“This week the orchestra … extended [Michael] Francis’ contract another three years, pushing his commitment through the 2023-2024 season. It’s a major step for the fourth music director in the orchestra’s history, coming on the heels of a record-breaking 50th season.”
Tag: 09.28.18
12th-Century Statue At Santiago De Compostela Defaced By KISS Fan
In early August, an unidentified culprit painted the rock band’s name and a cat face (or, alternatively, the face of a band member) on a sculpture that had just undergone a five-year restoration at the medieval pilgrimage center.
Mexico City Now Has A Full-Size Replica Of The Sistine Chapel Ceiling
Miguel Francisco Macias, a retired graphic designer, spent 18 years reproducing Michelangelo’s frescos for his neighborhood church, whose ceiling is almost exactly the same size.
“Still Here:” Native Americans And The Symphony Orchestra
“One of the biggest messages that we found personally was that we’re trying to tell people that we’re still here because a lot of people still view us as not being real – that Native Americans are made-up or that we’re extinct by now. We really want people to know that we’re not the Indians that they portray us as on TV, and we’re not the Indians that they come to sight-see. We’re actual people. We’re our own sovereign nation, and we’re trying to be a part of modern society if people will let us.”
How Dictionary.com Became A Master Of The Tweet
The website’s Twitter account now goes far beyond vocabulary-building blasts, seizing instead on words embedded in the public discourse–and expounding on not only their meaning but the intent behind them.
Reality According To Google (Like It Or Not We’ve Got To Deal With It)
Whether or not Google ultimately exercises this power depends on its human leaders—and on the digital society Google is so central to building. The company is investing heavily in machine intelligence, committing itself to a highly automated future where the mechanics and, perhaps, the true insights of the quest for knowledge become difficult or impossible for humans to understand. Google is gradually becoming an extension of individual and collective thought. It will get harder to recognize where people end and Google begins. People will become both empowered by and dependent on the technology—which will be easy for anyone to access but hard for people to control.
City Ballet Has A Gala, And Addresses Its Recent Scandals
The fall fashion gala began with all of the dancers facing the audience, and principal dancer Teresa Reichlen reading a statement that included the words, “We will not put art before common decency or allow talent to sway our moral compass.” That is, of course, because three of City Ballet’s male dancers have recently left or been fired for sexual harassment and worse. Will this statement work?
How The 19th Century Japanese Artist Hokusai Influenced His Dutch Contemporary
Van Gogh admired Katsushika Hokusai and studied prints of The Great Wave Off Kanagawa. Did it influence Starry Night? From a visual standpoint, that seems probable: “The similarities between the thrust of the wave and the swirling of the sky; that they are both striking studies in blue; and the fact that Van Gogh admired The Great Wave so much all point to a loose inspiration.”
Joe Masteroff, Playwright Of ‘Cabaret,’ Has Died At 98
Masteroff, who adapted Cabaret from Christopher Isherwood’s Berlin Stories and the stage adaptation of that book, hit a timely nerve (not that performances have ever stopped at colleges, high schools, and community theatres – or even on Broadway, where it was revived in 2014). “Cabaret, produced and directed by the Broadway legend Harold Prince, pushed boundaries with provocative depictions of homosexuality, bisexuality, ménages à trois and abortion” – and the growing Nazi threat.
Leonard Cohen’s Notebooks In The Freezer (And His Final Poems)
Leonard Cohen’s son says that even talking about his father’s process of writing feels like an invasion. “My father was very interested in preserving the magic of his process. And moreover, not demystifying it. Speaking of any of this … is a transgression,” Adam Cohen says. But a final book of poems “is what he was staying alive for.”