I'm mourning the death of Brazilian music star Sérgio Mendes (1941-2024).
This track from his famous Brasil 66 band still sounds fresh and vibrant, so many decades later.
"The Magic Flute" kicked off the 2024 summer season at @SFOpera, restyling the War Memorial stage as a 1920s silent film. Our reviewer notes that "the show’s transforming technical feat comes in how the imagery is blended with the singers."
https://t.co/ejm1L9XsIH #opera#mozart
Paul Auster had a most striking face & how ironic that according to his poignant memoir “The Invention of Solitude,” his father avoided him not only emotionally but literally, did not look at him (for some mysterious reason). Paul himself, warmly sympathetic, gregarious.
From the Winter issue of @esquire: Viet Thanh Nguyen on his mid-life crisis and finding freedom in being "mid."
"I rapidly deduced that mid is not good. Mid is mediocre. Middle of the road. Meh. And then I realized—I am mid."
https://t.co/1hVmqXwm5p
Reading a manuscript of @SamDalrymple123's brilliant, brilliant Shattered Lands: The Five Partitions of India 1937-71, and completely blown away by it. He has such a gift for making accessible and fascinating complex tangles of late colonial history, and it makes me realise how little I understood of the last days of British rule in South Asia. While I am, of course, unbelievably proud, I am also slowly becoming resigned to becoming the Kingsley Amis of Indian & Imperial history, fated to be known forever as the father of the more brilliant son (not so terrible a fate.) Shattered Lands will be published by @HarperCollins in Spring 2025.
One month ago, @MosabAbuToha started texting me a few hundred words a day.
He was still in Gaza. Still sleeping in a school. Still recovering from beatings he got in Israeli custody.
But every day, he typed this story into his phone: https://t.co/bdOsbPdyGM
Today’s not just any day, but world premiere day. And not just any premiere, but @esapekkasalonen’s Tiu (2023) for @LAPhil, celebrating the first 20 years of the Walt Disney Concert Hall - with palindromes, reverse time, clouds, spatial fanfares and whatnot!!💙
#AdventuresInMusic
From @esquire's 90th anniversary issue: the great Karen Russell writes, "We cannot succeed if we cannot imagine (and articulate) vivid alternatives to apocalypse." https://t.co/XCYpujGexH
This is so for reading right now--@granta essay by @edvulliamy + his playlist notes (yours are always amazing, too @sashafrerejones)
https://t.co/Zo6bmlrOph
https://t.co/p8Y4dvYodk
On this day, 30 August 1992, Philip Glass's Symphony No.1 "Low" premiered in Munich, Germany.
Based on the music of @DavidBowieReal and @brianeno, Low Symphony was part of a trilogy of symphonies with Heroes (1996) and Lodger (2019): https://t.co/chbxIzLnHa
Wonderful guest essay by @RealJoeLevy for @sashafrerejones about the Tom Verlaine book sale in NYC...and much more. How much do our books really tell about us?
https://t.co/lKk1LRkHiB