How A Vancouver Family Turned Out A Generation Of Star Pianists

Jon Kimura Parker, Jamie Parker, Ian Parker, and Liz Parker are siblings and cousins. All three Parker pianists have garnered praise for their recordings as well as their performances across North America and beyond. How did the Parkers of Vancouver manage to produce a generation of musicians that has left such a discernible mark on the world of classical piano? On a practical level, it boiled down to a family discipline.

Legendary Editor Robert Gottlieb At 87

As industrious a writer as he was an editor (John McPhee marveled that Gottlieb once read an 80,000-word article of his overnight, with cogent suggestions for improvements), Gottlieb has published biographical treatments of Sarah Bernhardt, Charles Dickens’s children and the choreographer George Balanchine. Given that he turned 87 in April, the title of his new book, “Near-Death Experiences … and Others,” might suggest a meditation on impending mortality, a midnight reflection on the exit sign hanging at the end of the hall. Nothing of the sort.

How Ventriloquists And Their Dummies Trick Our Brains

“The common misconception is that this trick involves the performer somehow ‘throwing’ their voice through a clever trick of the voice box.” But that’s not it at all. “‘Imagine you hear a loud sound, and at exactly the same time, there is an abrupt appearance of something. Then, automatically — because of the coincidence in time — you would tend to associate these two events as originating from the same cause,’ says [researcher] Salvador Soto-Faraco … ‘That is the inference that happens in ventriloquist illusions.'”

Could This Be How To Organize A Museum For The 21st-Century Age Of Migration?

A new exhibition in Hamburg by curator Roger M. Buergel (still known for his provocative Documenta 12 in 2007) “delivers on its contention that European museums need to do much more than just restitute plundered objects in their collections, important as that is. A 21st-century universal museum has to unsettle the very labels that the age of imperialism bequeathed to us: nations and races, East and West, art and craft.”

Woman Brings ‘Enigma Variations’ Manuscript To ‘Antiques Roadshow’ – And Elgar Foundation Suggests That It’s Stolen

On last weekend’s UK broadcast of the popular TV series, one Jude Hooke showed the resident specialist a printed score of the “Enigma Variations” with annotations and pasted-in corrected passages of music in Elgar’s own hand. Imagine the surprise of the Elgar Foundation: that very score had gone missing in 1994 – at which time, it turns out, Ms. Hooke’s late husband was an attorney at the same firm as the Foundation’s former vice-chairman.

Why Big-Venue Concerts Are A Pain In The Ass

If you write about music, your job takes you to these places on a regular basis. In the past few weeks I have been to Wembley Stadium, Twickenham and the London Stadium; I’ve been to the O2 Arena and almost ended up at Wembley Arena too. I feel as if I’ve spent most of the early summer negotiating poor transport, incomprehensible entry arrangements and interminable queues. And, in between times, seeing some musicians.