“Powerful grid computing has revived a stringed musical instrument that was last played in ancient Greece, Italian researchers announced at a recent conference in Catania, Sicily. Called an epigonion after the 6th century B.C. musician Epigonus of Ambracia, the instrument was somewhat similar to a modern harp.”
Tag: 03.17.09
Yup, You Can Build Anything With Legos
“Five of Scotland’s top architecture practices have accepted a challenge to design a building out of Lego… [T]he project was designed to show ‘how even the humble plastic brick can be turned into a work of architecture in the right hands’.”
Baltimore Symphony Goes To The Circus
“The orchestra’s 2009-10 season… will culminate in a four-week circus festival involving actual circus performers such as the Cirque de la Symphonie.” The repertoire for “BSO Under the Big Top” next March includes Corigliano’s Third Symphony (subtitled “Circus Maximus”), “an evening of concert operas by Barber and Gershwin and Stravinsky’s ballet Pulcinella.”
Subscription Tickets In Baltimore Still $25
“The Baltimore Symphony Orchestra will keep its $25 tickets for the third year in a row in spite of financial pressures that have strained the organization in a sour economy. In addition, one-quarter of its premium orchestra level and box seats will sell for $50 next season.”
Hip-Hop Dance As A Discipline (À La Française)
“Parkour is defined as the art of movement but it’s more about using the concrete block or staircase as a brace or vault to get over, around or through to the next step or block.” The discipline, whose practitioners are called traceurs, was developed in France and now has a solid foothold in the U.S.
Das Kapital! To Chinese Producers, Marx Is Musical Material
“You’ve read the book, attended the seminars and pondered the accumulation of surplus value – now see the musical. Chinese producers are attempting to transform Das Kapital from a hefty treatise on political economy into a popular stage show, complete with catchy tunes and nifty footwork.”
Lead In Children’s Books Isn’t A Big Worry, CDC Clarifies
“Could a vintage, dog-eared copy of ‘The Cat in the Hat’ or ‘Where the Wild Things Are’ be hazardous to your children? Probably not, according to the nation’s premier medical sleuths, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. But a new federal law banning more than minute levels of lead in most products intended for children 12 or younger — and a federal agency’s interpretation of the law — prompted at least two libraries last month to pull children’s books printed before 1986 from their shelves.”
Boris Johnson’s Tory Tack: Make The Kids Learn Poetry!
“As anyone who loves poetry will testify, when you learn a good poem, you make a good friend. You have a voice that will pop up in your head, whenever you want it, and say something beautiful and consoling and true. A poem can keep you going when you are driving on a lonely motorway, or when you are trapped on some freezing ledge in the Alps, or when you are engaged in any kind of arduous and repetitive physical activity, and need to keep concentration.”
A New President For Museum of Latin American Art
“The Museum of Latin American Art (MOLAA) of Long Beach has named Richard P. Townsend as its next president and chief executive officer. A museum spokeswoman said the position has been vacant for more than a year.”
For Subway Rescuer, Stage Role Really Came In Handy
Chad Lindsey, who on Monday rescued an injured man who had fallen onto the subway tracks, “said almost everyone seems to be an aspiring actor nowadays, but in this case, it is a critical point to the story: Mr. Lindsey currently appears in an Off Broadway show called ‘Kasper Hauser,’ in a role that requires him to repeatedly lift a character who cannot walk.”