The New Concert Companion Is An App

“Before the music begins, app users can read background information about the piece. When the music starts, a sequence of brief annotations begins, cued by an operator in the hall who follows the musical score. The annotations alert listeners to when an important theme in the work is coming up, for example, or describe important subtexts to the music.”

How Much Should A Theatre Worry About Offending An Audience?

“Instead of censoring or sanitizing content that “might offend,” theatres should look at such works as opportunities to engage their audiences in critical public discourse about important issues in the play, because if we approach theatre as something that should be feared or approached cautiously, then we’ve robbed it of it’s power before the actors have even said a word.”

Docents Gone Wild

“More arts-loving baby boomers – educated, experienced and recently retired – are hustling to become museum tour guides. … [Yet] behind closed doors some museum staffers are growing impatient with docents flouting their supervisors, misstating facts, touching the art, and other infractions.”

Can You Consciously Design A Metaphor To Change Someone’s Mind?

“I’m here to tell you that they can, and are. … They aren’t supposed to make someone remark: ‘That’s beautiful.’ They’re meant to make someone realise that they’ve only been looking at one side of a thing.” Michael Erard (“For five years I worked full-time as a metaphor designer at the FrameWorks Institute, a think tank in Washington, DC … I continue to shape and test metaphors for private-sector clients and others”) explains how it’s done.

James Joyce Fascinates The Chinese

“These days, if you ask about James Joyce – or ‘Zhanmusi Qiaoyisi’, as his name is transliterated in Chinese pinyin – in a Chinese bookshop you will be led to shelves lined with relevant volumes. The vast five-floor Xinhua bookshop on Wangfujing, a crowded shopping avenue just round the corner from Tiananmen Square, currently stocks no fewer than four different editions of Ulysses.”