ArtsJournal: Daily Arts News

TT: So you want to see a show? Here's my list of recommended Broadway, off-Broadway, and out-of-town shows, updated weekly. In all cases, I gave these shows favorable...

Posted November 20, 2008

TT: Almanac "We are always on stage, even when we are stabbed in earnest at the end." Georg Büchner, Danton's Death (trans....

Posted November 20, 2008

OGIC: Killing me softly I'm really obsessed with Keats's "To Autumn"; I think it's a perfect and magical piece of writing, with effects that...

Posted November 19, 2008

TT: Clive Barnes, R.I.P. When I was a teenager and first became aware of criticism as a profession, Clive Barnes was one of its...

Posted November 19, 2008

TT: Snapshot Sid Caesar and Nanette Fabray engage in a pantomime argument on a 1954 episode of Caesar's Hour, accompanied by the...

Posted November 19, 2008

The Artful Manager

Andrew Taylor on the business of Arts & Culture

Wanna get to Carnegie Hall? Got 10,000 hours? Malcolm Gladwell has yet another book, this time on Outliers, the men and women whose success or abilities lie well beyond the norm. In an excerpt published in The Guardian, he suggests that one indicator seems common to all such...

Posted November 18, 2008

Enabling and rewarding your critics There's more and more conversation out there (at least that I'm hearing) about embracing and enabling audience members to connect around your content and contribute their own perspectives. Whether through discussion circles, on-line forums, or post-event coffee hours, the larger...

Posted November 13, 2008

Shacking up Chicago Tribune critic Chris Jones explores an increasingly common consideration for facility-dependent arts groups in a down economy: sharing space instead of building or owning their own. Says Jones:Given the economic downturn, sharing of space may turn out to the...

Posted November 12, 2008

Learning to speak and listen... I spent this past Friday and Saturday in Philadelphia with my fellow members of the Association of Arts Administration Educators board, of which I'm currently president. It's a group of some of the smartest, funniest, and warmest folks you're likely...

Posted November 10, 2008

Policy to come? Given the regime change enacted in last night's election results, it might be a good time to reread (or read for the first time) the Obama campaign's arts policy document, which is reprinted in full below. You can also grab...

Posted November 5, 2008

blog riley

rock culture approximately

blip tunes go viral, all good blip: (verb) a mashup of pandora and twitter, blindingly addictive, killerapp, non-sequiturs woven through instant classic playlists, ricoched through various anonymous ears of abundance, the flash fantastic, in blissful stereo where available....

Posted November 19, 2008

OBAMA THROUGH THE LOOKING GLASS This would be quote of the week but it's too juicy, too venal, too outrageously narcissistic, even after watching the Boogie Man (Frontline's Lee Atwater) profile on Friday night. From Karl Rove in the Sunday Times Magazine: "Our new president-elect...

Posted November 18, 2008

Now a Major Motion Podcast Obama: The First Motown President (podcast riley), a discussion of the Vanity Fair oral history by Lisa Robinson, with Suzanne de Passe and Raphael Saadiq On Point (Thursday, November 13, 2008). (Download mp3, or iTunes)...

Posted November 14, 2008

Levi Stubbs' Tears Tune in to On Point tomorrow morning at 11 am (Thursday, Nov. 13) for a discussion of Lisa Robinson's oral history of Motown (Vanity Fair). And when Levi Stubbs died last month, nobody mentioned that 1986 Billy Bragg song, "Levi...

Posted November 12, 2008

REPORT FROM SMT NASHVILLE AD LINE OF THE MONTH: Urinal wallboard, Rennaissance Hotel Convention Center: King of Country Picks the King of Chrome: George Jones for Hunters Custom Automotive, Nashville (Society for Music Theorists conference, Plenary session on "Popular Music and the Canon")...

Posted November 10, 2008

CultureGulf

Rebuilding Culture after Katrina

Waiting in the Ninth Ward for Godot This looks cool: *** CREATIVE TIME PRESENTS PAUL CHAN'S WAITING FOR GODOT IN NEW ORLEANS What: Creative Time is pleased to announce the presentation of Waiting for Godot in New Orleans, a project by Paul Chan, co-produced by Creative Time...

Posted October 29, 2007

Beaucoup recruiters So one of the kids I occasionally tutor through the YEP program was talking the other day about how 'beaucoup recruiters been coming around my mama's place lately,' which set he and another boy off on a discussion of which...

Posted October 17, 2007

I've been a miner for a pot of gold Ever since the Grace Mansion was struck by lightning a few months back, a small army of workers has been milling about the property as they gut and rebuild the top floor. In keeping with most post-Katrina phenomenon, this has...

Posted October 1, 2007

Katrina and Me: Meta storytelling on the post-storm stage I was reading Andrew O'Hehir's film column in Salon today, where he mentions a new Katrina documentary screening at the upcoming New York Film Fest, "The Axe in the Attic." I can't tell much about it based on the synopsis...

Posted September 27, 2007

Another long goodbye My friend called me today -- she was crying, having just left her office here for the last time. In a few days, she'll be headed north for good. "I'm really, really sad," she said, and she sounded like my...

Posted September 21, 2007

Dewey21C

Richard Kessler on arts education

Is There a Silver Bullet to Fix Education? I can't tell you how many times I have heard supporters of arts education say: "we need a research project that will prove beyond any doubt what we already know about the benefits of arts education. Then we will really...

Posted November 19, 2008

Update on NYSCA Funding Cuts Thanks to New York State politics, the cuts to NYSCA as proposed by Governor Patterson will not be taking place. Phew....With state budget deficits growing, what happened here may be worth noting carefully, very carefully.It raises the question of exactly...

Posted November 19, 2008

The Bleeding Edge: 20 Percent Mid-Year Cuts to the New York State Council on the Arts The budget for the State of New York has a big hole in it, this year and next. Governor David Patterson has proposed major cuts, some call it amputations, to the NYSCA budget.A cut of $2.6 million occurred just a...

Posted November 14, 2008

To Go Where No Public School Teacher Has Gone Before: No Tenure Michelle Rhee, DC Schools Chancellor, has unveiled non-tenure track pilot program for teachers in the DC public school system. With the help of private foundations, Rhee will offer this non-tenure track for teachers, in exchange for significantly increased pay.Teacher tenure:...

