Responding to the latest study to find that people can’t hear the difference between million-dollar Strads and top-line new violins, columnist Richard Ball suggests that – well, as a cynical DC operative might put it, perception is reality.
Tag: 05.08.17
Olivier Award-Winning Playwright To Lead, And Build Up, African-American Theater Company In Memphis
With the appointment of Katori Hall – author of The Mountaintop (about the last night of Martin Luther King Jr.’s life) and now working on a bio-musical of Tina Turner – as artistic director as well as a new stage and headquarters, the Hattiloo Theatre “is making a shift to be a main if not the main player in black theater in the country,” says company founder and CEO Ekundayo Bandele, who relinquished his artistic director title in order to hire Hall.
Justin Davidson Imagines Manhattan’s New Mega-Towers As High-Security Prisons For Billionaires
“To be sure, the inmates of these levitating dungeons believe they are being pampered. They have room to stretch, plenty to eat, and access to round-the-clock cable TV. But the psychological impact of life in such extreme conditions is hard to fathom. On sunny days, sunlight pounds blindingly through glass walls, ricocheting off white-oak floors and glossy white surfaces, and making the closets seem invitingly shaded. In gray weather, fog shrouds the living quarters, confronting residents with the blankness of a near-death experience.”
Science’s “Facts” Problem – People Need Stories To Back Them Up
“Facts don’t speak for themselves. People like stories, whether they are factual doesn’t really matter, but scientists can make stories about science, including evidence and uncertainties… If there’s a weather disaster, public opinion swings. The 2003 heatwave convinced many Europeans that climate change is real. In the wake of those events people are receptive, and they want to know what happened.”
Why There Are More Books Published In French In Canada Than There Are In English
There’s a perception that the Francophone community is much smaller than the Anglophone community. The fact is that there are more books published in Quebec and Francophone Canada than in the English language [in Canada].
The Stradivarius Test – And The Strads Don’t Pass
Whether the player was performing solo or with an orchestra, “Listeners found that new violins projected significantly better than those by Stradivari. Moreover, listeners preferred new violins over old by a significant margin.” In addition, Paris audiences were asked “to guess whether each of seven violins was old or new. In all, just 122 of 273 (or 44.7 percent) of the guesses were correct.”
Edwin Sherin, Theater And Television Director, Dead At 87
In his stage career, he was best known for his Tony-winning production of The Great White Hope starring James Earl Jones and Jane Alexander (whom he later married). In his prolific television career, his longest gig was as sort of in-house director and executive producer for Law and Order.
‘Black, Openly Gay, Virtuosic, And Arrogant’ – Also Unconventional And (Yes) Mad: Composer Julius Eastman Gets Revival 27 Years After His Death
He studied and then taught with Morton Feldman; he sang with both Meredith Monk and the New York Philharmonic; at the premiere of one of his pieces, he put on a dress and served the audience soup. (The description in the headline, by the way, is by his little brother.) David Patrick Stearns has a look at this singular figure, the subject of a festival now underway in Philadelphia.
Russia’s Most Notorious Protest Artist Granted Political Asylum In France
Pyotr Pavlensky – the man who sewed his lips shut in solidarity with Pussy Riot, nailed his scrotum to Red Square, and set fire to the headquarters of the successor to the KGB – fled Russia earlier this year following sexual assault charges that may or may not have been trumped up.
Midgette And Kennicott Dish The Met Opera 50th Anniversary Gala (And The House Itself, And The State Of Singing)
Also dished: “Anna Netrebko single-handedly upholding the grand tradition of opera as camp” and the evening as “a symbolic passing of the torch.”