The formidable Norwegian soprano Lisa Davidsen, making her Metropolitan Opera debut in Tchaikovsky’s Queen of Spades, is right now New York’s most talked about opera singer. I caught the final performance in the run, on December 21 – and discovered myself mainly thinking about the Bolshoi Opera’s historic four-week New York season of 1975. – Joseph Horowitz
Tag: 12.24.19
Popular Songs , Social Justice, and the Will to Change with Brad Schreiber
Author Brad Schreiber joins S.T. Patrick to discuss his new book Music is Power: Popular Songs, Social Justice, and the Will to Change. For two hours, Schreiber and Patrick discuss the impact of protest music (or more aptly, socially conscious music) on the culture and on their lives (while playing many of the songs discussed). Some of the topics discussed are the qualities that make up a socially conscious song, if American and British popular music working bottom-up made socially conscious music more plentiful, the Vietnam era, the misuse of Bruce Springsteen songs, what “This Land Is Your Land” really means, The Man in Black, The Dixie Chicks versus “W,” the impact of “the end of the Sixties,” Marvin Gaye in 1970, whether the music of the 1980s is underrated as socially conscious music, and much more. – Midnight Writers News
Wendy Whelan’s Top Ten Cultural Wants
What are the essential pieces of culture you have to have? For Whelan, they include Stravinsky, MoMA, socks and Chanel No. 19. – The New York Times
The Next Big Thing In Streaming? Human Curators
While computer-generated suggestions aren’t going away, companies are increasingly looking for other means to help viewers discover shows and movies they might otherwise have missed in a world where something significant premieres almost every day. The industry calls this “human curation,” which is basically a fancy phrase for describing nonautomated ways of hyping specific content. – New York Magazine