“Not only is it the only Christmas perennial that orchestras have, it’s also a great public relations opportunity. … Messiah attracts an audience outside typical symphonic circles, not just because the music is well known, but because the holiday season comes with a hear-this-now imperative. And though such audiences might be outwardly satisfied with what they hear, they won’t come back unless they’ve experienced an inner satisfaction they may not articulate.”
Tag: 12.21.10
Historical Performance Meets Rodgers & Hammerstein: UNCSA to Recreate Original Staging of Oklahoma!
“Faculty, guest professionals and design and performance students at University of North Carolina School of the Arts (UNCSA) will merge to realize the classic American musical Oklahoma! as it was first envisioned in 1943. The spring 2011 revival will recreate original Broadway sets, costumes and dances.”
England Cuts All Funding for Free-Children’s-Books Programs
“Booktrust, the independent charity set up to encourage reading, is to lose all government funding for its children’s gifting programmes Bookstart, Booktime and Booked Up, in England.”
Pioneering Choral Conductor John Alldis Dead at 81
“Through his eponymous choir, Alldis was responsible for introducing the British public to some of the more eclectic contemporary music of the last century; he also worked with Pink Floyd and Duke Ellington, established a permanent chorus for the London Symphony Orchestra and wrote pantomime music.”
Bedbugs: An Existential Dilemma
“We try to control them, and lose control of ourselves in the process. We try to protect ourselves from them and end up isolated from each other. Better, then, not to focus on bedbugs themselves but rather, on how the bedbugs make us act.”
Disaster! London Review of Books to Drop Personal Ads
“The editor of the London Review of Books, Mary-Kay Wilmers, has decided to drop the paper’s ‘personals’. For 10 years now these cheeky afterwords have raised naughtiness to new levels of wit. Even highbrows, they reminded us, have low desires; the difference is, the highbrows do it cleverer.”
Intense Interest (Debate) As Google’s Books Database Launches
“Ngram, Google’s new searchable dataset of words and phrases from 5.2 million published books, got quite a workout on its first day. Within 24 hours after its launching last Thursday afternoon, more than a million queries were run.”
FCC Votes For Net Neutrality Rules
“The three new rules, which will go into effect early next year, force ISPs to be transparent about how they handle network congestion, prohibit them from blocking traffic such as Skype on wired networks, and outlaw “unreasonable” discrimination on those networks, meaning they can’t put a competing online video service in the slow lane to benefit their own video services.”
National Portrait Gallery Refuses Request To Remove Artwork From Hide/Seek
“Toronto-based AA Bronson had requested the gallery remove his photograph from the gay-themed exhibit Hide/Seek: Difference and Desire in American Portraiture after the museum removed a video by artist David Wojnarowicz.”
‘Faux Velazquez’ Painting in Met Museum Collection Ruled Genuine Velazquez
In 1973, a portrait of Spanish king Philip IV thought to be by Velazquez was determined by scholars to be merely from the painter’s studio. “Now, after a year of examination and restoration, curators, conservators and scholars have changed their minds.”