Jeremy Denk: “His whole achievement depended on a catlike understanding of which notes hold on and which let go; on delicate traceries between chords, suspending dangerously on a single note or pair of notes, and then, once a foothold is established, leaping to a new harmony as if it were nothing.”
Tag: 08.04.17
The Making, And Potential Undoing, Of Canadian Novelist Joseph Boyden
This massive profile concerns whether Boyden is Indigenous or not, but “the real difficulty of answering the question rests with the essential thorniness of coming to grips with Indigenous identity in a country that has spent centuries trying to warp and misconstrue the very concept.”
Criticism Isn’t Dead; It’s Just Migrated To YouTube
Oh, and that “criticism” is created by fans instead of critics. For instance, there are the guys who run New Rockstars. “They are superfans — sophisticated ones — using visual aids to break down shows and movies for superfans. And their handiwork makes the audience for these pop-culture spectacles even bigger and more engaged.”
In 14 Years, This Drama School In London Has Trained Thousands Of Actors – Including Star Wars And Detroit’s John Boyega
In 2003, the Identity School opened in London as the first school for Black actors. “Identity’s founder and principal, Femi Oguns, wanted to create a drama school that reflected modern society. ‘Rather than join a chorus of complaint I decided to do something about it,’ he says.”
White Guys Still Dominate Hollywood Releases
Using artificial intelligence, researchers at USC analyzed about 1,000 popular film scripts. Aside from the fact that men talk a lot, they found “that the language used by female characters tended to be more positive, emotional and related to family values, while the language used by male characters was more closely linked to achievement. African-American characters were more likely to use swear words, and Latino characters were more apt to use words related to sexuality. Older characters, meanwhile, were more likely to discuss religion.”
George Dreyfus, Violinist With The Philadelphia Orchestra For Almost 50 Years, Has Died At 97
He joined the orchestra in 1953. “Mr. Dreyfus was ‘at the center of the players’ labor activism during contentious years of disputes’ in the 1960s, his son said, which resulted in a long strike and, eventually, a 52-week contract. By the time of his retirement, he’d played under Stokowski, Ormandy, Muti, and his ‘personal favorite,’ Wolfgang Sawallisch.”
Mexico City’s Oldest Standing Dance Hall Isn’t Ready To Hang Up Its Dancing Shoes
Salon Los Angeles has seen Frida Kahlo dance with Leon Trotsky, Che Guevara and Fidel Castro with dance hall regulars and revolutionaries, and a lot more. And so, “Miguel Nieto, whose grandfather opened Salon Los Angeles 80 years ago this week, refuses to quit, even as his gray-haired regulars dwindle, even as developers dream about turning the nightclub into condominiums like the concrete apartment tower going up across the street.”
Battle Over Cleaning Up Music Databases Erupts In A Full-Out Industry War
Three weeks ago, Congress proposed a global, centralized music database to ensure that artists get paid on every streaming platform. Then, performance rights organizations (PROs) ASCAP and BMI announced that they had started work on a joint authoritative music database one year ago. Now, the RIAA and the NMPA have started discussions on a possible shared music rights database.
Anne Midgette: The Best 35 Women Composers, A List
“In the wake of much discussion about the chronic underrepresentation of female composers on American concert programs, I came up with my own best-of list. Since I was responding to a list of recordings, I confined myself to artists active in the recorded music era, the 20th and 21st centuries”
Playwrights Grapple With Ohio’s Opioid Crisis
“At least five plays about heroin abuse have been produced in northeast Ohio alone in the last year as the state’s residents grapple with the surging epidemic.” The writers and their colleagues are using as a model the theater’s response to AIDS in the ’80s and ’90s.