“The Music Center said today that 7,439 people registered for 2,800 places for the free outdoor simulcast of Dudamel’s Thursday inaugural concert [with the Los Angeles Philharmonic] at Walt Disney Concert Hall.”
Tag: 10.06.09
What Made Bette Davis So Compelling? (It Wasn’t The Eyes)
“It was her audacity. The impatient kind that does not suffer long or suffer fools. The bitchy kind that beguiles gays and jolts the rest. The professional kind that makes every victory a hard-won struggle engendering wealth, power, enemies, a hard shell, and abiding loneliness.”
Pacific Northwest Ballet’s Conductor Retires Abruptly
“Stewart Kershaw, the longtime music director and conductor of the Pacific Northwest Ballet orchestra, today resigned from his post.” In a statement, he said, “Please understand that I am now 68, have been a professional ballet conductor for the last 43 years, and recently completed 25 seasons as PNB’s Music Director.”
The Life Aquatic With Robert Lepage At Canadian Opera Co.
Audiences for the Canadian director’s new all-Stravinsky program, The Nightingale and Other Short Fables, “will confront an orchestra pit filled with 67,000 litres of water, a principal cast of water-borne humans and Japanese-influenced puppets.”
The Bookies Were Right: Hilary Mantel Wins Man Booker Prize
The British novelist received the £50,000 award for Wolf Hall, “a fictionalization of the life of Thomas Cromwell, adviser to Henry VIII, during the king’s attempts to produce a male heir to his throne. Mantel’s win was not a complete surprise; bookmakers considered Wolf Hall the heaviest favorite in years.”
Meanwhile, Guardian Readers Award ‘Not The Booker Prize’
“After weeks of longlists, shortlists, readings, discussions, voting, heated debate, posts from authors, praise, blame and all the other marvellous workings of democracy,” readers of the paper’s books blog selected (by a large margin) Rana Dasgupta’s novel Solo, about a man living through the 20th century in Bulgaria. Dasgupta will receive a Guardian mug.
Ignorance Of Science, Math Is Culturati’s Badge Of Shame
Why do “we still meet people who would think it shaming to admit difficulty in reading but who boast (sometimes untruthfully) about their incompetence at basic mathematics? How come the phrase ‘computer nerd’ runs off the tongue more easily than ‘painting nerd’?”
FTC Forcing Transparency In Bloggers’ Reviews
“[B]eginning on Dec. 1, bloggers who review products must disclose any connection with advertisers, including, in most cases, the receipt of free products and whether or not they were paid in any way by advertisers, as occurs frequently.”
Aided By Technology, Hunting For A Hidden Leonardo
“If you believe, as Maurizio Seracini does, that Leonardo da Vinci’s greatest painting is hidden inside a wall in Florence’s city hall, then there are two essential techniques for finding it. As usual, Leonardo anticipated both of them.”
Does National Anthem Have A Place As A Curtain Raiser?
“It can seem slightly odd. The concert hall is aglitter with expensive evening gowns and tails; the audience is seated; the lights go down; the conductor comes out; and suddenly the lights come up and everyone stands up, as if in school, and sings along. Then the ‘real’ music starts.”