – Artnet

Performance Venues, Museums, Libraries Closed Again In Montreal And Quebec City

“As of 12:01 a.m. on Thursday, performance venues in Greater Montreal, Quebec City and Chaudière-Appalaches – regions now considered ‘red zones’ for the coronavirus – must close to audiences for 28 days as part of wide-ranging new measures announced by the provincial government on Monday [amidst a second wave of infections].” – The Globe and Mail (Canada)

Singer-Songwriter-Actor Mac Davis Dead At 78

“Davis became known as the songwriter behind the Elvis Presley hits ‘In the Ghetto,’ ‘A Little Less Conversation’ and ‘Memories’ before reaching No. 1 himself on the Billboard Hot 100 with ‘Baby, Don’t Get Hooked on Me’ in 1971. He soon parlayed his pop success into a [larger] career … with his own NBC variety series, The Mac Davis Show, from 1974-76, followed by … a brief span as a leading man in feature films, [starting with] the 1979 football drama North Dallas Forty.” – Variety

Bad Sign For London’s West End: ‘The Mousetrap’ Calls Off Reopening

“Agatha Christie’s whodunnit, the longest-running play in the world, had been due to welcome socially distanced audiences at St Martin’s theatre from 23 October onwards. However, its producer Adam Spiegel announced on Tuesday that it would now be postponed ‘in view of the current uncertainty and with greater restrictions looming for London’.” – The Guardian