The Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment’s “Night Shift” concerts are pulling in that much-sought-after younger audience. “It’s been running for a couple of years, and the idea is simple: after a full-scale concert, the OAE players and their conductor for the evening perform an hour-long concert for a more relaxed clientele (who, mercifully at 10pm on a Friday night, were allowed to bring a drink into the auditorium).”
Tag: 11.05.08
They’ll Be Burning This Book In Cooperstown
“Jane Austen wrote about baseball 40 years before its official invention, according to a new book. But evidence of the game’s British origins was erased from history by the American sports magnate Albert Spalding.”
Down With The Poor, Suffering Poet!
“This skinny eighteenth century Emo kid with a penchant for self-harm and a dodgy taste in cornflower blue pantaloons still epitomises most people’s notion of what a poet should be. The stereotype may be romantically appealing, but it’s also alienating and disempowering. In a time when we have such a diverse and modern poetry scene, why does it still have such an abiding hold?” Molly Flatt has a couple of ideas about the reason – and a remedy.
Hidden Treasures In A New York Archive
“The first scholarly survey of the drawings collection of the New York Historical Society has brought to light previously unknown or misattributed works by John Singer Sargent, Louis Comfort Tiffany, David Wilkie and others.”
Uneasy Truce At Mpls Dance Venue
Minneapolis’s Southern Theater, one of the Twin Cities’ premiere dance venues, has been embroiled in infighting and recrimination since the board decided to fire its founding artistic director last summer. “For now, it appears the artists and the board have put most of their differences aside to keep the 2008-09 season alive. But getting to this point was a difficult and occasionally ugly process.”
Higher Taxes For Wealthy Under Obama Could Spur Giving
“Charity leaders can expect President-elect Barack Obama and Congress to push for changes in the federal tax structure that could spur giving and add new regulations for charities and donors, tax experts say. With Mr. Obama and Congress facing a recession and grappling with establishing a new strategy for the war in Iraq, those changes aren’t likely to come quickly. Nonetheless, they could be significant.”
$2M Grant Funds Regional-NY Network For New Musicals
“The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation will dole out $2 million to Off Broadway’s Playwrights Horizons, with the money earmarked for the development of new tuners.
Grant will fund the commissioning of at least four new tuners and the full production of three or four works, each staged both at Playwrights and at a regional partner. Seven-year program aims to create a network of nonprofit regionals to develop and produce legit musicals.”
And How Did Italy Get So Ugly?
“The Veneto is one great construction site that has produced monstrosity after monstrosity over the past 50 years… On the one hand, you have a region of outstanding natural beauty and extraordinary architecture; on the other, an ugly urban sprawl that has obliterated the countryside.”
Considering Crichton – And Where He Went Wrong
“The boy-novelist who engineered a tyrannosaurus in Jurassic Park and mysterious pathogens from outer space in The Andromeda Strain ha[d] become a political pamphleteer, a right-wing noodge. […] Crichton’s early novels were escapist fantasies that happened to be instructive. His political books are hectoring screeds that incidentally turn out to be thrillers.”
Russian President Calls For End To Media Censorship
“In a speech to lawmakers televised live across the country on state television’s flagship news show Vesti, Medvedev warned officials against trying to interfere in freedom of expression in the press, radio and television.”