Tag: 09.29.20

Unheard Recording Of Ella Fitzgerald’s 1962 Berlin Concert Rediscovered

“These tapes” — of Fitzgerald’s return to Berlin two years after her 1960 debut there, a concert which became a Grammy-winning bestseller — “come from impresario and Verve Records founder Norman Granz’s private collection. As Ella’s manager, he had a habit of recording Ella live – sometimes for radio broadcast, sometimes for later release, sometimes just to have. He also had another habit of focusing on his next project rather than harnessing what he had just recorded, thus the tapes being lost.” – Glide Magazine

The One Patriotic Song That Unites All Americans (Good Thing Most Folks Don’t Know Its History)

“A sharp little scene [in Mrs. America] points out how two political opponents could both relate to [Woody] Guthrie’s generous vision of the US, but it also raises a crucial question about the significance of a song so famous that it has been described as an ‘alternative national anthem’. Not knowing about the story behind the song may make it universal, but is that at the cost of diluting it?” – BBC

PBS Is About To Turn 50

These resources are especially crucial to families without access to broadband internet, and it has been a huge boon during the Covid quarantines. It’s not too much to say that PBS was “built for the pandemic,” as the documentary filmmaker Ken Burns put it in a phone interview last week. “We had the materials. We had the relationships. We didn’t have to retool.” – The New York Times

Germany Announces $19 Million Aid To Commercial Galleries

As a part of its “New Start Culture” program, the country’s culture ministry will provide support to commercial galleries across the country in the form of grants that range between €5,000 ($5,837) and €35,000 ($41,000) for its early 2021 programs. In a statement to the press, culture minister Monika Grütters says her aim is to help “stabilize the art market,” citing its importance both to culture and the economy. – Artnet

Theater Workers On What It’s Like To Be Back In The Theater (In Places Where They Can Do That)

“Cautiously, with six-inch cotton swabs and four-gallon drums of hand sanitizer, theater is creeping back — on the side of a cliff in Cornwall, England; on stoops in Montreal; even, in a few cases, in New York. … We asked artists and audiences — even an usher and a critic — to reflect on what it was like to return to shows across the world.” – The New York Times

Jeremy O. Harris, Katori Hall, And Matthew López On How Broadway Must Change And How Theater Can Change The World

Harris: “I’ve always felt this responsibility that if I was going to be in the theater, I had to do theater the way the Greeks did it. The theater of the Greeks was as much about civic responsibility as it was about anything else. It’s about people witnessing the world, responding to that world, and then maybe doing something to change it. That’s why the only people who could see it were people who could vote.” (video or audio) – Variety

Performance Venues, Museums, Libraries Closed Again In Montreal And Quebec City

“As of 12:01 a.m. on Thursday, performance venues in Greater Montreal, Quebec City and Chaudière-Appalaches – regions now considered ‘red zones’ for the coronavirus – must close to audiences for 28 days as part of wide-ranging new measures announced by the provincial government on Monday [amidst a second wave of infections].” – The Globe and Mail (Canada)