ART AND THE GOVERNMENT In a major victory for New York’s arts education advocates, Mayor Bloomberg signed a bill requiring the city’s department of education to report on the availability and accessibility of arts education in each of its schools. This annual report will make public the degree to which schools meet current instructional requirementsRead More
Conversations with a Curator: Douglas Laustsen
In the spirit of the recent conversation on ArtsBlog, Emerging Ideas: Seeking and Celebrating the Spark of Innovation, I thought it would be interesting to talk to a curator about how he makes room for the unfamiliar in his work. Douglas Laustsen is a music educator and trombonist based in New Jersey who runs aRead More
New article at NewMusicBox.org
Yesterday, the good folks at NewMusicBox (the web magazine of the American Music Center) published a rather massive article of mine called “Composing a Life, Or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Dollar.” It’s my plea to composers and the new music community (which is the world I come from) to getRead More
Playwrights’ Outrageous (Mis)Fortune
As mentioned yesterday, a group of blogfolk are making their way through the new book/study Outrageous Fortune that looks at the state of the new American play in the early 21st century. My first post on the subject was here; today, I’ll be discussing chapter two along with playwright Matt Freeman. Other writers will (thankfully)Read More
Outrageous Fortune: a composer’s perspective
Around a year ago, Createquity got discovered, if you will, by a certain Isaac Butler of the Parabasis blog. Isaac is a writer and director active in the theater field, and since Parabasis is one of the central pillars in the “theatrosphere,” as its participants call it, he ended up sending me a lot ofRead More
Around the horn: picking up the pieces edition
Obviously, the big story this week has been the effort to get the NEA funding through the Senate, which as it stands doesn’t look in very good shape with the Coburn amendment having passed. However, Americans for the Arts is taking out a series of full-page ads in several political newspapers and organizing a letter-writingRead More
Professionals vs. Amateurs
Back when I was working for the American Music Center, one of the most common and maddening riddles that would come up with respect to our members was “what does it mean to be a professional composer?” The normal sense of “professional” implies earning one’s living from one’s work in that field; but only aRead More