The St. Romanos International Composers Competition, launched this year as part of the state-run St. Petersburg International Choir Festival, aims to bring the church’s music (more central to worship than in the West) out of the powerful shadow of Russian Romanticism and into the 21st century. Roughly 300 scores were submitted; large, enthusiastic crowds turned out to hear the winning works.
Tag: 05.03.12
The Myth Of “Average” – It Turns Out Most Of Us Are Outliers
“New research suggests that rather than describe how humans perform, the bell curve may actually be constraining how people perform. Minus such constraints, a new paper argues, lots of people are actually outliers.”
New Instruments, And The Human Quest For Volume
“Humans have an irrepressible desire to be heard and also to experience music at a sufficient dynamic that it can be felt in a visceral sense.” (And that leads to some rather odd challenges for musicians.)
Timing Really Is Everything – In Film, Anyway
“Bam. Pow. Timing. The moral? Wait a beat. Don’t wink. Set up the moment properly. Whether it’s Grodin in deadpan or a computer-animated Marvel taking it out on another computer-animated Marvel, the audience can be putty in the right hands.”
Newly Discovered Draft Pages Could Change Understanding Of The Little Prince
“Believed to date from 1941, the translucent, tissue-thin pages are filled with annotated writing, crossed out and underlined in sections. Saint-Exupéry experts authenticated the pages.” One of the pages contains a scene that never made it into the book.
Completing Audubon’s Work, Thanks To A Broken Heart
“Her father sold subscriptions to the works that Gennie completed. Among those who signed up were Rutherford B. Hayes, the former president, and Theodore Roosevelt, then a student. Soon, Gennie and her helpers were circulating lithographs of such quality and precision that some top American ornithologists took notice.”
Royal Ballet Director: Stop Denying That Dance Has An Anorexia Problem
“Royal Ballet director Monica Mason has claimed that any dance company leader who says they have never worked with an anorexic performer is lying.”
UK Culture Minister Says Ministry Is Not Being Abolished
“Minister for the arts Ed Vaizey has accused Labour’s shadow culture secretary Harriet Harman of ‘concocting’ a rumour that the Department for Culture, Media and Sport is set to be abolished.”
Tunisian TV Station Convicted On Morals Charge For Airing Persepolis
“A panel of five Tunisian judges Thursday convicted TV magnate Nabil Karoui of ‘disturbing public order’ and ‘threatening public morals’ by broadcasting the French movie Persepolis. … Karoui was fined $1,600.”
Jerry Saltz Hates Big Art Auctions
“Not just because they’re freak-show legal casinos, spectacles where the Über-ultrarich can act out as profligately in public as possible, trying to buy immortality, become a part of art history, make headlines, and create profit. … I hate them for what they do to art, for the bad magic of making mysterious powerful things turn into numbers.”