“After 20 years of opining on weighty bilateral issues like NATO expansion and ballistic missile defense, the political analyst Nikolai V. Zlobin recently found himself trying to explain, for an uncomprehending Russian readership, the American phenomenon of the teenage baby sitter.”
Tag: 12.11.12
Woman Who Botched Spanish Fresco, Now Famous, Sells Her Own Art
“Fame has come late to Cecilia Gímenez, an 80-year-old Spanish painter whose disastrous attempt at restoring a 19th-century Ecce Homo on the walls of her local church spread her name around the globe over the summer. … Now [she] has appeared as an artist in her own right, with one of her pictures currently for sale on eBay. (The bidding has now passed €610.)
Are Jazz Standards Losing Their Cool?
“Many contemporary jazz artists include standards in their performances, and a large number of these songs are now about 90 years old. But despite attempts to add contemporary pop songs to the canon, jazz standards may be losing some of their appeal among younger players.”
Study: More Than Half Of UK Musicians Earn Less Than £20,000 A Year
“The research shows that more than a third earn on average between £10,000 and £20,000, and the majority of those artists have more than ten years’ experience in the profession.”
Remembering Oscar Niemeyer
His real significance was in championing and incarnating an expanded definition of glass-box international-style modernism to include the voluptuous, the emotional and even the startling. Or, as Niemeyer liked to put it, playing off the best known catchphrase in architecture, “Form follows feminine.”
St. Paul Chamber Orchestra Cancels More Concerts Due To Lockout
“The St. Paul Chamber Orchestra has canceled concerts through Feb. 8 because of the labor dispute with its musicians. … On Oct. 21, the board locked out musicians when they failed to vote on a contract proposal that would severely cut salaries.”
Charles Rosen, Pianist, Polymath And Author, Dead At 85
“As a renowned writer and lecturer on music who was also a concert pianist of no small reputation, Mr. Rosen was among the last exemplars of a figure more typically associated with the 19th century: the international scholar-musician. If as a writer he was known for aqueous lucidity and the vast, ecumenical sweep of his inquiry, then as a pianist he tended to rate a similar description.”
Eugene Ionesco, Children’s Author
“In the late 1960s, … the Romanian-French absurdist playwright, published a series of ‘silly stories,’ in his words, that he’d written for his young daughter decades before. … When they were published, Maurice Sendak called them ‘among the most imaginative picture books of the last decade’.” Children are, after all, a natural audience for absurdism.