More Audience Engagement? Audiences Need To Reassert Themselves

“Aside from the artist’s responsibility, Don Roth has come to believe that audiences need to do a better job of reasserting themselves. They need to spend more time preparing for a concert, discovering or rediscovering the music, as well as finding out about the musicians. Audience members also need to disconnect themselves, literally and figuratively, from daily life, and be open to a musical experience that’s simultaneously emotional, intellectual, and spiritual.”

Our Audience As Community? Not Necessarily

“Community requires connection. Without interpersonal relationships, a community is just a group. Community requires generosity. Without an element of giving, it is hard to imagine members being invested in the collective and future well-being of the group. Community requires space. Without a place (virtual, physical) in which people can connect and contribute, it will be much more difficult for these things to take place.”

Brooklyn’s Hipster Mecca Gets A Classical Music Venue

“A long-discussed plan to turn a disused sawdust factory in Williamsburg, Brooklyn into a venue for classical and contemporary music appears to be now taking shape. Organizers of the 13,000-square-foot space on Friday announced plans to open this October with a program of ‘genre-spanning music at accessible ticket prices.’ The venue is to be called National Sawdust, and will host, among other performances, three concerts of the New York Philharmonic’s Contact! series.”

Parents In Idaho, North Carolina Want ‘Of Mice And Men,’ ‘Kite Runner’ Removed From High Schools

“In Coeur d’Alene, four members of a committee dedicated to curriculum review have urged the city’s school district to ban Steinbeck’s famous novel from being taught in classrooms … In Asheville, one school has already suspended [Khaled Hosseini’s 2003 bestseller], a frequently challenged novel about an Afghan boy growing up in Kabul.”

Librarians Fight Back Against NSA’s Big Brother-Style Mass Surveillance

“The American Library Association has counted privacy among its ‘core values’ since 1939, but [Alison] Macrina thinks that now, in the age of dragnet data collection by intelligence agencies and corporations, librarians aren’t taking enough concrete steps to protect their patrons, in many cases because they don’t have the technical skills.” And she’s working to change that.