Category: AJBlogs

“The Artist’s Muse”: $170.4-Million Modigliani Doesn’t Float All Boats at Christie’s
While the rest of the scribe tribe has moved on to parsing tonight’s contemporary auction at Christie’s, here’s my recap of the same auction house’s attempt last night to repeat the breakout success of … read more
AJBlog: CultureGrrl Published 2015-11-10

A Great Lulu
When the Metropolitan Opera rises to its own standard, no opera house in the world presents more engaging, exciting, or satisfying performances. On November 5 the new production of Alban Berg’s Lulu fulfilled every aspect of the… … read more
AJBlog: OperaSleuth Published 2015-11-10

Johnny Costa
The recent Rifftides review of pianist Sullivan Fortner’s new album mentions Johnny Costa as an influence. The influence came early. Like millions of other American children, Fortner grew up watching Mr. Rogers’ Neighborhood.  … read more
AJBlog: RiffTides Published 2015-11-09

Not a One-Trick Pony
San Francisco, 1969. So says Jed Birmingham in #23: The Dead Star, the first of his picks for “The Top 23 Most Interesting Burroughs Collectibles.” The Burroughs Nova Broadcast pamphlet, which I published in 1969 and … read more
AJBlog: Straight|Up Published 2015-11-10

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The 4 Types of Audiences
You want to attract, grow, diversify and sustain your audience? Great!  But the biggest mistake you can make is to think of that audience as a single entity.  True, “your audience” converged at some point … read more
AJBlog: Audience Wanted Published 2015-11-08

Entr’acte
Between performances of Lo, her new quasi-violin concerto, Caroline Shaw paid a visit to our Composition Department yesterday.   Her visit came in two chunks: first coaching a graduate string quartet in her 2011 composition Entr’acte, … read more
AJBlog: Infinite Curves Published 2015-11-09

Recent Listening In Brief: Fortner, Salvant, Giuffre
Sullivan Fortner, Aria (Impulse!) In Sullivan Fortner’s debut album as a leader, the shaded subtlety of his keyboard touch is only one of the young pianist’s notable attributes. His harmonic inventiveness, grasp of the jazz … read more
AJBlog: RiffTides Published 2015-11-09

Three Veteran Adventurer-Choreographers Get Together
First time I’ve been to JACK, where Neil Greenberg, Yvonne Meier, and Jennifer Monson are sharing a program. The Brooklyn space reminds me of the original Dance Theater Workshop of the 1960s, when it sprang up in Jeff Duncan’s loft at 215 West 20th Street in Manhattan. … read more
AJBlog: Dancebeat Published 2015-11-08

Even the Most Brilliant Musicians Are Mortal
Death is not taking a holiday. I learned on my way to California that my good friend Martha Herr died on Halloween. She had survived breast cancer twice, and this time succumbed to … read more
AJBlog: PostClassic Published 2015-11-08

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An Ancient Dance Play Meets New Music
Wendy Whelan and Jock Soto dance together again in a new approach to a Noh play. Wendy Whelan and puppeteers Leah Hofmann and Rowan Magee in Hagoromo. Photo: Julieta Cervantes It is a marvelous robe!… … read more
AJBlog: DancebeatPublished 2015-11-07

Increasing the Capitalization of Creativity

What is Audience Engagement? (Part 3)
This is SUCH a great thought-provoking conversation, I’m thrilled for it to continue… Again, delighted (and grateful) to share the wisdom of respected friends and colleagues on the question: What is the meaning of the word “engagement”?  And how does an arts organization know if it is succeeding? … read more
AJBlog: Audience Wanted Published 2015-11-05

Noticing and judging
One of the attributes we recognize and admire in great artists, curators, and other professionals is how quickly and decisively they assess the world around them. They see almost immediately whether an action, object, or direction is ‘right’ or ‘aligned’ with some larger vision. … read more
AJBlog: The Artful Manager Published 2015-11-05

Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker Fest in Los Angeles
Resistance is futile: There is no way to rank or prioritize all the myriad events occurring next week during the epic choreographic & performance feast by Belgium-based choreographer Anne Theresa de Keersmaeker and her company Rosas at CAP UCLA … read more
AJBlog: Fresh Pencil Published 2015-11-04

