Month: December 2015

Sometimes the FOMO hits you like a ton of bricks. So, here are hot links you missed in the CDA mailer this week:

One-woman pop-music phenom Taylor Swift gave $50,000 to the Seattle Symphony last week. Fifty thousand? Talk about hush money. What dirt do they have on her?? No sane person donates to orchestras anymore.

Sure, the “official” reason was that Swift simply “appreciated” the Seattle Symphony’s work with John Luther Adams and his tour de force piece Become Ocean. Assuming Swift was telling the truth (and I have no reason to believe she is) this “donation” signals something big. When your orchestra is willing to play, record, and promote good new music — to cultivate a reputation as the go-to outfit for experiments like this — then you’ll reap handsome rewards, although not always monetarily.

NR-K was ice-cold.

The city of Berlin offers city dwellers an amazing proposition: an off-peak, all-access, year-long pass to nineteen art museums and research centers for a modest 25 euros. Since buying the pass in October I’ve been on a quest to visit as many sites as possible. Firmly resolved: it will get done.

Most recently I went to the Alte Nationalgalerie. The Alte Nationalgalerie was completed in 1876 and renovated in 2001. It’s home to works by Rodin, Pissarro, and others you’d expect. Even better, it boasts a sturdy collection of German painters from the past three centuries.

The Alte Nationalgalerie also houses paintings and sculptures of interest to classical music buffs. I snapped a few photos for posterity, which you can see below.