Posted November 13, 2008

News Flash: Gates Foundation Announces New Focus in Education I bet this will be my most viewed blog.The big news here is that Gates, as many people already knew, will be moving away from its focus on the creation of small schools. It will be interesting to see what...

Posted November 12, 2008

diacritical

Douglas McLennan's blog

ArtsJournal is Hiring [UPDATE] ArtsJournal is expanding and I'm looking for a part time editor. The job involves culling stories from the publications we monitor...

Posted August 26, 2008

Why Newspapers Are Failing... I've been posting lately at the National Arts Journalism Program's new Articles blog. Today I enumerated the business reasons why newspapers...

Posted February 20, 2008

A New Blog At NAJP In my other life (what other life?) I'm the acting director of the National Arts Journalism Program (NAJP). NAJP started out...

Posted February 4, 2008

The Rise Of Arts Culture Today I want to make an argument about the rise of arts culture. In the 1950s, at the dawn of TV,...

Posted November 21, 2007

A Low Pressure Air Mass... If the power of mass culture is based on the ability to attract a mass audience, then perhaps it's worth looking...

Posted November 16, 2007

Flyover

Art from the American Outback

Mary Jackson wins again! Mary Jackson, a master basket-maker and Charleston’s most high-profile artist, won a MacArthur genius grant last month. Now her genius has been recognized again with a fellowship from United States Artists. See this report for more on that news. Meanwhile,...

Posted November 11, 2008

Rhythm Nation: New street performance group brings back the carnivalesque From the Oct. 15 issue of the Charleston City Paper: On the surface, this story is about the creation of a new live performance company. It comprises an array of artists focused on forms of movement new and old —...

Posted November 10, 2008

Without a Trace: How Charleston is leading the way for graffiti's next generation From the Oct. 22 issue of the Charleston City Paper: If you met Brian Muller and Zach Thomas at a coffee shop, as I did last week, you might not associate them with the gritty, subversive underworld of graffiti. Muller,...

Posted November 6, 2008

The Partisan Imagination: Does being an artist make you a liberal? From the Oct. 29 issue of the Charleston City Paper: You don’t hear about it much, but it exists — the role of art in the democratic process. We’re a pragmatic country. We don’t care much for shades of gray....

Posted November 2, 2008

Tough Love Jennifer asked if I were going to post this to Flyover. I’m still not sure, so I’ll let you tell me if this was the right thing to do. From the Charleston City Paper: Dear Charleston Arts Community, You know...

Posted October 30, 2008

Life's a Pitch

For immediate release: the arts are marketable

If that's your girl you better watch your back Today we learned that Lang Lang is one of the Sexiest Men Alive, or so says People Magazine.Now, I like Lang Lang a lot, but I have to ask...of all the men...alive...is he really...the superlative of sexy? David Beckham...Lang Lang...David...

Posted November 19, 2008

Space heater-side chats This could have been you, Gerard Mortier!Or any arts organization executive director or orchestra music director, for that matter. Keep us in the loop! We'll care more about what you're doing if you...tell us....

Posted November 18, 2008

Good news for people who like confusing news In recent days, the following happened in the topsy turvy world of media*:Alex Ross quotes a press release on his blog. Anthony Tommasini directs New York Times print and online readers to Jeremy Denk's blog in a concert review. Ronald...

Posted November 18, 2008

Disneyfication I went to...brace yourselves...Mary Poppins on Broadway yesterday, and it took all strength I had left on a windy Sunday night to stop my 20-something sister from buying a Mary Poppins bird-head umbrella. Granted, the umbrella was pretty cute (if...

Posted November 17, 2008

The argument for digital-only releases I hauled this woolly mammoth of a shopping bag (CD to show scale) to the post office yesterday, only to be informed by a knowing piece of paper on the door that it was Veteran's Day, and the post...

Posted November 12, 2008

Mind the Gap

No Genre Is the New Genre

Opera in the 21st Century Now, see, in this example, the singing totally doesn't seem like the silly, far-fetched part! It works in the trailer. In full-length, apparently not so much. Sad! Anyone have a report? So, um, what 21st-century opera needed to seem...

Posted November 14, 2008

I Gots To Know A couple of short composer interviews I conducted have surfaced on the internet in recent weeks (Doug Cuomo / ACO composers). In all cases, the point of these pieces was to provide a little amuse bouche for potential attendees. If...

Posted November 11, 2008

No Time Like the President's After all the hand shaking, speech making, and historical precedent setting that came to a massively satisfying celebratory close on Tuesday night, you would have thought the President-Elect would have had to--I don't know--sit down for a few minutes....

Posted November 7, 2008

Quick Station Break Just in case you missed Greg's directive, when you need some relief from election-day banter today, anyone at all interested in new music should go and read this essay. Seriously. As soon as we get the Obama/McCain decision delivered, we will...

Posted November 4, 2008

Please Move. You're Standing On My Heart. I had the awesome experience of being connected to this little love song project last year. It was 100% amazing to hear our song in concert last Wednesday, and it proved to be one of those nights when the talent...

Posted November 3, 2008

Rockwell Matters

John Rockwell on the arts

Slow Journalism My latest entry to the National Artts Journalism Proogram's ARTicles blog, on a lively if contradictory panel in Los Angeles on the Internet, journalism and "slow journalism."...

Posted November 18, 2008

Patti Smith has her McGarrigles moment Went to hear Patti Smith at the Metropolitan Museum of Art last weekend -- her fifth appearance there, and hence a long way from St. Mark's Church and CBGB's. I did it because I like her music and like to...

Posted November 15, 2008

Peter Brook's Simplicity Peter Brook's version of the "Grand Inquisitor" scene from Dostoevsky's "Brothers Karamazov" has been playing for a six-week (I think it is) limited run at the intimate New York Theatre Workshop in New York, across the street from La MaMa....

Posted November 12, 2008

Shallow Stages at the Met One advantage of being a retired journalist is that you can muse about what might be happening somewhere and not feel obligated to get on the phone, do some reporting and try to pin down whether your musings have any...

