“The lavish production of “South Pacific” picked up seven prizes — more than any other show — including musical revival, actor-musical for leading man Paulo Szot, director-musical and four design awards: sets, costumes, lighting, sound. (The show won nine Tonys in 1950.)”
Category: today’s top story
Profile Of The 21st Century Artist
“More Americans identify their primary occupation as artist than as lawyer, doctor, police officer or farm worker… Drawing from the census, the [National Endowment for the Arts] has compiled what it bills as the first nationwide profile of professional artists in the 21st century.”
Meadowmount Director Accused Of Sexual Misconduct
“A former student at the prestigious Meadowmount School of Music [has] sued the institution, saying the director lured him into a homosexual relationship and prostitution. The accuser, now a young adult living in The Bronx, has accused school director Owen Carman of paying his tuition in exchange for sexual favors, asking him to be a gay “escort” and pose nude, and prompting him to have three-way sex with another male escort.”
The Problem With Lit Critics?
“They prefer to patrol boundaries rather than venture into the no-man’s-land of hybridity. If culture is often war by other means, we are finally witnessing a truce in one longstanding conflict: that between so-called elite and mass cultures. Skirmishes do continue.” Comics, for example…
Is Google Training Us To Be Dull Thinkers?
“Thanks to the ubiquity of text on the Internet, not to mention the popularity of text-messaging on cell phones, we may well be reading more today than we did in the 1970s or 1980s, when television was our medium of choice. But it’s a different kind of reading, and behind it lies a different kind of thinking–perhaps even a new sense of the self.”
Reinventing The Idea Of Cities
“In both China and the Persian Gulf, cities comparable in size to New York have sprouted up almost overnight. Built at phenomenal speeds, these generic or instant cities, as they have been called, have no recognizable center, no single identity. It is sometimes hard to think of them as cities at all.”
Perceptions: Western Museums Want To Take Art
“Events and anxieties in Bangladesh tell us how Western museums are seen outside the west: as terrifying places with insatiable appetites for works of art. They are also seen as the arm of a more powerful state, with infinite funds and power at their command. To tell a Bangladeshi protestor that universal museums ‘build bridges across cultures and promote mutual understanding’ would only provoke anger or derision.”
A Rebuttal From The Classical Jungle
Oboist and Mozart In The Jungle author Blair Tindall says that concern over drinking and drug use among classical musicians is overblown, and that the use of beta blockers does not equate to the sort of recreational drug use rampant in the pop world.
Boozing In The Wings: The Unspoken Scandal
“Substance abuse among concert musicians has been going on for decades but has been kept under wraps… Between 25 and 30 per cent of musicians regularly take tablets or alcohol to combat performance anxiety,” according to one expert. So how widespread is the problem, and are there solutions?
Remembering Anne d”Harnoncourt
“In Philadelphia, she made a very big difference. Twinning partnership skills with the aristocratic Robert Montgomery Scott, the pair took a slouching institution with aged facilities and questionable relevance and parlayed it into one of the most vital comprehensive art museums in the country.”