“Studies done in past decades make clear that, up through the 1960s, the median age for classical music in the U.S. was around 30. … [Greg] Sandow doesn’t pretend he has any quick fixes for a complex socio-cultural problem, but he does believe part of the solution involves thoroughly overhauling the ways classical music is being packaged, marketed and presented.”
Tag: 04.29.10
Edgar Awards Mystery: The Trick To Winning Twice
“The group has doled out awards to crime and mystery novelists since 1946, but few writers collect multiple awards in major categories during the course of their careers. … Only one winner in the debut novelist category has gone on to win best novel.”
What Should Los Angeles Ask Of Eli Broad?
Broad hasn’t confirmed that a site near Disney Hall is where he wants to put his art museum, but let’s assume it is. “They could sensibly begin by asking how the museum’s construction might be leveraged to help produce truly meaningful improvements to the blocks surrounding it — and to help draw foot traffic and avoid the hidden-in-plain-sight quality of Arata Isozaki’s design for the MOCA building.”
Making Audio Sculpture Of Artists’ Conversations
“Beginning in 1973, with the help of a few collaborators, [a conceptual artist named William] Furlong created Audio Arts, a no-budget ‘magazine’ composed solely of cassette recordings of interviews with artists Mr. Furlong found interesting. He mailed them to friends and subscribers, at first hundreds and then thousands.”
Pulitzer-Winning Cartoonists Condemn South Park Censorship
“The group produced the site RevolutionMuslim.com — on which images of the fatally stabbed filmmaker Theo van Gogh (a noted critic of Islam) appeared with the caption: ‘Have Matt Stone And Trey Parker Forgotten This?’ Comedy Central censored an episode of ‘South Park’ last week that was to depict Muhammad.”
It’s Time To Put An Oboist On The Supreme Court
“[O]nly one thing matters when it comes to Diane P. Wood, the U.S. 7th Circuit Court of Appeals judge and University of Chicago law professor who is believed to be among the president’s top picks to replace outgoing Justice John Paul Stevens. … It might even be more important than her stance on abortion. Wood is an oboist.”
NY Phil To Give NY Premiere Of Messiaen’s St.-Francois d’Assise
The Philharmonic presents its first fully-staged opera, Ligeti’s Grand Macabre, next month. And it’snot stopping there: “Though it hasn’t yet been announced, [Alan] Gilbert is planning to bring to the Phil the first complete New York production of Olivier Messiaen’s five-hour opera St. Francis of Assisi, … tentatively planned for 2013.”
Ailey Company Names Successor To Judith Jamison
“Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater, one of the nation’s most successful dance troupes, said on Wednesday that it would entrust its future to Robert Battle, a 37-year-old outside choreographer who has had a long association with the company.”
Alastair Macaulay On The Reward And Risk In Ailey’s Choice Of Director
“When it came to picking an artistic director to succeed Judith Jamison, the Ailey company could have easily chosen to turn itself into a heritage troupe – or into one yet more heritage-oriented than it already is. … By naming Robert Battle, however, the company is allowing the recipe to change. … [But can] Mr. Battle – can anyone – emanate positive energy in the industrial quantities that Ms. Jamison delivers?”
Abstract Painter Robert Natkin Dead At 79
He “was one of the most important independent abstract artists of his generation; but an insistence on his work always containing a strong emotional and narrative thread sometimes led him into conflict with the orthodoxies of the day.”