Posted November 11, 2008

Page One Collectibles Here's a link to my latest ARTicles blog entry, about an art site that has made an online quilt/grid of worldwide page one Nov. 5 election coverage, with each tiny page blowable-uppable to legiblity. Very cool, and there's an embedded...

Posted November 11, 2008

Straight Up |

Jan Herman - Arts, Media & Culture News with 'tude

Hidden Burroughs-Kerouac Novel Surfaces;
So Does Malcolm Mc Neill's 'lost art of Ah POOK' Is it something in the November air? Doubtful. Maybe it's the god of artistic collaborations wanting to set the record straight. Let's say it's strictly dumb coincidence. Whatever the reason, this month provides a happy occasion for legions of Jack...

Posted November 10, 2008

Bob's Your Uncle Because of something Ralph Nader said on Election Day -- he asked whether Barack Obama was going to be an Uncle Sam or an Uncle Tom -- I feel obliged to take note of an interview (as posted on YouTube)...

Posted November 7, 2008

Obama Book Bubble If you think people have gone nuts for Obama memorabilia -- they bought stacks of newspapers marking the Obama victory -- get a look at the book collectors' market. With enough scratch you can pick up a boxed set of...

Posted November 6, 2008

The Morning After Now that America has elected a black fist bumper to the presidency, take a look at the newspaper he has in his hand. Take a close look. The photo, shot during the election campaign, shows him carrying The Wall Street...

Posted November 5, 2008

Studs Terkel, R.I.P. Oh shit. Studs Terkel has died. He was 96. He was the blackest white man I ever met. Blacker even than his lifelong friend the novelist Nelson Algren, another black man who happened to be born white. Anyway, here's what...

Posted November 1, 2008

DANCE

Foot in Mouth

Apollinaire Scherr and guests talk about dance

Gottlieb's "Reading Dance" revisited Normal 0 false false false MicrosoftInternetExplorer4 /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; mso-para-margin:0in; mso-para-margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:10.0pt; font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-ansi-language:#0400; mso-fareast-language:#0400; mso-bidi-language:#0400;} If you've been reading Foot this week,...

Posted November 19, 2008

Clive Barnes (1927-2008), RIP Normal 0 false false false MicrosoftInternetExplorer4 /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; mso-para-margin:0in; mso-para-margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:10.0pt; font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-ansi-language:#0400; mso-fareast-language:#0400; mso-bidi-language:#0400;} What a bright soul. I didn't...

Posted November 19, 2008

Robert Gottlieb's "Reading Dance": a squandered opportunity Normal 0 false false false MicrosoftInternetExplorer4 Normal 0 false false false MicrosoftInternetExplorer4 /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; mso-para-margin:0in; mso-para-margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:10.0pt; font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-ansi-language:#0400; mso-fareast-language:#0400; mso-bidi-language:#0400;} It was...

Posted November 15, 2008

Gillian Murphy, pillar of fire Normal 0 false false false MicrosoftInternetExplorer4 /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; mso-para-margin:0in; mso-para-margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:10.0pt; font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-ansi-language:#0400; mso-fareast-language:#0400; mso-bidi-language:#0400;} Normal 0 false false false MicrosoftInternetExplorer4 /* Style...

Posted November 11, 2008

We got there I just didn't believe it could happen--this, our new First Family. I'd been calculating and recalculating the electoral votes since the beginning of October--you know, switching a NH for a CO, a Michigan for a Pennsylvania, etc., etc.,--and maybe by...

Posted November 5, 2008

Seeing Things

Tobi Tobias on Dance et al.

What Ever Happened to Bebe Miller? Bebe Miller Company: Necessary Beauties / Dance Theater Workshop, NYC / November 11-15, 2008 Kristina Isabelle in Bebe Miller's Necessary Beauty. Photo by Yi-Chun. I remember the veteran dancer-choreographer Bebe Miller for two qualities: the ferocity of her performing--she was...

Posted November 14, 2008

Lubovitch Group Brings Vintage Dances, New Dancers This article originally appeared in the Culture section of Bloomberg News on November 7, 2008. Nov. 7 (Bloomberg) -- The gala opening night of the 40-year-old Lar Lubovitch Dance Company, Wednesday, at New York's City Center, revealed a great deal...

Posted November 7, 2008

Tudor's Stricken Lovers End Ballet Theatre Season This article originally appeared in the Culture section of Bloomberg News on November 4, 2008. Gillian Murphy, right, and David Hallberg perform the pas de deux from "Romeo and Juliet (Romeo's Farewell)" during American Ballet Theatre's Tudor Centennial Celebration in...

Posted November 4, 2008

An Enduring Connection: De Keersmaeker and Reich Steve Reich Evening (Choreography by Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker) BAM Howard Gilman Opera House, Brooklyn, N.Y. / October 22-25, 2008 All told, Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker's "Steve Reich Evening" had the deep civility of work made for an audience expected...

Posted October 27, 2008

S.F.'s Laid-Back Balanchine Is Pretty as a Picture This article originally appeared in the Culture section of Bloomberg News on October 14, 2008. Tina LeBlanc takes part in the San Francisco Ballet's production of George Balanchine's "Divertimento No. 15" at New York City Center in New York on...

Posted October 15, 2008

MEDIA

Out There

Jeff Weinstein's Cultural Mixology

Kim's Video Pizza War Almost any restaurant is better than, say, Alan Greenspan at analyzing the economy. After the 1987 crash, eateries in New York and elsewhere began a process that I, as Village Voice restaurant critic, named "bistroization," by which I meant...

Posted October 28, 2008

Must Arts, Rights Stay on Election's Back Shelf ? I ask this leading question because, though we know the answer, we persist in champing at the usual bit. Almost no one running for office will discuss the arts or something as specific as gay rights when business and...

Posted October 9, 2008

Trout, or Fish Fashion My wonderful neighbor Anthony, whose fisherman expertise is matched by his passionate, sensible defense of the aquatic ecosystem, came to my door at 5 p.m. carrying a paper plate. Upon it sat a beautiful spotted gray and rose fish,...

Posted September 29, 2008

Yard Sale Tale I'll never know why didn't he snap up the vintage photo of Public School 238's eighth-grade graduating class. He had a really good reason to do so -- but maybe an even better one to leave it be. ...

