Tag: 09.01.20

How The Classical Music System Conspires Against Minority Participation

White people and some ethnic groups follow a progression of youth orchestras and schools of the arts and then are often paired with principal musicians in local professional orchestras. Meanwhile, young Black musicians inevitably draw attention to their raw talent but can’t afford the coaching and mentoring to help develop technical expertise and to help direct the way through the audition maze. Having little or no experience in a youth orchestra, they arrive in college music departments with, as one musician put it, “a lot of heart and personality but may not catch every note.” – San Francisco Classical Voice

A German Experiment In How To Have Large Audiences And Be Safe From COVID

All the fans were volunteers, part of Restart-19, a study to see if and how big cultural and sporting events can be held safely in the era of COVID-19. The daylong experiment was set up by scientists to try and understand why mass events are so effective at spreading the novel coronavirus and how organizers can act to minimize the risk. – The Hollywood Reporter

When Merce Cunningham Collaborated With A Computer Program

No, it wasn’t to generate random patterns of movement; rather the contrary, in fact. Ellen Jacobs, for years his company’s publicist, recounts how, at age 70, when his body could no longer demonstrate to his dancers everything he wanted, he began using a software program called LifeForms: “He carefully moved the limbs of these avatars — he called them Michelin men — joint by joint, in multiple directions, and wondrous new possibilities appeared.” – The New York Times

Small Theatres Are Innovating Online In Ways That Will Change The Art Form

Over the last few months, it has been interesting to watch how theatre navigates what, in many cases, is largely new territory: digital space. What began as a free-for-all, with organisations throwing anything they could online, has started to develop into something more interesting, as theatres and companies grapple with questions around the creative possibilities and also how to monetise them, so that artists and organisations have income. – The Stage

There Was An Entire Lost Generation Of Gifted African-American Conductors

“[They] led major concerts by Arturo Toscanini’s NBC Symphony, gave the Philadelphia Orchestra premiere of the Shostakovich Symphony No. 8, and led the Metropolitan Opera’s celebrated rehabilitation of Meyerbeer’s Le Prophète. Most of them were robbed of that over-60 elder-statesman period when the world was likely to more widely celebrate their accumulation of artistic wisdom. But there’s ample proof that Dean Dixon (1915–76) and Calvin Simmons (1950–82) had many great moments well before then. They can be counted among the finest of any generation.” David Patrick Stearns looks at Dixon, Simmons, and their Black colleagues, and at why many never reached that elder-statesman stage. – WQXR (New York City)

Tate, V&A And Pompidou Museums Defend Projects In China

All three are collaborating or consulting on major projects in China with development firms owned by the state. They say that sharing their collections and expertise in this way “can help to foster tolerance and curiosity” (Pompidou); “generates greater understanding between global cultures and communities” (V&A), and helps “increase Chinese people’s access to the possibilities of international art” (Tate). – The Art Newspaper

Using Greek Tragedy To Make Sense Of The Pandemic

Elif Batuman on watching Theater of War’s online production of Sophocles’s Oedipus the King: “You’ve never really seen Oedipus, I found myself thinking, till you’ve seen it during a plague. The plague hadn’t really stood out to me on previous readings, yet it was the key to everything. … No matter how many times you see it pulled off, the magic trick is always a surprise: how a text that is hundreds or thousands of years old turns out to be about the thing that’s happening to you, however modern and unprecedented you thought it was.” – The New Yorker

Singer-Conductor Claudio Cavina, Major Force In Monteverdi Revival, Dead At 58

He first came to prominence on recordings by Rinaldo Alessandrini and Concerto Italiano, especially their landmark series of Monteverdi’s madrigals. He then broke off to found his own consort of singers and instrumentalists, called La Venexiana, with whom he performed and recorded all of Monteverdi’s operas, madrigals, and major sacred works as well as music of other 16th- and 17th-century Italian composers, winning a pack of awards along the way. – Presto Classical