Weekend Listening Tip: An Earshot Potpourri
In Seattle, the Earshot Festival is easing into the penultimate weekend of its six-week run. On Sunday, Jim Wilke, the veteran broadcast chronicler of jazz in the region, will present some of the musicians still … read more
AJBlog: RiffTides Published 2015-11-06

Recent Listening: Lennie Tristano
Lennie Tristano, including The New Tristano (Atlantic/Rhino) Researching notes for the forthcoming Don Friedman album discussed in this post a couple of weeks ago led me to revisit the original Lennie Tristano recording of “Requiem.” … read more
AJBlog: RiffTides Published 2015-11-05

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What is Audience Engagement? (Part 2)
It’s commonplace to talk about the need for “audience engagement” – but what does the term actually mean? Let’s pick up from yesterday’s discussion. … read more
AJBlog: Audience Wanted Published 2015-11-04

Both Sides, Now
Both Sides, Now: Short-Term Income vs. Long-Term Engagement in the Arts By Jill Robinson, TRG Arts. This post is part of a series of collaborations with TRG … read more
AJBlog: Engaging Matters Published 2015-11-03

Spectator sport
Georgian theatre going was not for the faint hearted. Dandies in the pit, doxies in the boxes, light fingers filching your pockets. If it wasn’t the fire that got you, it was the riots. … read more
AJBlog: Performance Monkey Published 2015-11-04

“Masterpiece” Theater: Sotheby’s & Christie’s Tout Megabucks Wares at Auction Preview
Hyperbole is always the order of the day when the auction houses unveil their wares at their press previews for the big evening sales of Impressionist, modern and contemporary art. But the back-to-back presentations by the Big Two auction houses on Friday (“Taxi!”) were even more boastful than usual. … read more
AJBlog: CultureGrrl Published 2015-11-04

Taubman Was No Havemeyer: Sotheby’s Rough Night
A lot was riding on Sotheby’s “Masterworks” sale from the Taubman Collection tonight, and it was a rough ride. … read more
AJBlog: CultureGrrl Published 2015-11-04

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What is Audience Engagement? (Part 1)
It’s commonplace to talk about the need for “audience engagement” – but what does the term actually mean? And how does an arts/cultural organization know if its succeeding? Perhaps it’s an intentionally amorphous concept … read more
AJBlog: Audience Wanted Published 2015-11-03

American Music — An Alternative Narrative
The Standard Narrative for American concert music starts with Aaron Copland after World War I. It presumes that Copland and others of his generation were the first to create an “American style” based on American songs, American rhythms, American energies. … I propose that in fact there are multiple American musical narratives, none of which takes precedence over the others. I call these “musical streams, all of which achieved substantial results and none of which reached fruition.” … read more
AJBlog: Unanswered Question Published 2015-11-03

Dancing with Bach
Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker’s Brussels-based company, Rosas, last performed in New York in 2013, when the Brooklyn Academy of Music presented … read more
AJBlog: Dancebeat Published 2015-11-03

Frishberg Retromania
Bassist and author Bill Crow sent a note: Following some of your links, I ran across Dave Frishberg’s article on the Half Note, and saw a comment after it by someone looking for … read more
AJBlog: RiffTides Published 2015-11-03

Auction High-Wire Act Without a Net: Sotheby’s Daredevil Taubman Guarantee
This is a watershed moment for Sotheby’s and its new CEO, Tad Smith. When I heard the astonishing news in September that Sotheby’s had provided the Taubman Collection‘s consignors with a guarantee of approximately $500 million for some 500 works, … read more
AJBlog: CultureGrrl Published 2015-11-03

Compatible Quotes: The Piano
“What has to happen is that you develop a comprehensive technique and then say, forget that. I’m just going to be expressive through the piano.” — Bill Evans … read more
AJBlog: RiffTides Published 2015-11-02

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From Vaudeville to the Streets
Eleven dancers take the stage at NYU Skirball Center in Donald Byrd’s The Minstrel Show Revisited. They’re strutting, prancing, raising white-gloved hands. How come I don’t recognize any faces? I can hardly tell which are women and which are men. … read more
AJBlog: Dancebeat Published 2015-11-02

More by Mustill: A Smokin’ Victorian and an ‘EVENT’
Finding lost and uncollected artworks by the late Norman O. Mustill has been a continuing project here. An old friend of his, Kurt Wold, recently … read more
AJBlog: Straight|Up Published 2015-11-02