Posted September 8, 2008

Unabomber Aesthetics Robert Kusmirowski, Unacabine, 2008 Art forms that appeal to modern leftist intellectuals tend to focus on sordidness, defeat and despair, or else they take an orgiastic tone, throwing off rational control as if there were no hope of accomplishing...

Posted August 21, 2008

Serious Popcorn

Martha Bayles on Film...

The Word From Rudy Today's newspaper carried the obituary of Rudy Ray Moore, heir to the vein of bawdy humor running through African-American culture from West Indian calypso and toasting to such North American customs as signifying, sounding, and playing the dozens. This vein...

Posted October 22, 2008

Talk, at Least I know I have been remiss in keeping up with Serious Popcorn. Book-writing and blog-keeping don't seem compatible, at least for me. But I do like to talk, and Chris Lydon of the Boston-based OpenSource online radio program just posted...

Posted October 2, 2008

Snoop Stoops to Cleaning Up his Act Rapper Snoop Dogg is now an old dude to hip hop fans, having made his name more than a decade ago. But the guy has staying power. Last month he made a cameo appearance in a Bollywood movie called Singh...

Posted September 14, 2008

Gray Hats I have not seen the original 3:10 to Yuma (1957), made during the high noon of 1950s Westerns, when the hats were either white or black, and the heads wearing them either good or evil. So I don't know how...

Posted August 24, 2008

The Socialization of Young Men A wise social scientist once commented to me that the most important task facing any society is the socialization of its young men. Philosophers have concentrated on this question for thousands of years, and like it or not, almost every...

Posted August 17, 2008

MUSIC

The Future of Classical Music?

Greg Sandow performs a book-in-progress

Book 2.0
Episode 16: Modernism, Analysed and Tamed For earlier episodes, see my summary at the start of the last one. If you'd like to be notified (by...

Posted December 21, 2006

Book 2.0
Episode 15: Glorious Noise In recent episodes: I've been talking about the origins of the classical music world as we know it today. In...

Posted November 28, 2006

Book 2.0
Episode 14: Hardcore Argument In recent episodes: I've been talking about the origins of the classical music world as we know it today. In...

Posted November 7, 2006

Book 2.0
Episode 13: Just Before Modernism In recent episodes: I've been talking about the origins of the classical music world as we know it today. In...

Posted October 25, 2006

Book 2.0
Episode 12: Classical vs. Popular In recent episodes: I've been talking about the origins of the classical music world as we know it today. In...

Posted October 11, 2006

Jazz Beyond Jazz

Howard Mandel's Freelanc Urban Improvisation

Guitar heroes, virtual and actual The phenomenon of Guitar Hero is unaccountable to most musicians. Why would anyone spend hours miming moves with a fake instrument when given similar time investment you could make music yourself, live, and with friends? Nonetheless, the game is the Christmas...

Posted November 16, 2008

Mostly Other People's killer liner notes Mostly Other People Do The Killing is a super-serious-with-a-sense-of-humor Philadelphia-based quartet paying homage to Ornette Coleman with its hot new album This Is Our Moosic.The cd's cover photo cops and mocks the oh-so-cool look of Coleman's earth-shaking quartet on its classic 1960...

Posted November 11, 2008

The jazz of victory and celebration It's odd that of all the nuances of expression jazz can convey, the thrill of victory and celebration of success is hard to find among the music's classics. Barack Obama's heartening win of the presidency prompts me to search out...

Posted November 5, 2008

hail Studs Terkel, Jazz Age Chicagoan A talker and listener, actor-dj-writer-oral historian, good humored realist and pragmatic idealist, Studs Terkel (1912 - 2008) stands as an American cultural patriot, who enjoyed as rich if not untroubled a life as genuinely democratic artist might hope for over...

Posted October 31, 2008

Globalism in the Azores Globalism held its head high at the tenth annual Ponta Delgada Jazz Festival last week. Five nights of concerts performed by an international coterie of improvisers in the superb acoustics of a nicely modernized old center-city theater for a stylish,...

Posted October 30, 2008

ListenGood

Focus on New Orleans. Jazz and Other Sounds

obama-be, obama-bop Morning in America it may not be, nor am I in some shining city on a hill. It's just another day at the crest of the hill that is Park Slope, Brooklyn. But buried in my coffeeshop's calm are remnants...

Posted November 5, 2008

horns for guns I'm back down in New Orleans now till Friday. (Notes and images of last Saturday's Black Men of Labor parade to come...) But I'll be gone before the huge, citywide contemporary art biennial begins on Saturday. That same day, a...

Posted October 29, 2008

wish i were in barcelona... and here's why: Cuban pianist Bebo Valdés, who turned 90 on October 9th, is performing a series of duets with his son, Chucho, also a pianist, who turned 67 that same day. Since the two live half a world apart,...

Posted October 23, 2008

swing voter, part 2 Oops. Realized I'd never posted the final piece I did for the Village Voice on the Jazz for Obama concert. Still thinking about that election...Now, I continue to regret the fact that even when Hurricane Gustav was barreling toward New Orleans,...

Posted October 22, 2008

swing voters Wed, Oct. 1st offers a way to hear swinging music and help boost Obama's chances. (see below)But first, a brief history of the presidency since 1980, via music:Reagan pretend cowboy country musicBush 1...

Posted September 29, 2008

On the Record

Exloring America's Orchestras with Henry Fogel

Training Administrators from Within--at Youth Orchestras and Beyond Last month I wrote about a stimulating, thoughtful meeting that took place in Elgin, Illinois, between the staffs of the Elgin Symphony Orchestra and the Elgin Youth Symphony Orchestra. In that blog I focused on the spirit of the meeting,...

Posted November 14, 2008

The Economic Challenge: Emotional Reactions Will Not Help Us In last week's blog I shared some thoughts about the current economic turmoil that we are experiencing. And because this appears to be one of the most serious downturns that most of us have experienced, I think it is important...

Posted November 7, 2008

The Economic Challenge: Responding with Administrative Strength The question I am now hearing more than any other from people associated with orchestras goes something like this: "What effect is the current economic crisis going to have on orchestras?" If I could answer that accurately, I would be...

