Category: AJBlogs

A particularly lovely passage in François Matarasso’s recent book, A Restless Art: How participation won and why it matters, describes the opportunity of art-making for children, which Matarasso describes as an interplay of five actions. – Andrew Taylor

Ralph Peterson & The Messenger Legacy: Legacy Alive (Onyx)
Paying concentrated attention to all of the new releases that arrive at Rifftides is out of the question. Some, however, simply cannot be passed over. Here is one of those. – Doug Ramsey

Some anecdotes from the backstage front lines (so to speak) of opera in the US in the 1980s. – Greg Sandow

Had you told me in 1963 — or 1985 — that I would live to see a fully mobile phone in every person’s pocket, I would have laughed in your face. And it’s easy to forget that as late as 1940, 45% of all Americans did not yet have indoor plumbing. – Terry Teachout

A friend sent this photo of Marcus Bowcott’s Trans Am Totem, which stands amid the traffic in Vancouver. For me the sculpture brings to mind Heathcote Williams’s 1991 chapbook Autogeddon. – Jan Herman

The seductive intelligence of a manifesto. – Jan Herman

At Rosmersholm, “there is a slight problem with damp.” – David Jays

Congrats to the Jazz Journalists Association award winners! – Doug Ramsey

CultureGrrl takes in Reich Richter Pärt; Trisha Donnelly’s untitled, unexplained, and almost unlit installation; and Norma Jeane Baker of Troy. – Lee Rosenbaum

I had a range of thoughts about Ellen Reid and Roxie Perkins’s opera p r i s m, which won the Pulitzer Prize. And it made me long for the days, decades ago, when artistic music-theater pieces had a much bigger audience. – Greg Sandow