Category: AJBlogs

Daniel Szabo, Visionary (Fuzzy Music)
Szabo’s work reflects influences of jazz, classical and modern European music. But more striking is that the music has coherence and — for lack of a more exact term — a distinct personality. – Doug Ramsey

I’ve found strikingly few resources available in any media about the craft, practice, and management of arts organizations in the live performing arts (beyond the usual-suspect books). So I’ve started a series of video interviews with performing arts professionals. First up is Pamela Tatge, who took the reins at Jacob’s Pillow Dance Festival in 2016. – Andrew Taylor

It’s not a real iguanodon tooth, I don’t think. Though in a story about how to interpret the material world and humanity’s place within it, identification is an unusually fraught subject. – David Jays

Dominic Miller: Absinthe (ECM)
Abetted by producer Manfred Eicher’s canny guidance and ECM’s flawless sound and studio presence, Miller draws on inspiration from painters of France’s impressionist period, delivering power and subtlety in equal measure. – Doug Ramsey

Stuart Murphy isn’t hiring consultants, just making immediate change at the English National Opera. – Greg Sandow

“We come to know the choreography’s codes, if not always certain what they conceal.” – Deborah Jowitt

The power and imagination in his composing and arranging have made Ed Partyka a major contributor to the European big band scene. The Ed Partyka Jazz Orchestra’s two most recent albums reflect a distinct musical personality and, often, his relaxed and refreshing approach to serious music. – Doug Ramsey

I began pondering issues related to community engagement almost 30 years ago. What has become clear to me is that the economic pressures faced by institutions presenting Eurocentric art forms are, throughout the world, forcing greater attention on spreading the reach of those arts. Community engagement is, to my mind, the best available means of doing so. – Doug Borwick

Dear SFMOMA and Sotheby’s: Have you no shame?
It’s bad enough for a museum to decide it no longer wants a work that it had specifically requested from its owner. It’s much worse when that owner is the artist himself. How will future potential donors regard such caprices? – Lee Rosenbaum

What museum director would choose to sell from his institution “an important work completed at the apex of Rothko’s artistic powers, … one of just 19 paintings completed by the artist in 1960” — a year that marked “a critical juncture in the iconic Abstract Expressionist’s career”? – Lee Rosenbaum