Welcome To Wright Country

There is a place in rural Pennsylvania where you can visit no fewer than three of Frank Lloyd Wright’s signature houses in a single day. “Fallingwater is spartan and spectacular; the hilltop Kentuck Knob is cozy within and expansive without; and Duncan House, the newest addition to the collection, is a transplanted curiosity where visitors can spend the night.”

War Games

“It may be simultaneously illuminating and terrifying to realize that an entire postdraft generation of young men has had its perception of war shaped in some measure by video games. Games are perhaps the final mass-entertainment medium that regularly includes portrayals of modern war; gamers may be the last audience ready to consume them.”

Wilson Revival Coming To Broadway

August Wilson’s Fences, about “a bitter and resentful former baseball player and ex-convict in 1957 Pittsburgh,” will be revived on Broadway this fall, in a production directed by Suzan-Lori Parks. The original Broadway run of Fences, in 1987, made it Wilson’s most financially successful play.

de Waart Headed Back To Minnesota

The St. Paul Chamber Orchestra has named conductor Edo de Waart is its latest “artistic partner,” under the revolving system of leaders the SPCO uses in place of a single music director. De Waart, who will also become music director of the Milwaukee Symphony in 2009, was music director of the nearby Minnesota Orchestra from 1986-95.

A Filmmaker With Heart

Filmmaker Anthony Minghella, who died earlier this week, “was far more than the sum of his credits; he was truly an industry leader… Above all, he had a refreshing lack of arrogance. He did not believe in sweeping into a foreign country with an American or British film crew, and ordering the locals around.”