Yes, classical music types have rolled their eyes at dead-Maria Callas and dead-Glenn Gould tours, but rock is another matter. Since the long-departed Tupac Shakur (re-)appeared at the 2012 Coachella Festival, the field has grown, with recent concerts by the images of Buddy Holly, Roy Orbison, and Frank Zappa posting impressive ticket sales and a full tour by a reanimated Whitney Houston coming this year. And with the acts that form the bedrock of the live music touring business made up of people now in their 60s and 70s, and with recently-dead stars like Prince and David Bowie still having legions of fans, the musical hologram business may soon be booming. Reporter Mark Binelli watches the hologram creators at work. – The New York Times Magazine
Tag: 01.07.20
Are We Losing Our Ability To Listen?
None of us are good listeners all the time. It’s human nature to get distracted by what’s going on in your own head. Listening takes effort. Like reading, you might choose to go over some things carefully while skimming others, depending on the situation. But the ability to listen carefully, like the ability to read carefully, degrades if you don’t do it often enough. – LitHub
How Do You Translate A Standup Comedy Act From Another Language Into English? Ten Comedians Who Do It Explain
“Some grew up functionally bilingual, while others had to learn English from scratch. All overcame linguistic, cultural, and a variety of other hurdles to translate their acts for an English-speaking audience, which can potentially take their act from quiet clubs to packed theaters. They addressed a variety of topics, including the beauty of foreign accents, how American and British audiences are simultaneously more and less approachable, and why Germans aren’t exactly known for their sense of humor.” – Vulture
A ‘Star Wars’ Movie Unit Director Explains What She Does On A Shoot
“As Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker‘s second unit director, and the first woman to ever hold the megaphone on a Star Wars movie, [Victoria] Mahoney got to experience all of it. Now that the movie is out, Mahoney — who’s been a writer, producer, actor, and director (Grey’s Anatomy, I Am the Night, her indie film Yelling to the Sky) — can finally talk about it.” – Wired
Romantic Fiction’s Top Awards Cancelled After Struggle Over Racism Blows Up
“The US’s most prestigious awards for romance writing, the Ritas, have been cancelled after a host of judges and entrants pulled out over an ongoing racism row involving the industry’s largest trade group, the Romance Writers of America.” – The Guardian
California’s New ‘Gig Work Law’, Aimed At Uber, Causes Big Headaches For Small Arts Organizations
Under Assembly Bill 5, “Uber and Lyft drivers, musicians, dancers, singers, artists of all kinds, freelance journalists, etc., under contract now will have to be employed, rather than paid as independent contractors under [what’s called] the ‘ABC test’.” AB5 has been in effect for a week, and already opera and theatre productions are being put on hold or called off — “just the beginning of a flood of potential problems, complaints, job losses, and project cancellations.” – San Francisco Classical Voice
Largest Musicians’ Union Plans Major Cuts To Pensions
“The plan, the American Federation of Musicians and Employers’ Pension Fund — which covers more than 50,000 people, including Broadway musicians, players in some orchestras, and freelance musicians and recording artists — declared over the summer that it was in ‘critical and declining status’ and would run out of money to pay benefits within 20 years. … Now its trustees are taking the rare step of trying to cut benefits that have already been earned by many of the plan’s participants.” – The New York Times
Elizabeth Wurtzel, Author Of ‘Prozac Nation’, Dead At 52
Her memoir, published in 1994, when she was 27, “established her as one of the most provocative writers of her generation, generating awe among readers who saw in her work an honest depiction of depression and mental health issues, as well as derision from critics who accused her of self-absorption, narcissism and relentless self-promotion. … Ms. Wurtzel went on to make ‘a career out of my emotions,’ as she later put it, receiving a reported $500,000 advance for her second book, the essay collection Bitch: In Praise of Difficult Women (1998).” – The Washington Post
After Seven-Year Vacancy, Pittsburgh Symphony Names Principal Pops Conductor
Byron Stripling, the former lead trumpet of the Count Basie Orchestra, “has conducted the [PSO] as a guest and will make his debut as principal [pops] conductor in October. This is only the second time the orchestra has named a principal pops conductor. The first was the renowned Marvin Hamlisch, who was hired in 1995 and died in 2012.” – Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
Reconsidering The Big Bang Theory
Both the retrospective and the prospective interpretations of the Hubble Constant have stoked ongoing controversy in the 90 years since Edwin Powell Hubble published the first definitive evidence of an expanding universe in 1929. Recently, the controversy has taken on yet another guise, as increasingly precise techniques for measuring the expansion rate have begun to yield distinctly different predictions. The discrepancy has cosmologists wondering whether they are missing important elements in their models of how the Universe evolved from the Big Bang to today. – Aeon