"The subtext of the week's performances [at the Blue Note] - with McCoy Tyner, Roy Haynes, Eddie Palmieri and Jack DeJohnette as guests on various nights - is that Mr. Glover is a musician. The raised wooden board beneath him isn't just his stage; it's his instrument, with eight microphones underneath."...
ArtsJournal
mclennan
"A tooth and two fingers of Galileo Galilei, the 17th century Italian astronomer, physicist, inventor and mathematician, have re-emerged from a lost wooden case, Florence's authorities [have] announced."...
ArtsJournal
mclennan
"Augmented reality (AR) has been touted as the bridge between the physical and virtual worlds, as new technologies add information to real-world environments." A new exhibition titled "Give Me More" uses AR "to reveal hidden layers of meaning associated with ordinary objects. … Storybooks become animated, t-shirts bestow powers on their wearers, and Euro notes show their more salacious face."...
ArtsJournal
mclennan
Sarah Kaufman says that, because U.S. companies are so utterly dependent on income from their annual Nutcracker runs, ballet in this country "suffers from a serious lack of confidence that is only growing more and more paralyzing. … Has ballet become so entwined with its Nutcracker image, so fearfully wedded to unthreatening offerings, that it has forgotten how eye-opening and ultimately nourishing creative destruction can be?"...
ArtsJournal
mclennan
"Rita Marcalo is an artist doing what artists are supposed to do: creating work that is surprising, challenging, transgressive and exciting. … [She] is drawing attention to the fact that on YouTube (and elsewhere) it's easy to find mobile-phone footage of people having fits - mostly taken without their consent. Curious, isn't it, that controversy should arise when a person with epilepsy consents to being filmed?"...
ArtsJournal
mclennan
Critic Armond White wrote, "Not since The Birth of a Nation has a mainstream movie demeaned the idea of black American life as much as Precious." Responds the novelist Sapphire, "With Michelle, Sasha and Malia and Obama in the White House and in the post-Cosby Show era, people can't say these are the only images out there."...
ArtsJournal
mclennan
"It's been an interesting journey. Slowly and surely we have come together through honeymoons and the opposite. I remember Karajan said that with an orchestra like this the first five or 10 years are tradition. I didn't quite believe him. But after what has sometimes felt like moving at the speed of tectonic plates, … we now have a tradition to build on."...
ArtsJournal
mclennan
"His 19 'Above' books, each with about 150 photographs, include neighborhood-by-neighborhood overviews of Paris, London, Mexico City, New York, Los Angeles, Washington, Chicago, San Diego and Seattle." (He covered his hometown with four volumes of Above San Francisco.) "Then there are the volumes showing the natural wonders of places like Yosemite, Big Sur and Hawaii."...
ArtsJournal
mclennan
"Reading the future and shunning possible mishaps is mankind's oldest dream. In 16th-century Iran and Turkey, … it inspired some of the most intriguing book paintings ever. These were prompted by a peculiar literary genre, the Fal-Nameh, or Book of Omens, which took off around the 1560s and lasted at least until the early 18th century."...
ArtsJournal
mclennan
"Set in the mid-1960s … Fetch Clay, Make Man, by Will Power, centers on the young boxer's friendship with Stepin Fetchit, the stage name of the actor Lincoln Perry." The play, which "deals with creating personas," opens in January at the McCarter Theater in Princeton. Ben Vereen will play Fetchit, with Evan Parke as Ali; Des McAnuff will direct...
ArtsJournal
mclennan
Surveying the history of artists' attempts to fool their viewers, from Ancient Rome through Giotto and the Flemish masters to American tricks with pictures of money and sculptors who made rock look like bronze and porcelain resemble wood....
ArtsJournal
mclennan
"IBM announced this week that it has a computer system that can simulate the thinking power of a cat's brain with 1 billion neurons and 10 trillion synapses. At just 4.5 percent of a human brain, the computer can sense, perceive, act, interact and process ideas without consuming a lot [of] energy."...
ArtsJournal
mclennan
18-year-old participant Lauren Lovette: "[Peter Martins] was looking at me as I was sitting there, and I was like: Are you expecting me to say something? Are you reading my mind right now? Stop staring at me. O.K., fine! I really wanted six [dancers to work with]. I'm so happy he gave that to me."...
ArtsJournal
mclennan
Media psychologist Stuart Fischoff, "says Winfrey is a master of impression management. … People seek leaders who will guide their decisions, according to Fischoff, and he says Winfrey exhibits the very qualities people look for in leaders - authenticity and trust. … Plus, he adds, Winfrey is smart and unguarded with her faults, which shows her humanity."...
ArtsJournal
mclennan
"The CD player is dead. So says Linn Products, the high-end audio specialist based in Glasgow which for 20 years has been making … CD players. The reason: its audiophile customers have moved, with alacrity, to hard drive-based systems."...
ArtsJournal
mclennan
Stephen King looks at the short story master, the appalling treatment he gave the wife who made his career possible, the appalling treatment axe-wielding editor Gordon Lish gave his prose, and the alcoholism underlying it all....
ArtsJournal
mclennan
"Oxfam has attempted to patch up its differences with secondhand booksellers." A trade group "had said that Oxfam's voluntary staff, donated stock and business-rate reductions allowed it to undercut rivals, forcing some secondhand booksellers out of business and taking trade away from others."...
ArtsJournal
mclennan
Mark Lawson: "[L]ast week, for the first time ever, I was tempted to leave a theatre in mid-performance, not through tedium or sciatica … but from moral anger." The reason: a female character - written by a male playwright - speaking about experiencing pleasure while being raped. Lawson and commenters consider the ethics of the situation....
ArtsJournal
mclennan
"The Los Angeles County Museum of Art saw its investment portfolio lose nearly a quarter of its value during its 2008-09 fiscal year." In the same period, contributions to the museum fell by $100 million - nearly 80 percent - from the year before....
ArtsJournal
mclennan
Admired for her radiant voice, keen dramatic instincts and cheerful disposition, the Swedish soprano was, among her many accomplishments, a key figure in the ongoing revival of Leos Janácek's operas....
ArtsJournal
mclennan