September 2011

Musical Theater

Stephen Sondheim’s Follies at the Marquis Theatre on Broadway

Musical jelly beans are scattered all over Broadway. If well done, these shows are colorful and fun to eat. They taste good going down, give you a temporary high but ultimately are empty calories. They leave you with nothing. Then there’s the current revival of Stephen Sondheim’s Follies. You might not be able to hum all its songs as you exit the theatre, but you’ll surely be thinking Sondheim, feeling Sondheim. And for many days to come you’ll be reflecting on all he has to say about human follies, relationships and, depending on your age, your own life choices
Bard Music Festival

Sibelius II: Larry Wallach on the Bard Music Festival 2011 – Jean Sibelius and his World

Originality is a hard concept to get a hold of — there is no yardstick for measuring it, by its very nature. This makes the evaluation of composers, the assessment of their influence and historical position, one of the most subjective areas of music history and criticism. Contemporary writers have become impatient with their predecessors’ habit of rating composers in terms of “importance” or “greatness” based, at least in part, on their originality. And then there is the issue of “unique voice” — is that the same as originality? Is their any good composer who lacks either one? Can “uniqueness” be evaluated?
Art

Vasari’s 500th Birthday: The Battle of Anghiari

It’s not a matter of deciding whether to celebrate Giorgio Vasari’s 500th birthday, but where to start. The author of the Vite de’ più eccellenti Pittori, Scultori e Architettori traversed the entire Italian peninsula researching his literary masterpiece, so there are many possibilities. Perhaps the most appropriate site is the Florentine Palazzo Vecchio, for it was there that Vasari made a triumphal return after two of his staunchest supporters in the city were murdered in 1530. Not until Duke Cosimo I invited him back in 1554 to decorate apartments begun by Battista del Tasso was Vasari vindicated. In typical fashion, he immediately altered Tasso’s plans, raising the ceilings to make room for imaginative frescoes based on the plan of humanist scholar Cosimo Bartoli. With the help of an eager crew of collaborators, Vasari completed the project in less than three years.
Architecture | Urban Design

Istanbul: New Wealth, New Architecture

As I stepped into the 47th floor garden room of a new luxury apartment in Istanbul, a cool breeze caught my hair and made the curtain in the sitting room behind me billow like a sail. Suddenly feeling uneasy, I grabbed hold of the sliding glass door. I was inside, correct? There wasn’t a wide-open window nearby I could fall out of? The sensation I had was that I had just walked onto the windy veranda of a country house or a boardwalk by the beach. The breeze ebbed and flowed, moving the trees and shrubs in the garden. The air felt fresh and clean and at least 5 degrees cooler than the crowded sidewalks below at street level.
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