Tag: 01.17.20

Why Don’t Audiences Know More About Composer George Walker’s Music?

Walker, who died in 2018 at age 96, was one of America’s most distinguished composers. He won the Pulitzer Prize for music in 1996. He was a superb pianist and an esteemed academic. His shelves and walls were overloaded with the awards and honorary degrees that go with a legendary career. He wrote around 100 pieces, and many of them have been recorded. No history of American music is complete without Walker, and that means many a standard history of American music is incomplete. Who among classical music lovers, let alone the general public, even knows who George Walker was, much less has heard his music? – Los Angeles Times

Today’s Theme Parks Are More Immersive, Interactive

Say goodbye, at least for the foreseeable future, to the topic-focused lands of yore such as Adventureland or Fantasyland, and think instead of story- and plot-driven lands that will place guests in the midst of an ongoing narrative, which bring with it new opportunities and challenges. They are, in essence, to quote the narration of the recent Disney+ docu-series “The Imagineering Story,” lands that represent a “living theater” where the guest can “play make-believe.” – Los Angeles Times

Saving Face: China’s New Surveillance System Upends A Moral Order

China’s rapidly expanding network of surveillance cameras increasingly relies upon AI-aided facial-recognition technology to achieve much of its primary mission: to keep track of, record, control and modify the behaviour of its citizens. Within this system, ‘face’ really has nothing to do with traditional conceptions of moral or social status – at least, their ideal forms; it is not about how one views oneself or how the members of one’s community regard one. Instead, it is to be an object under the gaze of a systematic government surveillance system established by the Communist Party of China (CPC) and guided by increasingly sophisticated AI. – Aeon

Fifty Black Dance Companies Are Converging On Philadelphia This Weekend

It’s the annual conference of the International Association of Blacks in Dance, which was started 32 years ago by Philadanco founder-director Joan Roberts Brown. “In the mid-1980s, she started cold-calling every dance company she could identify with the word ‘Black’ in its title, to see if they were interested in getting together to talk about the challenges they faced running African-American dance companies. ‘I thought it would be six ladies in my kitchen,’ said Brown. ‘Sixty people showed up.'” This year’s attendance figure: 1,100. – WHYY (Philadelphia)

Barry Tuckwell, Perhaps The World’s Most Prominent French Horn Player, Dead At 88

He started playing the horn at age 13 and within two years landed a position in the Melbourne Symphony; by age 19, he had gone to Britain and played in orchestras there; at age 24, he was appointed first horn in the London Symphony. After 13 years, he left the LSO for a full-time career as a soloist (then, as now, very rare for his instrument), making more than 50 recordings, and developed an additional career as a conductor. – Gramophone