On Sunday afternoon, “a new Chi-Jazz El Train will swing around the Loop, rumble up the Purple Line to Evanston and then head back downtown — with jazz musicians playing onboard all the while. The performers will hold forth in one car, the music piped in live to all the others. To ensure that everyone gets face time with the jazzmen, passengers periodically will rotate from one car to the next.”
Tag: 08.18.09
A Reporter Plays The Stooge (And Other Tiny Roles)
“It’s one of those challenges you wonder how you ever came to accept: go to the Edinburgh festival and take part in as many plays and other events as possible. … Preparation for my Edinburgh extravaganza? A few calls to writers, directors, producers, publicists, anyone, just before I take the sleeper north, asking them if they had any parts for a large, greying man with a wooden stage presence. I’ll be honest: I do not sleep well on the train.”
In A Rut? It May Be Because Stress Has Rewired Your Brain.
“Reporting earlier this summer in the journal Science, Nuno Sousa of the Life and Health Sciences Research Institute at the University of Minho in Portugal and his colleagues described experiments in which chronically stressed rats lost their elastic rat cunning and instead fell back on familiar routines and rote responses…. Moreover, the rats’ behavioral perturbations were reflected by a pair of complementary changes in their underlying neural circuitry.”
LACMA Director Gets Almost $1M Per Year, But Should He?
“In good times, eyebrows might be raised over whether $1 million a year is a fair wage for a director of a nonprofit museum. But in the midst of a recession that has forced budget cuts and layoffs at museums around the country, the issue becomes more loaded.” Michael Govan’s “compensation, about a 50% increase over that of his predecessor, places him in an elite group of art museum directors who for the most part preside over institutions more prestigious and many times richer than LACMA.”
The Public Loves Redbox. Studios Had Better Love it, Too.
“By trying to keep their product from Redbox for as long as possible, the studios are doing what all businesses do when threatened by dramatic change — they’re trying to hang on to their business model for as long as possible. But after you get past all the legal mumbo jumbo, it’s impossible to ignore the obvious: The DVD market is undergoing a seismic shift where many of the same people who once wanted to buy every DVD in sight are now far more eager to rent movies, and rent them cheaply at that.”
The Care And Feeding Of Herb And Dorothy’s Artworks
“After-hours at the Blanton Museum of Art at the University of Texas at Austin,” a scene unfolds “that has already taken or soon will be taking place at 49 other museums, one in each state: the opening of a gift of 50 works of art sent by Herb and Dorothy Vogel. … Unlike some donors, the Vogels imposed only two minimal conditions to their gift: that the entire gift be exhibited together once within five years, and that it be deaccessioned only as a whole.”
Baseball Bets Big On Berlin Ballet Stars’ Genes, Discipline
“Max Kepler-Rozycki, 16, has just received an $800,000 bonus to sign with the Minnesota Twins, a stunning sum for a teenager out of Europe and a record for an amateur position player outside the U.S. and Latin America. … But the reason the Twins are betting long on a kid who is still two years away from his high school graduation is another pair of attributes scouts talk about, both inherited from his parents, former Berlin ballet stars.”
Vying For Arts Tourists, Glasgow Takes On Edinburgh
“It’s widely accepted, of course, that Glasgow’s arts scene is one of the freshest and most exciting in the UK. Almost all Scotland’s major arts organisations are based here, from the National Theatre of Scotland and the Royal Scottish National Orchestra to Scottish Opera and Scottish Ballet. … But can the city really compete during festival month, when Edinburgh hosts the largest and most diverse series of arts festivals in the world?”
Scientists: Strep Throat, Not Salieri, Killed Mozart
“A minor streptococcus epidemic, which probably originated in a military hospital, had erupted when Mozart died in 18th century Vienna, according to research published in the Annals of Internal Medicine. The scientists ascertained that strep probably caused his death by analyzing the local death records for the winter of 1791 and the years before and after.”
Why Can’t Scots Win The Bagpipe Band Championship?
“The dust and the din raised by 210 pipe bands from across the world – more than 8,000 pipers and drummers from 16 countries – have subsided on Glasgow Green, following Saturday’s World Pipe Band Championships, leaving Scottish bands and piping aficionados to ponder why it is that, for the fourth year running and for the eighth time over the past decade, the coveted grade one world championship has been piped off by an overseas band.”