All Entries in the "General Musings" Category
Yes, Quality Will Definitely Out
More and more the whole idea that it takes 10,000 hours to master a skill seems to be bearing out. Last year I wrote about the astonishing excellence exhibited by Chitresh Das and Jason Samuels Smith in the India Jazz Suite. (And I guess I did a good job because that entry is now part [...]
Trash Talkin’ About The Arts
First it was Indianapolis Museum of Art and the New Orleans Museum of Art wagering paintings on the outcome of the Super Bowl. Now I hear Dallas and Ft. Worth are talking smack about which of them has better cultural assets.
Please people, art is only demeaned by using it as a prop in a bet [...]
Carl Sagan Sings About The Universe
Hat tip to Artsjournal.com which had the video below as the video of the day last week. I normally don’t watch the videos there but something inspired me to and I am glad it did.
The video is a remix of Carl Sagan from the Cosmos television series with a little Stephen Hawking from the series [...]
Edmonton Symphony Orchestra To Audition Jug Players
According to his letter to NPR’s All Things Considered in response to a recent story, Bill Eddins, the musical director of the Edmonton Symphony Orchestra, said he wanted his orchestra sound like the Carolina Chocolate Drops, a string band out of North Carolina. Well, actually he said “this is what I want my orchestra to [...]
BoardChemistry.com
Boards seem to be a real hot topic recently. Thanks to a massive blogroll listing on the Clyde Fitch Report, I became aware of a ArtPride NJ blog post pondering why Gen X/Y is not well represented on non-profit boards. Leonard Jacobs of the Clyde Fitch report also weighed in on the subject of boards [...]
Art. IT CAN INFECT YOUR BRAIN!!!!!
Before the Christmas holidays I was watching a TED video of Golan Levin using interactive technology to manifest visual art in response to human action. The video is pretty cool itself, but there is a section starting around 6:30 (video embeded below) with Jaap Blonk performing Kurt Schwitters’ tone poem The Ursonate. (There is a [...]
Ah, Proscenium!
I am beginning to understand why performance spaces were constructed in the first place. I have done some talking in the past about how performances may need to be uncoupled from the traditional performance spaces to have significance to audiences whose entertainment experiences continue to evolve. But now that I am actually trying to [...]
Holiday Memes? Bah! Humbug!
So our glorious Inside the Arts leader Drew McManus laid down a challenge of a Holiday Extremes Meme. Now, I think if you are a musician and can only name two of four good holiday concerts and one of the two (of four) worst concerts you name involves YOU performing, it isn’t quite fair to [...]
Art That Scans
I have a few more thoughts based on the Human Sigma book I have been discussing over the last few entries. However, I wanted to present some fun stuff I have recently come across as something of a palate cleanser before I move on.
In something of a reverse of Al Hirschfeld’s work where people [...]
Emotional Satisfaction
A two years ago I had been entranced by a comment Neill Roan made about arts administrators being so emotionally satisfied with their jobs, they didn’t feel the need to keep current on the latest literature and theories about arts administration. Earlier this year, I was in touch with Neill on another matter [...]