Tag: 05.10.20

The World Has Suffered A Trauma – So How Might Trauma-Care Inform Our Response?

“We will need to be prepared for an entirely new and multi-phased approach to audience and community engagement—both at the organizational and industry-wide levels. When there is no precedent, there is also no case study, so in my own formulation of possible ways forward, I’ve turned to approaches from outside our field and outside of our own literal context. In fact, this ultimately led me back to my training in social work.” – Tom OC

Music in Wartime

Here’s an ingenious 45-minute film by Behrouz Jamali that revealingly juxtaposes the music Shostakovich, Prokofiev, and Stravinsky wrote in response to World War II. The video artist Peter Bogdanoff contributes a singular visual rendering of Stravinsky’s finale, applying pertinent newsreel clips. – Joseph Horowitz

Betty Wright, Powerful Singer Of ‘Clean Up Woman’ And Many More, Has Died At 66

Wright, whose first hit came when she was 17 and who produced and mentored scores of other performers as she aged, had 20 singles in the Billboard R&B Top 40 and a voice that blew other singers out of the water. She was “one of the first pop vocalists to sing in the stratospheric ‘whistle register,’ a technique also used by Minnie Riperton, Mariah Carey and Ariana Grande.” – The New York Times

Will The High School Shutdown Derail Theatre And Other Performing Arts Careers?

For students at performing arts schools, the lost senior recitals, plays, dance recitals and more are not just about losing the opportunity to share performances with family: This is their careers on the line. One 18-year-old playwright and director: “The environment in theater is nice because you have a lot of voices together, and everyone was working on this cool project and it felt really great, and I felt that we were all in sync with the vision. … Without that to look forward to working on every day, it makes the days very glum.” – Los Angeles Times

Will French Bookselling Also Change Due To Covid-19?

French publishing, and its associated literary prizes like the (now somewhat disgraced) Goncourt, has long crowded the fall with a flood of titles (which has, in normal years, made the spring frantic for publishers getting the word out). But can that continue? One agent: “Why must so many prizes be awarded at the same time of the year? What logic is behind this? With a more balanced spread of editorial production, the chances of a larger number of books would be increased.” – Le Monde

Jacquelin Taylor Robertson, Architect And Shaper Of New York’s Urban Design, Has Died At 88

Robertson loved classical lines, but “there was no inconsistency between his love of grand classical architecture and his passionate belief in cities: It was all about finding ways to turn time-tested ideas to the benefit of modern life, and he would spend much of the rest of his career promoting better urban design.” – The New York Times