“That his band was Ellington’s instrument has become a cliché, but it is a misleading one. An instrument is a passive object that takes its energy from its operator. That’s not how Ellington worked. He was a tremendous talent-spotter, and part of what kept that talent close by was his willingness to let it have its voice, and more, to highlight and showcase it, and most importantly, to involve it in the creative process.”
Tag: 05.02.12
Classical Musicians Happily Pay To Get Recorded
Performers and composers now regularly spend tens of thousands of dollars to get a professional-quality master tape delivered to a record label – often one of the small, innovative outfits that have sprung up over the past few years. There’s no money to be made from the recordings, but musicians say the resulting exposure is worth the investment.
Britain’s Coolest Music Joint (Vogue Italia Says So) Serves Up Ale And The Avant-Garde
Cafe Oto, in a former warehouse (naturally) in east London, offers music ranging from the Sun Ra Arkestra to Korea’s Balloon & Needle collective to Sean Lennon and Yoko Ono to experimental opera – all to rooms full of 200 listeners, teenagers to octogenarians, listening in attentive silence.
Chinese Publishers Start Putting Ads On Book Covers
Publishers have started printing advertisements on book covers in a move to help their industry sustain development and survive.
The Scream Sells For $120M At Auction
“Sotheby’s New York sold Edvard Munch’s 1895 The Scream for $119.9 million on Wednesday night, setting a record for the most expensive artwork sold at auction. The top spot was previously held by Picasso’s 1932 Nude, Green, Leave and Bust – a painting of his much-younger lover Marie-Thérèse Walter that sold at Christie’s in 2010 for $106.5 million.”
Dancer’s Heart Stops Onstage; Doctor In Audience Saves His Life
“It almost sounds like the old joke: Is there a doctor in the house? But when a 22-year-old dancer collapsed at a recent performance [at the Baryshnikov Arts Center in Manhattan], the answer was gravely serious.”
Egyptian Writers Plead With Their Government To Let Them Attend Gaza Lit Fest
“Egyptian authors, bloggers, journalists and revolutionaries are calling on their government to issue permits for them to enter Gaza and participate in the Palestine festival of literature, which is scheduled to start on Saturday in the embattled territory.”
Cranach Adam And Eve Case Goes To US Court Of Appeals
“A long-running lawsuit to force the Norton Simon Museum to surrender one of its prized artworks, 480-year-old paired paintings of Adam and Eve by Lucas Cranach the Elder that were looted during the Holocaust, has reached what could be its last legal round: plaintiff Marei Von Saher’s recent appeal to the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals.”
In The Philippines, A Mini-Sistema For Ballet
Jessa Balote, 14, who lives in a slum next to a giant waste dump and whose parents earn tiny bits of money scavenging and selling trash, “is one of 54 students enrolled in ‘Project Ballet Futures,’ a program run by Ballet Manila to provide free ballet training to children from some of the city’s most deprived neighborhoods.”
Leonardo – Great Artist Or Great Scientist? To Him, There Was No Difference
“Leonardo was a scientist and an artist at the same time and in a way totally unimaginable today. CP Snow’s famous image of the ‘two cultures’ of art and science, a great divide in the modern mind, did not apply in the 15th and early 16th centuries when Leonardo lived.”