Singing Through the Storms: We Will Be a Shelter for Each Other
Click here to watch the TEDTalk that inspired this post. A life-changing storm inspired Eric Whitacre's "Cloudburst," sung by the Virtual Choir Live. In 1991, Whitacre's college choir had stopped to...
View ArticleCrowd-Sourced Music With a Touch of Chaos
Click here to watch the TEDTalk that inspired this post. Eric Whitacre writes and conducts beautiful music. But he's also done something extraordinarily creative that leaps far beyond the notes and...
View ArticleMusicals in Popular Songs? A History
It's a case of opposites attracting, and one song's success piggy-backing on the other. Whether you enjoy the inspired song or not, its popularity can mean a renaissance for the show on which it's...
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Star-tissima: The Grande Donna of Contemporary Turin
London and Paris tend to be the Fall Focus of Europe's Contemporary Art scene but, instead of Fiac-ing off and Friezing away, I tucked into Turin. Artissima, the city's long-established contemporary...
View ArticleFirst Nighter: The Gotham Chamber Opera's Top-Notch "La descente d'Orphée aux...
Much of the intense charm of Marc-Antoine Charpentier's La descente d'Orphée aux enfers (Opheus's Descent into Hell)--receiving an intensely charming Gotham Chamber Opera production at St. Peter's...
View Article5 Challenges, a Stumble and a Lot of Pride: How We Made a Biopic About Nelson...
A global icon, a legend, an inspiration. Even The Onion joked respectfully, "Nelson Mandela Becomes First Politician To Be Missed." How do you make a movie about such a man? The first answer, looking...
View ArticleImagine Dragons: How 'It's Time,' The Song Of The Year, Made My Year
If you saw The Perks of Being a Wallflower, you heard "It's Time" a year ago. You certainly heard this Imagine Dragons song on FM radio -- it was, reported Rolling Stone, "the biggest rock hit of the...
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Listening to Learn: The Message of Phish
"It is so amazing to be standing out here in the middle of this whole thing with you guys," says the man on the stage. Twenty thousand people roar. "'Cause we've been standing on one end for 30 years,"...
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Actual Acting Advice From Anonymous Authors
The rise of internet culture has caused many shifts in how we consume information, with one of the more amusing side benefits being the rise of the fictional Twitter user. Disregarding spambots, the...
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Dog Ears Music: Festival of Sleep Playlist
Anathallo Song: Sleeping Torpor Album: Canopy Glow Genre: Alternative Buy: iTunes.com Beastie Boys Song: No Sleep Till Brooklyn Album: Licensed to Ill Genre: Hip-Hop/Rap Buy: iTunes.com Peter...
View ArticleLove Letter to My Muse
"You have an interesting face. I would like to do your portrait. I have a feeling we will do great things together." --Pablo Picasso What is a Muse? In mythology, the Muses were nine goddesses who...
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Stage Door: Cirkopolis
Montreal-based troupe Cirque Eloize capitalizes on 12 talented dancers, tumblers and contortionists to capture beauty in motion. Its current show, Cirkopolis, at NYU Skirball Center for the Performing...
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Jazz Orchestra of Philadelphia's All-Star debut
Jazz trumpeter Terell Stafford photo: Jimmy Ryan Kicking off the new year with a jazz bang, the multi-generational Philly veterans and vanguards will be onstage to launch Jazz Orchestra of...
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Anders Zorn in San Francisco
One would seldom assert that the greatest of the Impressionists was a Swede. But once having seen the Anders Zorn exhibition currently up at The Palace of The Legion of Honor in San Francisco, you...
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Laura & Manfred Menz: Natural Security
The concept of surveillance is ingrained in our beings. God was the original surveillance camera. - HASAN M. ELAHI They are intent on making every conversation and every form of behavior in the world...
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Simone Gad: From Brussels to Chinatown (Video)
Simone Gad. Los Angeles. Photo by Eric Minh Swenson One night I had a dream David Lynch told me I should do a film on Simone Gad. In this dream he was holding a cat and wearing a bad Christmas sweater....
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A Star Is Torn
Must an artist's soul be tortured in order to produce art? The stereotype of the starving artist who suffers for his art is far from the reality of creative types who muster the resolve to keep...
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Music as Refuge: the Life of John Gorka
Rules of art were made to be shattered. When broken by accident, that's gaucheness. When broken on purpose, well, that's style. John Gorka's technique breaks free from the rules of modern music....
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