“Newish LA Weekly editor Darrick Rainey and publisher Brian Calle run what is perhaps the most on-edge paper at this moment in American journalism. In December of last year, Calle – formerly the head of the libertarian op-ed pages for the Orange County Register – and a group of investors under the name Semanal Media bought the august alt-weekly, then axed 9 of 13 staff writers and editors … The layoffs prompted a furious counterattack by former staffers and freelancers, who alleged Calle heads a conservative conspiracy to turn the historically progressive LA Weekly into an alt-right rag.”
Tag: 04.17.18
The Last Of Istanbul’s Public Scribes
The arzuhalciler, petition writers or public scribes who set up shop in the streets, go back to the early years of the Ottoman Empire, composing and writing legal documents for citizens to submit to courts and government offices. There are still a very few of them left (despite the efforts of Turkey’s legal profession to get rid of them), and reporter Joshua Allen meets two of them.
Was The Orpheus Model Of Flattened Orchestra Hierarchy A Success?
Asked whether the principles of the Orpheus Process had any resonance these days, Stanford business professor Jeffrey Feffer replied in an email, “There are various movements that have tried to ‘democratize’ organizations. They mostly don’t work or don’t last. I am a huge believer in the advantages of the Orpheus approach, but it flies in the face of fundamental human psychology. So, no, although the Orpheus experience at one point got some press and attention, I would not say there is much diffusion, even in the music world where the MTT/SF Symphony model is much more prominent.”
Collecting All The Music Written In Nazi Concentration Camps
“Jewish Italian musicologist and pianist Francesco Lotoro has devoted his life to unearthing thousands of songs and scores written during the Holocaust. … Lotoro has catalogued symphonies, operas, scores and songs written on everything from coal sacks to toilet paper and by anyone who composed it in the captivity of a concentration camp: Jews, gypsies, prisoners-of-war. He has collected more than 8,000 pieces of music, with the goal of both preserving them for posterity and repairing a ‘gap’ in music history, a time when innumerable composers were murdered in the Holocaust.”
Philosophically, Music Of Our Time Has Lost Its Way
“Few people play instruments, and music at home emerges from digital machines, controlled by buttons that require no musical culture to be pressed. For many people, the young especially, music is a form of solitary enjoyment, to be absorbed without judgment and stored without effort in the brain. The circumstances of music-making have therefore changed radically, and this is reflected not only in the banal melodic and harmonic content of popular music, but also in the radical avoidance of melody and harmony in the ‘modern classical’ repertoire. Released from its old institutional and social foundations our music has either floated into the modernist stratosphere, where only ideas can breathe, or remained attached to the earth by the repetitious mechanisms of pop.”
The Legend Of Tulipmania In 17th-Century Holland Is Way Overblown
“Stories have been circulating for nearly 400 years about the apparently strange compulsion that led otherwise sensible merchants, nobles and artisan weavers to spend all they had and more on tulips, only to land in bankruptcy and ruin” – and pulling the entire country’s economy down with them – “when the bottom fell out of the market in February 1637.” Historian Anne Goldgar argues that this narrative is a moralistic Victorian invention and that primary documents from the late 1630s tell a somewhat different story.
EU Considers Law To Consider Robots To Be People (The Way Corporations Are)
“A 2017 European Parliament report floated the idea of granting special legal status, or ‘electronic personalities,’ to smart robots, specifically those which (or should that be who?) can learn, adapt, and act for themselves. This legal personhood would be similar to that already assigned to corporations around the world, and would make robots, rather than people, liable for their self-determined actions, including for any harm they might cause.”
Nine Artists Accuse L.A. Gallery Of Stiffing Them On Work Sold
“Long before dealer Clyde Beswick established CB1 Gallery in Los Angeles, he spent 13 months in prison for embezzlement. Now, more than 20 years later, a group of artists is accusing the gallerist of breaking the law again. In an open letter published on Tuesday, nine artists claim that the dealer, along with partner Jason Chang, stiffed them repeatedly and engaged in a pattern of ‘systematic and unfailing’ abuse.”
JoAnn Falletta To Step Down From Virginia Symphony
The 64-year-old conductor will step down from the music directorship of the Norfolk-based orchestra at the end of its centennial season, 2019-20. (She is evidently staying on with her other orchestra, the Buffalo Philharmonic, where her current contract expires in 2021.)
Subject Of Bestseller ‘The Boy Who Came Back From Heaven’ Sues Publisher For Defamation
“The book, which was believed to have been written by [Alex] Malarkey with his father, Kevin, was pulled from print in 2015 after Malarkey, still a minor, recanted his story. Today, at 20-years-old, Malarkey alleges that his father was the sole author of the book, and he is suing Tyndale [House Publishers] for defamation, deceptive trade practices, and five other charges.”