Percussionists can be a feisty bunch, as you might be if the question you were most frequently asked was, “You get paid for standing around and occasionally hitting things with sticks?” But the oft-misunderstood musicians are being highlighted in Minneapolis this month as part of a 3-week Percussion Festival…
Tag: 05.20.08
A Banner Year For Scottish Theatre
Critics debate over the best in show of this season’s Scottish theatre.
Better Health? Make Music!
“If I don’t play for a couple of days,” said Dr. Claudius Conrad, a third-year surgical resident at Harvard Medical School who also holds doctorates in stem cell biology and music philosophy, “I cannot feel things as well in surgery. My hands are not as tender with the tissue. They are not as sensitive to the feedback that the tissue gives you.”
Your Brain Filling Up
“Some brains do deteriorate with age. Alzheimer’s disease, for example, strikes 13 percent of Americans 65 and older. But for most aging adults, the authors say, much of what occurs is a gradually widening focus of attention that makes it more difficult to latch onto just one fact, like a name or a telephone number. Although that can be frustrating, it is often useful.”
Steinway Buys Arkiv
“Arkiv, a kind of Amazon of classical music that launched in Feb. 2002, offers some 90,000 CD and DVD titles from major and independent classical music labels through its website, Arkivmusic.com. About 5,500 of those titles are otherwise out-of-print. The deal calls for Steinway to pay $3 million in cash up front plus an additional $1.5 million over the next three years.”
West End Actors Urge Rejection Of More Performances
“Actors have called on Equity to reject any offers by London theatre producers to increase the minimum wage for West End casts in return for additional performances. They warn employers might try and raise the number of shows staged on a weekly basis to 12 – an increase of four on the existing deal – as a way of conceding to the 44% salary hike that the union is campaigning for.”
Lynn Harrell On Playing Bach In The 21st Century:
“The 21st-century listener hears music, and assimilates it mentally and emotionally, extremely differently than an 18th-century gentleman. Certainly, when music was played in much smaller venues, the loudest thing that the urban man would ever hear was thunderclaps. Perhaps people’s hearing was less damaged than it is now. Today, time goes so much faster. If your watch gained four minutes in a week, that didn’t matter much in the 18th century. If your letter got there three weeks later, it wasn’t a big deal. It is now.”
Suddenly, New Creativity In American Musical Theatre
“For nearly a decade, New York’s musical theater has seemed to be frozen in an eerie holding pattern. This year, the ice broke. And suddenly, it’s spring.”
How A Poet Laureate Could Change The World
“The next poet laureate could work from the heart of government to influence areas from literacy to public health, from roadbuilding policy to the Ministry of Defence. It’s a wide remit, but poets are wide thinkers. He or she could sit on those committees that decide what money goes where, and gently suggest that members of the civil service had workshops with a poet as part of their training.”
Controversy Roils Drama Desk
“The recent attacks on the Drama Desk began with a former member of the Nominating Committee complaining to the New York Post about having been removed from the Committee. That member resigned from the organization.”