$78,000 Of Debt For A Harvard Theater Degree That’s Not A Real MFA – And Alumni Blame Diane Paulus

“Despite being at the world’s wealthiest university, institute students receive modest financial aid and leave with a median of $78,000 in debt in exchange for a master of liberal arts degree from the Harvard Extension School.” Said one alum, “Getting this degree basically guaranteed that I wasn’t able to pursue it as a career because I immediately had to get a job to pay for the education I received.”

Shakespeare & Company’s Tina Packer Has Now Directed All 37 Of Shakespeare’s Plays

“I never thought consciously, ‘Oh, I’m going to do them all.’ But I started noticing a progression in his writing of the women. In the beginning they’re either shrews or sweet young things, but by the time he gets to his late plays, he says: ‘Guys, you have to go with what the women say. Otherwise we’re all lost.’ That really made me want to keep going.”

Opera Director Lee Blakeley Dies Suddenly At 45

He first got himself noticed with a provocative staging of Handel’s Clori, Tirsi e Fileno in London’s leading gay nightclub. He worked extensively at Covent Garden, San Francisco and Los Angeles Operas, Opera Theater of St. Louis, and especially Santa Fe Opera; his highest-profile project in Europe was directing a series of American musicals (in English) at the Théâtre du Châtelet in Paris.

Philadelphia Orchestra Gets $5 Million To Spotlight Its Concert Hall’s Organ

The program, “which is to begin this coming season, will make the orchestra and the Kimmel [Center] even more organcentric: commissioning new works; programming additional organ concertos and orchestral works that weave organ in and out of the overall texture; holding community concerts, recitals, and postlude concerts; and providing real-time program notes that explain the way the organ works.”

Top Posts From AJBlogs 08.07.17

Sunrise, Sunset and Subjective Connections
Can we name a universal aesthetic experience, one that all peoples around the globe have encountered from the beginning of humanity to the present?  Probably not.  But if we wanted to come close, we could … read more
AJBlog: Infinite Curves Published 2017-08-07

The Artist in His Studio – Matisse: and These are a Few of His Favourite Things
The artist’s studio is different things to different people. I’ve been in quite a few of these (often magical) spaces. The first I can remember is Barbara Hepworth’s in Cornwall, and most of what … read more
AJBlog: Plain English Published 2017-08-07

Backenroth And Fischer, Stenmark & Piatruba
Swedish bassist Hans Backenroth and Danish guitarist Jacob Fischer played in the 11th century Klosterkyrkan, not far from Ystad’s center. Among the most experienced European jazz … read more
AJBlog: RiffTides Published 2017-08-07

Milstein vs. Szigeti
My frustrations with a recent performance of Brahms’ Violin Concerto sent me to youtube in search of something different: an act of therapy. … read more
AJBlog: Unanswered Question Published 2017-08-06

 

Some Existential Questions About Music And Artificial Intelligence

“Whether businesses or researchers, these teams are trying to answer the same question: can machines create music, using AI technologies like neural networks to be trained up on a catalogue of human-made music before producing their own? But these companies’ work poses another question too: if machines can create music, what does that mean for professional human musicians?”