“Like thousands of other Stravinsky fans, I listened to a live stream of the première, my anticipation heightened by descriptions that the composer had supplied later in life. (He called it ‘the best of my works before The Firebird, and the most advanced in chromatic harmony.’) Like many others, I felt mild disappointment. Funeral Song contains no thrilling premonitions of the Stravinsky to come. … Yet, after spending more time with the piece … I felt a growing fascination. The music has a veiled power, and hints at otherwise hidden sources of inspiration. A spectre haunts the scene: the spectre of Wagner.” (includes sound clip)
Tag: 04.25.17
For First Time Ever, Met Museum Chooses Choreographer As Artist-In-Residence
“The Metropolitan Museum of Art has been seriously getting into dance lately. But now it’s taking its love affair one step further: Gallim Dance director/choreographer Andrea Miller was just named the museum’s artist in residence for the 2017-18 season – the first dance artist ever chosen for that distinction! We caught up with Miller to find out exactly what this means.”
Novel About Medieval Sufi Mystic Wins International Prize For Arabic Fiction
Mohammed Hasan Alwan’s A Small Death retells the life of Muhyiddin Ibn ‘Arabi (1165-1240), considered by some the greatest of Sufis and by others (conservative Muslims) an apostate, and his journeys across the breadth of the Islamic world. The award includes $50,000 for the author and another $50,000 toward the costs of translation into English.
A Museum Built For Failure (You’ll Learn Something)
“The purpose of the museum is to show that innovation requires failure,” Dr. West said as he introduced some of the exhibits in a video posted this month on the YouTube channel of Fredrik Skavlan, a Scandinavian talk show host. “If you are afraid of failure, then we can’t innovate.” He said he started the museum “to encourage organizations to be better at learning from failures — not just ignoring them and pretending they never happened.”
Why Does Our Musical Taste Get Frozen In Our Youth?
“It’s simply not realistic to expect someone to respond to music with such life-defining fervour more than once. And it’s not realistic, either, to expect someone comfortable with his personality to be flailing about for new sensibilities to adopt. I’ve always been somewhat suspicious of those who truly do, as the overused phrase has it, listen to everything. Such schizophrenic tastes seem not so much a symptom of well-roundedness as of an unstable sense of self. Liking everything means loving nothing. If you’re so quick to adopt new sentiments and their expression, then how serious were you about the ones you pushed aside to accommodate them?”
This Year’s NFL Football Draft Is At The Philadelphia Museum Of Art (Huh?)
“Standing on those steps and seeing that this is such a heroic moment, this is a culmination for these [draft picks], we set out on, ‘Could we create a theater? Could we build a theater here?’ ” said Peter O’Reilly, the NFL’s senior vice president of events. “We know it’s going to be complicated. We know it’s going to be audacious. But this is what we have to do, and the Parkway itself was natural. It’s a home to so many iconic events over the years.”
Do We Really Need To Dress Up When We Go To The Opera?
“Americans might say that their freedom of self-expression is being denied if they are told how to dress. I think we can learn that self-expression and respect for certain traditions are not mutually exclusive. I have seen many of my fellow citizens dressed in attire more suited to a workout at the gym or for mowing the lawn in restaurants, offices and theaters. This detracts from the specialness of certain occasions.”
What Do The Residents Of The S-Town Make Of ‘S-Town’? Wellllll …
Connor Towne O’Neill travels to Woodstock, Alabama to ask the folks there about finding themselves the subject of a record-smashing podcast – and finds some fair-mindedness, some defensiveness, plenty of ambivalence and even more awkwardness. After all, they really do all know each other. (Warning: includes spoilers)
The Extraordinary Steppenwolf Theatre Leader Martha Lavey Dies At 60
An indefatigable, unstinting and intellectually voracious artistic director who reinvented Chicago’s most audacious and aggressive theater for a new era, Martha Lavey wrestled the Steppenwolf Theatre Company — kicking and screaming — into the 21st century. And in her cajoling, bullying, flattering, outwitting and otherwise leading its hugely talented but famously passionate and opinionated ensemble of tightknit actors toward reinvention and expansion for changed times, this artistic director of more than 20 years became one of the most important figures in the illustrious history of the Chicago theater.
NPR Pioneer Robert Siegel To Retire After 40 Years
“This is a decision long in the making and not an easy one. I’ve had the greatest job I can think of, working with the finest colleagues anyone could ask for, for as long a stretch as I could imagine. But, looking ahead to my seventies (which start all too soon) I feel that it is time for me to begin a new phase of life. Over the next few months, I hope to figure out what that will be.”