Posted October 31, 2008

Midori and the Orchestra Residency: Unique Commitment from a Star Soloist Roughly two years ago, I wrote about my experience observing a couple of days of a Midori Orchestra Residency in Great Falls, Montana. Well, I just had another experience--shorter, to be sure--and I cannot resist writing about it again....

Posted October 24, 2008

Shostakovich and the Classical Canon It struck me recently that the music of Dimitri Shostakovich seems to turn up on orchestra programs with more and more frequency these days. His string quartets are also heard more often than they used to be. It's become apparent...

Posted October 17, 2008

Overflow

Harvey Sachs on music, and various digressions

Boh..... No, "boh" is not an abbreviation for the title of Puccini's most popular opera. It is the monosyllable that Italians utter -- usually in a tone that suggests the gray area between a question mark and an exclamation point -- in...

Posted November 9, 2008

More Manhattan moments I liked Holland Cotter's description, in the New York Times a few weeks ago, of Giorgio Morandi's still lifes, many of which are currently on view in an extensive exhibition that the Metropolitan Museum has dedicated to the man whose reputation as one of 20th-century...

Posted October 12, 2008

Relishing two Hamburgers The interpretation that Christian Tetzlaff offered, at Carnegie Hall yesterday (October 5), of his fellow Hamburger Johannes Brahms's Violin Concerto seemed to me as interesting as any I've ever heard. It was fresh and provocative but not eccentric, attentive to detail...

Posted October 6, 2008

The Rosenberg Case again. And the Met reopens. My previous blog entry, on music critic Donald Rosenberg's virtual demotion by Cleveland's Plain Dealer (he is no longer allowed to cover performances by the Cleveland Orchestra -- the city's only internationally celebrated classical music ensemble), provoked several interesting comments,...

Posted September 25, 2008

Another Rosenberg "executed" I was only seven years old in 1953, when Julius and Ethel Rosenberg were put to death for having allegedly passed information about the US's nuclear bomb program to the USSR. Fortunately, Donald Rosenberg, chief music critic of Cleveland's daily Plain...

Posted September 21, 2008

PostClassic

Kyle Gann on music after the fact

Out of the Millions Available Composer-video artist Betsey Biggs, currently completing graduate work at Princeton, presented some lovely work at the Sacramento State Festival I returned from last week. Her latest piece, Ton Yam I, was based nostalgically on the idea of California, and used as...

Posted November 18, 2008

Schroeder's Minions I am quoted in Rick Schulz's article about the toy piano as serious instrument in last Sunday's L.A. Times. It's a preview piece for a toy piano concert being given by Phyllis Chen this coming Sunday. The thing that Rick and...

Posted November 14, 2008

The Relentless Resurgence of 1981 Many of you know that in the early 1980s magnetic recording tape was made via some kind of process that facilitated quick deterioration, and that you can reclaim tapes from that era by baking them. Eric Bruskin has kindly done...

Posted November 13, 2008

Your Moment of Eighteenth-Century Zen 4 = 11. Or, 8 = 20. Symmetry without equivalence. Perfection without art....

Posted November 13, 2008

Coincidences Happen Heavens, I've gotten so involved here that I've forgotten to publicize a second performance I have today. Pianist Aron Kallay is playing three of my microtonal keyboard works this afternoon, Fugitive Objects and the world premieres of Triskaidekaphonia and New Aunts. The concert...

Posted November 9, 2008

Rifftides

Doug Ramsey on Jazz and other matters...

Recent Listening: Jordan, Longo, Garrett The Rifftides staff is still catching up with recent CDs, some more recent than others. Sheila Jordan, Winter Sunshine (Justin Time). The first word in the CD's title may refer to Jordan's age, the second to the quality of her...

Posted November 20, 2008

Other Matters: Obama And The VOA Murray Fromson has issued the first plea I've seen from a heavyweight journalist to president-elect Obama for a rescue of the Voice of America. Rifftides has often written about that broadcast agency's central role in cultural diplomacy during the...

Posted November 19, 2008

Marvin Stamm And The Russians Trumpeter and flugelhornist Marvin Stamm just spent a few days at the Brubeck Institute in Stockton, California. While he was there, he worked with jazz musicians visiting the institute from Russia. Rifftides reader Paul Conley of radio station KXJZ in...

Posted November 19, 2008

Three Little Bops Mystery Solved? When Marc Myers at JazzWax.com decides to solve a mystery, he goes into full Sherlock Holmes mode. He has done that in an attempt to track down the complete personnel of the Shorty Rogers combo in the Looney Tunes cartoon...

Posted November 17, 2008

Recent Listening: Sherr, Catherine, Mondlak David Sherr, OtherWorld Music (Bel Air Jazz). Sherr is a composer and player of reed instruments and flutes. His background includes work with Sonny Criss, the San Francisco Ballet, Nelson Riddle, Lalo Schifrin, Don Ellis, Harry "Sweets" Edison, Frank Zappa,...

Posted November 17, 2008

Sandow

Greg Sandow on the future of classical music

Quotation of the day ...while I work on a larger post about what classical music would look like if it really did connect with the world around us. Bono on Bob Dylan, from the current issue of Rolling Stone:When Sam Cooke played Dylan for...

Posted November 19, 2008

Why I'm here I want to thank everyone, and really warmly, for all the responses to my query earlier, and for all the comments you post here every day. You encourage me, teach me, tell me things I didn't know, make me think...

Posted November 18, 2008

Seeing the future Sunday night at Le Poisson Rouge, the new NY club where lots of good music happens. Among much else, it's the new home of the Wordless Music series, no surprise, since Ronen Givony, who founded Wordless, books classical music at...

Posted November 14, 2008

Niche markets We hear a lot these days about niche markets, and often enough -- as happened just a few days ago in a comment to one of my posts -- someone talks about classical music as a niche market, and therefore...

Posted November 12, 2008

Don't even think of trying this! In a new and most unfortunate development, an otherwise reputable orchestra the American Symphony Orchestra tried to advertise a concert by posting a comment on my blog. And also on Amanda Ameer's, and no doubt on other blogs, too on...

