If you are in New York this week there is plenty of art to see. Just a short walk from the Metropolitan Museum is a show that you will probably never see again. You can visit it for free. It closes this weekend.
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Listening During Covid, Part 11: Making Classical Music New in All Kinds of Ways
Two exquisite sopranos bring us refreshing songs, arias, and cantatas; and a noted Broadway composer and a remarkable Black librettist offer a searing opera about police brutality.
Pop Album Review: Florence + The Machine’s “Dance Fever” – Inside the Artist’s Mind
Dance Fever is one of the few pandemic-themed artworks that doesn’t feel contrived — it is specific about the value of music to the individual and by extension to the community.
Video Game Commentary: Roblox — Exploiting Child Labor in the Metaverse
The most popular game/platform in the world shows us how some of the darkest chapters of labor history can easily repeat themselves in virtual reality.
Arts Commentary: Getting ‘em in the Door
For the foreseeable, capitalist American future, full and equitable access to live, professional performing arts will depend on subsidy.
Film Commentary: Three Amazing Movies Turn 50
A terrifically significant, and eccentric, trio of films are turning 50 this year: Marjoe, Pink Flamingos, and Silent Running.
Theater Commentary: Burnt Norton
What will guarantee obsolescence? If members of the BTCA continue to embrace a “whatever is, is right” attitude to Boston’s stage scene.
Film Commentary: “Inland Empire” — The Dreamer Who Dreams
David Lynch’s Inland Empire is a provocative challenge to filmmaking as a medium of visual storytelling that’s largely gone unmatched in the sixteen years since its initial release.
Theater Reviews: “Hangmen” and “American Buffalo” on Broadway — From the Gallows to the Gutter
Two dark comedies explore American and British subcultures far below the line of decency.
Classical Album Review: Orion Weiss’s “Arc 1” — Crafting a Strong Sense of Impending Doom
The album serves up exceptional stuff, even if the program’s a touch macabre and pianist Orion Weiss’s well-written liner notes make uncomfortable connections between the world of pre-World War 1 Europe and our own pandemic-riddled age.