26.12.10

In Brief: Second Day of Christmas Edition

Here is your regular Sunday selection of links to good things in Blogville and Beyond.
  • Always up for a joke, Shaquille O'Neal celebrates his first season playing for the Boston Celtics by taking the podium of the Boston Pops. [Los Angeles Times]

  • Czech conductor Jiří Bělohlávek will return to Prague in 2012, to take up the reins of the Czech Philharmonic. [Slipped Disc]

  • People are trying to figure out what the best choirs in the world are. Does the fact that a British list did not include a single American choir reflect national bias (which would be shocking) or say something about the state of choral singing in the United States? [Deceptive Cadence]

  • What was the last building designed by Philip Johnson and who is using it these days? [Wall Street Journal]

  • We already know that classical music is dying -- and a good thing, too, because there is no new music left to compose. [Sound]

  • Critic Alastair Macaulay's name recognition jumped quite a bit after he observed in print that New York City Ballet dancer Jenifer Ringer was looking a little chunky ("as if she’d eaten one sugar plum too many"). Why is no one also mentioning that he was even harder on Ringer's male partner, Jared Angle, who "as the Cavalier, seems to have been sampling half the Sweet realm"? It's not nice, but that's what critics are supposed to do -- and it's why critics need to stay away from getting to know the people they review. [The Independent]

  • Feel free to dissect Mr. Macaulay's personal foibles yourself. [Ballet Magazine]

  • "What killed Mozart? Who the fuck cares." Oh, Jessa Crispin, you make me laugh. [Bookslut]

  • Jessica Duchen gets a head start on the Liszt anniversary year. [Standpoint]

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