Posted November 11, 2008

Slipped Disc

Norman Lebrecht

What would Aristotle have made of it? Here's the text of yesterday's Free thought on Radio 3. Norman Lebrecht: In Defence of Criticism One morning before too long, you will wake up and find last night's opera premiere reviewed in your paper by Covent Garden's...

Posted October 17, 2008

All the best things in life aren't free All those who have been reading 'In a Critical Condtion' on this blog will be encouraged to know that the crisis in criticism theme has been picked up by BBC Radio 3. This morning I gave the Free Thought talk on the...

Posted October 16, 2008

The man who said **** to TV My big hero of the financial crash is Marcel Reich-Ranicki who, given an achievement award on German's second TV channel, ZDF, thrust it back at the presenter and denounced the whole of public television as 'rubbish'. Reich-Ranicki, 88, is Germany's foremost...

Posted October 13, 2008

Radio vacant The guest on BBC Radio 4's Desert Island Discs this morning was David McVicar. He was introduced by Kirsty Young with a text that read something like 'at 42, he has long been regarded as the leading British opera director...

Posted October 10, 2008

Strange radio noises in Holland Make of this what you will: Concertzender victim of its own success Hello Norman, A bizarre situation has developed in the Netherlands. Everywhere in the world, classical broadcasters are shutting down, because of dropping listening figures. In the Netherlands...

Posted September 9, 2008

PUBLISHING

book/daddy

Jerome Weeks on books

Richard Wright's centennial: A symposium The African-American Museum in Dallas is presenting a celebration symposium of author Richard Wright this weekend to mark the centennial of his birth. Surrounding the symposium are a number of lectures and book club meetings.Elaine Johnson: "Richard Wright was...

Posted November 7, 2008

Cause for celebration: new bookstores Legacy BooksBooks and bookstores are supposed to be dying. But despite the internet and the dire economy, new bookstores have just opened in Plano (north of Dallas) and Oak Cliff (south of downtown Dallas). The new shops are not your...

Posted November 3, 2008

Literal-minded There is a new destabilizing trend in YouTubeLand called 'literal video" or "Literal [name of rock video or movie here]." It's a form of satire that seems to work best with the more inflated, '80s or '90s pop-rock videos,...

Posted November 3, 2008

Texas Books, Texas Politics Robert CaroThe Texas Book Festival, which ran over the weekend at the State Capitol in Austin, came directly out of politics -- thanks, in part to then-First Lady of Texas Laura Bush. And thanks, in part, to Austin itself and...

Posted November 3, 2008

book/daddy knows an 'older genius' -- and it's not himself In The New Yorker, Malcolm Gladwell examines the popular tradition of the young genius: Genius, in the popular conception, is inextricably tied up with precocity--doing something truly creative, we're inclined to think, requires the freshness and exuberance and energy of...

Posted October 14, 2008

Quick Study

Scott McLemee on books, ideas, trash-culture ephemera

Thanks I should update (and maybe purge) the blogroll here one of these days. It is on the list of things to do. I always lose that list. Don't hold your breath, is what I'm getting at, here. For now let...

Posted November 18, 2008

Badiou Badger Mushroom Your dose of "what the hell was that?" right here... In other Badiou news, see this interview on the tendencies within French Maoism. Speaking of which, Godard's La Chinoise is finally available on DVD (as opposed to bootleg VHS, which...

Posted November 18, 2008

Debts of Gratitude Critical Mass has a roundup of some recent tributes to John Leonard, including the one that ran as my column yesterday. In due course, I'm going to write more about him -- with much less emphasis on my own experience,...

Posted November 13, 2008

The Heart Longs For the Crooked Place We head to Austin one week from today -- my second visit this year, Rita's first ever. Quite a bit has changed in the twenty years since I left (the Drag now looks kind of like a suburban shopping mall...

Posted November 12, 2008

John Leonard I just learned that the critic and novelist John Leonard has died. He was a friend, the source of encouraging words at a particularly difficult time, when I was not hearing many of them. I tried to see him as...

Posted November 6, 2008

THEATRE

Drama Queen

Wendy Rosenfield: drama, onstage and off

Friday Mack Attack, 11/14 It's been a hell of a long week both personally and professionally, so I apologize to my regular and faithful readers for not posting more. I'll try to hit you back next week. In the meantime, this week I'm macking on:...

Posted November 14, 2008

Friday Mack Attack, 11/6 It's been a heckuva week, but you've done a heckuva job, brownies. Everyone, and by everyone, I mean even Fox News and Glenn Beck, is feeling cautiously optimistic about the nation's future. (But not Rush Limbaugh, who probably doesn't feel...

Posted November 7, 2008

Blogging about Tweeting, Pt. 3 or 4 Can I have a do-over?Last time I was on here, I was complaining about social media. Well now I have seen the light, and it's fueled by an alternative energy called democracy.All night, during the election mayhem, I was glued...

Posted November 4, 2008

Friday Mack Attack, 10/31: Us Can, Us Did! While most of you are preoccupied with getting your Halloween costumes just right for tonight--we're all drama geeks here, so don't front like this isn't your favorite holiday--those of us in Philly are just a little bit preoccupied by today's...

Posted October 31, 2008

To Be Famous, or Philly-Famous? That Is the Question One of the best things about being a reviewer is watching new talent grow. The worst? Losing them. Every once in a while an actor comes along who makes you think, "Okay, I'll be watching him/her a whole lot over...

Posted October 29, 2008

lies like truth

Chloe Veltman on how culture will save the world

The Walking House Forget about haunted houses this Halloween. This year is marked by the arrival of a much more awesome structure: the walking house.A few days ago, I read about this amazing-looking construction designed by architects and engineers from Copenhagen and Cambridge,...

Posted October 31, 2008

Being Clarence Theatre critics sometimes pop up as characters in plays, and like dentist characters in movies, the portrayals are rarely if ever positive. Tom Stoppard's The Real Inspector Hound and Ira Levin's Critic's Choice are cases in point.The other day, I...

Posted October 30, 2008

Stravinsky Two Ways There's something so refreshing about turning up to catch an Oakland Opera production. Instead of putting on a cocktail dress and walking into a grand, old wedding cake of a building in the heart of San Francisco as is the...

