“So as we try to make sense of Mandatory Fun, Al’s fourteenth studio album – and as we round into the fourth decade of his career – it’s becoming clear that his old-school/new-school media business playbook is a little genius. In many corners of the English-language Internet, this week has been Al-saturated, his new music videos and songs unavoidable. How does he do it? Where will it lead? And will this be his media strategy forever?”
Tag: 07.19.14
David Zinman Says His Farewell To Zurich’s Tonhalle Orchestra
“The American conductor David Zinman is a small man, physically – conductors often seem to be – but with a giant profile in the Swiss city of Zurich. People recognize him on the sidewalk. Waiters hover. Strangers wave.”
Inside America’s Biggest Employer Of Musicians
“The military is one of the largest employers of musicians in the Washington area; indeed, the Army’s Web site claims that the institution is “the oldest and largest employer of musicians in the world.” The combined budget for the nation’s military bands was projected, in 2013, at $388 million (before sequester-related cutbacks).”
That Time The Pet Shop Boys Wrote An Opera About Alan Turing For The BBC Proms
“The fact that a public work like this [is] going ahead in the very centre of one of our most famous concert series, on the BBC … there’s a sense of making up and making good, of expunging a lot of what was so bad about the old world.”
A Fight Against Censorship And For The Right To Read Heidegger
“If canonical philosophers were blacklisted based on their prejudices and political engagements, then there wouldn’t be all that many left in the Western tradition.”
OK, World, J.K. Rowling Plans To Produce More Mysteries Than She Did Harry Potter Books
“One of the things I absolutely love about this genre is that, unlike Harry, where there was an overarching story, a beginning and an end, you’re talking about discrete stories. So while a detective lives, you can keep giving him cases.”
The Getty Research Institute Gets Permanent Records Of Ephemeral ‘Happenings’
“The conundrum of how best to preserve the history of midcentury American performance art — art created before phones had video cameras — lies at the center of the Getty Research Institute’s recently announced acquisition of [photographer] Robert McElroy’s archive.”
Rethinking Our Concept Of The Solitary ‘Genius’
“Thinking itself is a kind of download of dialogue between ourselves and others. And when we listen to creative people describe breakthrough moments that occur when they are alone, they often mention the sensation of having a conversation in their own minds.”
Which Building Will Win Architecture’s Stirling Prize – And Which Building *Should* Win
“This year’s Stirling prize shortlist sets out to compare what can’t be compared – as if one had to decide what is better between, say, a shirt, a piece of cheese, an app, some nice music or a chair. … The underlying absurdity is part of the fascination.”
When Hercule Poirot Retires (Or At Least When Actor David Suchet Finishes Playing Him)
” ‘It’s a pleasure to talk about him, but there will come a time very soon where I say, “I’ve done that, I am closing the door and moving on,” ‘ explained Mr. Suchet, 68, clad in a very un-Poirot-like blue dress shirt and jeans.”