“A household name in prerevolutionary Iran, Marzieh was as closely identified with her country’s music as the great Egyptian chanteuse Umm Kulthum was with hers. … [She] was silenced after the Islamic Revolution in 1979 but who re-emerged years later outside Iran as a singer and a highly public supporter of the resistance.”
Tag: 10.17.10
Chamber Music Society Of Lincoln Center Renews Its Directors (In All Sense Of The Word)
“As traditional careers in music have to some degree diminished, the more entrepreneurial activities have increased, and self-made chamber music festivals are a realistic outlet for young musicians. David Finkel and Wu Han are heroic role models of the chamber musician as entrepreneur.”
Donations To Top 400 US Charities Down 11 Percent Last Year (And The Arts?)
“There are just five arts groups on the list (Met, Lincoln Center, BSO, Kennedy Center, and San Francisco Opera). The Met, the largest on the list at No. 188 with $104.2 million, is down 35.1% from last year. The BSO, No. 339, is up 103.9% over last year with $52.3 million.”
Israeli City Rebrands With The Arts
“With a dozen new museums, libraries, theaters and other cultural centers — all focused on the city’s unique rebranding around kids culture and digital arts — Holon has become an international model for urban renewal, drawing 400,000 tourists last year.”
A Musical About the Scottsboro Boys Trial That’s Fun. (Really.)
“Has there ever been a new Broadway musical facing a more daunting checklist of challenges than The Scottsboro Boys, which dares to set an infamous 1930s Alabama rape trial to music?” And enacts the story as a minstrel show. Yet songwriters Kander & Ebb and director Susan Stroman insist that the show isn’t a downer.
Detroit Symphony Strike Reverberates Around The Orchestra World
“In its essence, the Detroit situation stands as a cautionary tale for every orchestra struggling to remain vital through changing times and a slow economy.”
Christie’s Rocked By Sales Of Forgeries
“More than 30 paintings, thought to be by artists including Max Ernst, Raoul Dufy and Fernand Léger, have been unmasked as forgeries, the Observer has learned. The fakes have duped leading figures in the art world into parting with at least £30m.”
Rohinton Mistry Book Banned In Mumbai
“A 1991 book by Canadian novelist Rohinton Mistry has sparked an uproar in India after students at a Mumbai university burned copies and got the book removed from the syllabus.”
Israeli Banlieue Remakes Itself With Digital Arts
The Tel Aviv Suburb of Holon was “once known for crime and middle-class flight.” But with “a dozen new museums, libraries, theaters and other cultural centers – all focused on the city’s unique rebranding around kids culture and digital arts – Holon has become an international model for urban renewal, drawing 400,000 tourists last year.”
A Rwandan Slumdog Millionaire?
“Africa United tells the story of three Rwandan children who travel across Africa in the hope of taking part in the opening ceremony of the 2010 World Cup in Johannesburg, but board the wrong bus and end up in a children’s refugee camp in Congo.” Yet the film’s makers “claim it’s an uplifting tale that will correct the “perceived stereotype that Africa is just about safaris or pestilence or death’.”