Posted October 29, 2008

Resting On Her Lauriels I couldn't help myself. I tried really hard to stay awake. It wasn't like I hadn't slept the night before or had eaten a heavy meal prior going to the theatre. Yet I could barely keep my eyes open during...

Posted October 28, 2008

Free Night Of Theatre Update Since posting some thoughts about the 2008 Free Night of Theatre on October 16, I have received some valuable responses. Thank you all for writing in.Brad Erickson, executive director of Theatre Bay Area, which oversees Free Night in this part of...

Posted October 27, 2008

Stage Write

Elizabeth Zimmer on time-based art forms

Timely and Timeless When I was interrupted, a couple of weeks ago, by the news of Deborah Jowitt's dramatic change in status at The Village Voice, I was about to comment on the burgeoning of "historic preservation" in the dance and theater community.In...

Posted April 10, 2008

Everything at Once The Performing Arts Library at Lincoln Center just launched a new exhibition, "New York Story: Jerome Robbins and his World." Since his death a decade ago, the resourceful choreographer-director has spawned at least three biographies, but a gallery show is...

Posted March 26, 2008

Time Step In this era of ecological consciousness, there's one endangered resource we hear little about. It is especially important to those of us who make our living in the arts. That resource is time.Technology enables us to sample the wisdom of...

Posted March 19, 2008

Stage Write Stage Write is a blog about time-based art, and our changing relationship to performances that require protracted attention. As I witness plays and dance concerts, I'll be responding to them in terms of their value in an ecology of time....

Posted January 27, 2008

Elizabeth Zimmer Elizabeth Zimmer has been writing about the arts since 1971, beginning as a freelancer for the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation in Halifax, Nova Scotia. A native New Yorker, she has worked as a writer and editor for ......

Posted January 27, 2008

VISUAL

Aesthetic Grounds

Public Art, Public Space

How to Think about Public Art How to think about public art? Do you just keep doing the same thing? Big art? Architectural intimacy? Site-specific narrative? Locally responsive? Internationally, public art has been institutionalized as the founder's dreamed in the 1960 and 1970s. Big -...

Posted September 7, 2008

Public Art as Science Project MOMA and PS1 prepare the public for the "Watersfalls" later this month in NYC. The the scaffolding has been constructed under the Brooklyn bridge. Photo taken on May 26. From the Bay Area and Boston emerge artworks that are mainly science projects overlaid with...

Posted June 1, 2008

Starting Over Again Returning to New York City after a 20-year journey in Seattle and South Florida. New York taught me how to think art. Psychologically, NYC has changed dramatically. Signs in the subway remind parents to keep baby carriages off the escalator. Street territory has been reapportioned for...

Posted May 17, 2008

Public Buyers of Public Art On April 11 in North Carolina, Glenn Harper, Editor of Sculpture Magazine and Bill Thompson, Editor of Landscape Architecture, and I meet to kick off the "Public Art 360" Conference. Click Here to Attend. In the next few weeks,...

Posted March 16, 2008

Knitters beat MGM Mirage in Public Art Media Blitz At the end of last week, two public art projects competed for media attention in the USA. In the small town of Yellow Springs, Ohio, a few local women knitted a sweater for ONE tree during a winter day....

Posted March 11, 2008

Artopia

John Perreault's art diary

A.I.R. GALLERY, JENNY HOLZER, GILLIAN JAGGER Agnes Denes: Photograph of Wheatfield -- A Confrontation, 1982 What Do Women Want? In Artopia, art is gender-neutral. This does not mean we deny that women, for one reason or another, cannot offer art that deals...

Posted October 19, 2008

Street Works in Colorado; Libeskind and Kirkland in Outer Space John Perreault: Critical Mass Redux (1971-2008) How History Is Rewritten Yours truly has finally managed to get a few things off his chest. Or, more correctly, off his back. As keeper of the Street Works...

Posted October 6, 2008

LARRY RIVERS: A CAUTIONARY TALE Larry Rivers, The History of the Russian Revolution, 1965 How to Disappear How do famous artists disappear? First, their artworks no longer figure prominently in selections from collections on display at major...

Posted September 14, 2008

Paul McCarthy Spin; Eliasson Falls; Bourgeois Fails Paul McCarthy: Bang Bang Room, 1992. Collection Fondazione Sandreto Rebaudengo, Turin. Courtesy of the Artist and Galerie Hauser & Wirth Photo: Sheldan Collins Disorientations Who is Paul McCarthy? Not having the good grace to...

Posted July 29, 2008

BUCKMINSTER FULLER: MINISTER OF MIST Debunking Uncle Bucky Buckminster Fuller (1895-1983) invented the geodesic dome, sort of. He was not the first to use the icosahedron for construction. Walter Bauersfield in 1922 in Jena, Germany built a planetarium that had...

Posted July 7, 2008

CultureGrrl

Lee Rosenbaum's Cultural Commentary

Major News from All Over: Eli Broad, LA MOCA, Cleveland Repatriations, New Manager of Italy's Museums If figures that on my birthday, when I wanted to blog lite, there are more major news stories than candles on my cake. (Well, not quite.) I may flesh out some of these later. But for now:---Bloomberg and the NY...

Posted November 19, 2008

Artists Talk Market at Guggenheim Gala; Hirst Says He'll Lower Prices Catherine Opie talks about her day job on NY Times video of Guggenheim GalaWhile we're on the subject of the Guggenheim: Do you wish you could have attended last week's Guggenheim Gala? Now you can---via video on the NY Times...

Posted November 19, 2008

BlogBack: Guggenheim President Jennifer Stockman on Trustees' Conflict-of-Interest Jennifer Stockman, above, the president of the Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation, responds to Conflicts of Interest: Museum Trustees Play the Market: The director and the curators, not the trustees, of the Guggenheim make all decisions as to the exhibitions that...

Posted November 19, 2008

Why Aren't All Smithsonian Board Meetings Public? U.S. Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts, Chancellor of the Smithsonian's BoardBilled as its first public meeting, the Smithsonian Institution's Board of Regents' question-and-answer session yesterday with Smithsonian-ologists may have been therapeutic but it wasn't a sufficient step towards greater...

