“In an ideal world, Rattle would tour the LSO around its own country, instead of everywhere abroad, with a rallying cry to raise standards. That won’t happen either, because the Arts Council won’t fund anything that treads on the toes of regional clients. All of which leaves Rattle with a job title that has less clout than a viscountcy, an honorific to deceive the media into believing in miracles. These inhibitions may help explain why the incoming music director has set such store on getting the public authorities to build him a new hall. That, at least, could be credited as a concrete achievement.”
Tag: 09.23.17
Do Leadership Departures At Top Magazines Signal A Crisis In The Industry?
Magazines have sputtered for years, their monopoly on readers and advertising erased by Facebook, Google and more nimble online competitors. But editors and executives said the abrupt churn in the senior leadership ranks signaled that the romance of the business was now yielding to financial realities.
The Perils Of Collecting Art That Deteriorates And Goes Away
Some collectors have responded to the resulting existential malaise by deliberately collecting art that is difficult to live with, refusing the notion of art-as-investment and embracing work that is not easy on any level, art that until recently would only have found a home in a well-financed institution that had the resources to maintain it. These are works that are difficult not merely in a conceptual sense but in reality as well, works that require as much time and energy as they do money, works that are ephemeral and unwieldy and often extremely messy. This is the sort of art that can die, rot, dry up or just disappear.
Audio Book Sales Are Soaring. And Publishers Are Calming Down About It
“The good news for publishers, looking forward, is that much of the audience for digital is young. Almost half of those who say they listen to audiobooks were under 35. And it’s a hungry audience. While only 24 percent of Americans say they listened to at least one audio book in 2016, the average listener in that category consumed 15 books in that same period, mostly on a smartphone. You have to figure that the average reader of physical books did not buy 15 books last year, much less read that many.”
A Harrowing Play That Gets New Life Thanks To The Administration’s Anti-Immigrant Policies
Sure, Alex Alpharoah’s play about coming to the U.S. as a baby in his then-15-year-old mother’s arms was powerful, and sure, it sold fine during its six-week run at Ensemble Studio Theatre. But its name – Wet: A DACAmented Journey indicates what had everyone from politicians like Adam Schiff (D-Burbank) to the ACLU and the Human Rights Watch showing up, and what has the theatre planning for another run: It’s about DACA, the “Dreamers” program that the president kept saying he would end.
Colin Firth, Whose Wife Is Italian, Now Has Dual Italian And British Citizenship
Without saying “Brexit,” the actor says Brexit, as his wife gets British citizenship too: “We never really thought much about our different passports. But now, with some of the uncertainty around, we thought it sensible that we should all get the same.”
Charles Bradley, The ‘Screaming Eagle Of Soul’ Who Found Fame Late In Life, Has Died At 68
Bradley’s first album, on the ’60s sound revival label Daptone, was released when he was 62, and his James-Brown-evoking performances became legendary. Daptone’s Gabriel Roth: “Charles was somehow one of the meekest and strongest people I’ve ever known. His pain was a cry for universal love and humanity.”
How Weird – And How Abusive – Do Celebrities Have To Be Before We Stop Watching Their Movies?
Apparently, audiences will accept almost anything as long as it has to do with controlling women. See: Tom Cruise and Jim Carrey.
What A New Science Fiction Series Reveals About Our Planet (It’s Rather Grim)
Traditionally, science fiction with spaceships has been about exploration and escaping Earth. But that escape is a pipe dream. “We experience our actual earthbound future as an incomprehensible betrayal. For humanity to flicker and die on Earth alone — and to leave no trace of itself save its garbage and the geological echo of incomprehensibly vast mass extinction — seems to us like a crime against the specialness of our species (not to mention all the other species we’ve made extinct just to get this far).”
This ‘Star Trek’ Goes, Digitally, Where No CBS Show Has Gone Before
After the opening episode arrives over the usual airwaves, the show is only going to be available on CBS All Access – something that executives hope will get more people to sign up for the streaming service.