Dreams so real
Paul Hindemith once called America “the land of limited impossibilities.” My own life has been a string of increasingly extreme improbabilities, and every once in a while something happens that cause me to stop dead in my tracks and reflect on just how improbable certain of them have been. … read more
AJBlog: About Last Night Published 2015-11-02

A Day to Forget
I love Paris. I have visited this city more than thirty times over the last sixty years, and I will continue to love it even after today. I have a warning, however, that might alert … read more
AJBlog: OperaSleuth Published 2015-11-02

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Understanding The Auction Season That’s Upon Us

I spent several days in September–and even in late August–reporting an article that appeared as the cover of The New York Times‘s Fine Arts & Exhibitions section, which is officially in the Sunday, Nov. 1… … read more

I returned recently from a keynote-giving junket that took me to Toulouse, France and then to Springfield, Missouri. Some contrast, I know. (Although it should be noted that the food and the hospitality were excellent… … read more

In The Atlantic: “Academics, in general, don’t think about the public; they don’t think about the average person, and they don’t even think about their students when they write… Their intended audience is always their peers.… … read more

Once again, the Anonymous Was A Woman Foundation has chosen ten women artists for “no strings” grants of $25,000 each. Since I long ago began covering this–when the awards were first unveiled 20 years ago–I… … read more

Pharoah Sanders The National Endowment of the Arts has doubled down on celebrating jazz beyond “jazz” — music that has exploded historic parameters or preconceptions of  “jazz” conventions — by naming as 2016 Jazz Masters the saxophonists Pharoah Sanders and… … read more

What we say is new

Any composer’s work can be appreciated both for its connections to historical antecedents and for the way it reflects a distinct artistic voice.   Some music leans more heavily to the former, some to the latter.… … read more

Maybe they should be interested, but …
I have to admit I’m a little surprised by the comments on my last post, which was about the way we in classical music grasp for relevance by programming concerts built around things in history — Shostakovich and Stalin, for instance — that not many people care much about. And thereby showing how not relevant we are. … read more
AJBlog: Sandow Published 2015-10-29

The chance and cost of being wrong
I’ve been reading a lot lately about data-informed decision making…more than is likely healthy for me. And so much of what I read begins and ends with the assumption that more data is always better. … read more
AJBlog: The Artful Manager Published 2015-10-29

Seeking a Blue Ocean
Once you have freed yourself from being chained to a place, and granted yourself permission to see what you want to do as not only important to you but also important to others as well, … read mor
AJBlog: Creative Insubordination Published 2015-10-29

The Real Vladimir Horowitz
Sony’s new 50-CD compilation, “Vladimir Horowitz: The Unreleased Live Recordings 1966-1983,” is a startling exercise in candor three times over.  … read more
AJBlog: Unanswered Question Published 2015-10-29

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The Whole World Is Awash in Art
Once you have successfully freed yourself from the Sinatra Imperative, you have taken the first major step toward artistic independence. Suddenly, all the world is available for your creativity, and all the world’s people as well. … read more
AJBlog: Creative Insubordination Published 2015-10-28

Making My Peace with Sales
Nearly four years ago, shortly after I started Engaging Matters, I published a post (What Is Arts Marketing?) in which I outlined a conceptual framework for nonprofit marketing in the arts. While I stand by much of it, it implies a dismissiveness about sales for which I repent. … read more
AJBlog: Engaging Matters Published 2015-10-27

Recent Listening: Dee Dee Bridgewater
Dee Dee Bridgewater, Dee Dee’s Feathers (Okeh). Dee Dee Bridgewater is strong medicine, fully a match for the powerful New Orleans repertoire she performs here. Slinking and seducing her way through Harry Connick, Jr.’s “One Fine Thing,” … read more
AJBlog: RiffTides Published 2015-10-28

Exciting Young Singers
Over the past two weeks I had the good fortune to visit two extraordinary groups of aspiring and inspiring opera singers. I gave master classes, heard a lot of auditions, discussed how to get ahead in the business of classical music, and talked (probably too much) about my own experiences. All in all I heard more than forty singers, aged twenty-two to thirty, … read more
AJBlog: OperaSleuth Published 2015-10-28

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