Posted November 18, 2008

Kimbell Museum to Construct Piano Building Beside Kahn's Masterpiece UPDATED TWICE The lawn to the west of the Kimbell Art Museum, site of its planned Renzo Piano buildingThe Kimbell Art Museum, Fort Worth, has opted to court controversy with plans (to be announced at a 9 a.m. press conference today) that...

Posted November 18, 2008

Modern Art Notes

Tyler Green's modern and contemporary art blog

The trouble at (not with) MOCA By coincidence I'm in Los Angeles this morning: Good timing because the art world's two biggest stories are here. I'll tackle the MOCA issue in this post. The possible/future Beverly Hills Broad Art Museum will have to wait. MOCA, arguably...

Posted November 19, 2008

MOCA: In financial trouble LATer Mike Boehm has your must-read of the day on the financial problems at MOCA. I'll be back later today with some thoughts. In a semi-related story, Eli Broad seems to have decided to build his own museum. This will...

Posted November 19, 2008

New museo-websites abound There are new sites everywhere this week. Here's the Menil's new site. And the Hammer's (which seems not to be Firefox-friendly, but maybe that's about my add-ons). (In an unrelated story, apparently just about all the Frick's supporter$ are women.)...

Posted November 18, 2008

That's worth of a National Medal of the Arts?! The National Medal of Arts is the highest award given to artists and arts patrons by the United States Government. As such, you'd think that medals would be going to some pretty major figures in the visual arts. After all,...

Posted November 18, 2008

Monday links Richard Lacayo remembers Grace Hartigan. If you're in Baltimore for Franz West, don't miss several Hartigans in the contemporary wing of the BMA. Perry Garvin likes the new SFMOMA website more than I did.Ed Winkleman is always smart, but this...

Posted November 17, 2008

MOST RECENT POSTS
AJBlogCentral | rss

music

Recent Listening: Jordan, Longo, Garrett Sheila Jordan is seventy-nine. She sounds like a young bebop and ballad singer with sunshine in her voice....

Rifftides | 11/19/08@11:43PM

culture

Does sex sell classical music? Hot classical artists are mocked or not taken seriously; why and how did we get here?...

Life's a Pitch | 11/19/08@09:01PM

music

Telling the truth Bob Dylan -- said a famous soul singer, back in the day -- told the truth in his music. How...

Greg Sandow | 11/19/08@02:04PM

dance

Robert Gottlieb's "Reading Dance" revisited The good book inside the lousy one...

Foot in Mouth | 11/19/08@01:34PM

culture

Is There a Silver Bullet to Fix Education? Diane Ravitch on The Gates Foundation and its $2 billion silver bullet...

Dewey21C | 11/19/08@01:13PM

dance

Clive Barnes, RIP The lively, incisive dance and theater critic, 1927-2008...

Foot in Mouth | 11/19/08@01:06PM

visual

Major News from All Over: Eli Broad, LA MOCA, Cleveland Repatriations, New Manager of Italy's Museums Why can't I just darken my computer screen and blow out my candles?...

CultureGrrl | 11/19/08@10:25AM

visual

The trouble at (not with) MOCA What are MOCA's options? And are any of them any good?...

Modern Art Notes | 11/19/08@09:22AM

culture

Update on NYSCA Funding Cuts Be prepared!...

Dewey21C | 11/19/08@08:37AM

visual

Artists Talk Market at Guggenheim Gala; Hirst Says He'll Lower Prices Like dealers and auctioneers, artists look on the bright side: Weed out money-grubbers, help museums acquire, keep day job....

CultureGrrl | 11/19/08@08:13AM

visual

MOCA: In financial trouble Your morning must-read on arguably America's most important contemporary art museum...

Modern Art Notes | 11/19/08@06:54AM

people

Clive Barnes, R.I.P. One of New York's senior critics is dead....

About Last Night | 11/19/08@06:22AM

music

Snapshot This week's video: Sid Caesar interprets Beethoven's Fifth--in pantomime....

About Last Night | 11/19/08@05:45AM

ideas

Almanac Today's entry: Jacques Barzun....

About Last Night | 11/19/08@05:44AM

music

Marvin Stamm And The Russians Trumpeter Marvin Stamm spent a few days working with Russian jazz musicians at the Brubeck Institute....

Rifftides | 11/18/08@11:06PM

visual

BlogBack: Guggenheim President Jennifer Stockman on Trustees' Conflict-of-Interest She says she "in no way influenced" the Guggenheim's mounting a Prince retrospective before she sold his "Lake Resort Nurse."...

CultureGrrl | 11/18/08@09:07PM

music

Why I'm here The change I'm looking for, and why the readers of my blog are part of it....

Greg Sandow | 11/18/08@02:52PM

music

Guitar heroes, virtual and actual Play "World Tour" or put in hours of practice and sound like these folks do...

Jazz beyond Jazz | 11/18/08@12:57PM

visual

Why Aren't All Smithsonian Board Meetings Public? Shouldn't federal open-meeting laws apply to this quasi-federal agency? Calling the Smithsonian's Chancellor, Chief Justice John Roberts....

CultureGrrl | 11/18/08@09:08AM

ideas

Wanna get to Carnegie Hall? Got 10,000 hours? Malcolm Gladwell explores the magic number that separates the gifted from the exceptional....

Artful Manager | 11/18/08@07:18AM

visual

That's worth of a National Medal of the Arts?! So when you take arts education out of the public schools, someone chooses...

Modern Art Notes | 11/18/08@04:19AM

visual

Kimbell Museum to Construct Piano Building Beside Kahn's Masterpiece UPDATED TWICE It would controversially plant a new 90,000-square-foot building in a beloved park just west of Kahn's crowning achievement....

CultureGrrl | 11/17/08@09:04PM

theatre

Eavesdropping on Tom Stoppard with Gwen Orel The playwright speaks....

About Last Night | 11/17/08@08:32PM

people

A traveling drama critic orders dinner for one Dedicated to all those who live out of suitcases....

About Last Night | 11/17/08@08:32PM

ideas

Almanac Today's entry: Paul Fussell....

About Last Night | 11/17/08@08:31PM

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