‘To me, Song for Octave welcomes you into a different world. A dreamland in slow motion. I imagine being a child and walking in a glass house for the very first time, watching the rays of sunshine coming through the leaves of a big tree. It’s a quiet and peaceful conversation between light and shadow. (Pure and beautiful).‘
Rich in contemporary colour and contrast, LIFE – Mari Samuelsen’s third album for Deutsche Grammophon – is inspired by her experience of becoming a mother. Known for her vibrant and imaginative programming as well as her passionate and virtuosic playing, the Norwegian violinist has created a kaleidoscopic musical reflection of some of the emotional discoveries that come with parenthood.
The album presents music by Olivia Belli, Bryce Dessner, Ludovico Einaudi, Nils Frahm, Jóhann Jóhannsson, Mário Laginha, Hania Rani, Max Richter and Steve Reich, with a dash of Schubert also thrown into the mix. Samuelsen was joined at Teldex Studios in Berlin last autumn by a small group of fellow musicians, including the string players of Scoring Berlin, conducted by Jonathan Stockhammer. LIFE comes out digitally and on vinyl on 23 August 2024.
Architectural Digest (August 9, 2024) – Michael Wyetzner of Michielli + Wyetzner Architects returns to AD, this time breaking down four of the most common styles of college campus. Universities have been around for almost a thousand years and in that time have seen their designs evolve through the generations.
From the collegiate gothic halls of Yale to modern and brutalist buildings later added to the campuses of Harvard and UPenn, Wyetzner takes an in depth look at some of the most famous styles of college architecture to look out for this semester.
The Globalist Podcast (August 9, 2024): As Lebanon braces for an attack, we ask what plans are being made in the event of an Israeli invasion, Catalan separatist leader Carles Puigdemont returns to Spain for the first time in seven years and a diplomatic rift over Israel’s exclusion from Japan’s Nagasaki bomb commemoration.
Plus: fashion news, a flick through the papers and a check-in from our team in Paris.
The congressional voting record of the Democrat nominee for vice president shows his liberal streak, but with a deference to a conservative district’s needs.
The city has declined to divulge its plans or hold hearings on one of the worst public health crises in the United States, saying it does not want to jeopardize its lawsuit against drugmakers.
No Hands, Please: We’re Dutch
After two pandemic-disrupted Olympics, most teams haven’t given Covid a second thought in Paris. The one from the Netherlands is the exception.
The Globalist Podcast (August 8, 2024): We’re joined by journalist Abeer Ayyoub and Chatham House’s Yossi Mekelberg to learn more about Hamas’s new leader, Yahya Sinwar.
Also on the programme: Muhammud Yunus is named as the interim leader of Bangladesh’s government. We consider how this will affect the nation’s relationship with neighbouring India. Plus: we hear from Monocle’s Julia Lasica in Kyiv, discuss the latest news in aviation and Emma Nelson reports from Paris ahead of day 13 of the Olympic Games.
Democrats think Gov. Tim Walz’s cultural ties are needed to talk to rural and working-class voters. But Republicans are not going to let his folksy style obscure a liberal record.
A young skater’s emergence signals a pivot in the way an Olympic power defines success. But its handling of the table tennis competition suggests old expectations may persist, too.
Venezuela’s Strongman Was Confident of Victory. Then Came the Shock.
Venezuela’s government believed its control of all levers of power would give the country’s authoritarian president an Election Day victory. A rebellion by its supporters undid the plan.
London Review of Books (LRB) – August 7 , 2024: The latest issue features ‘Henry James Hot-Air Balloon’ – “The Prefaces” by Henry James; Trivialized to Death – “Reading Genesis” by Marilynne Robinson; Different for Girls By Jean McNicol…
The first time the man heard God, he uprooted his entire life, though he was very old. Then God appeared to him in person, an event which would embarrass later thinkers. God made the man an impossible promise in the shape of a son. His wife was ninety, and she laughed. When the child arrived, it was hardly unreasonable to think it a miracle. They named the child after the laughter.
In 1904 Henry James’s agent negotiated with the American publisher Charles Scribner’s Sons to produce a collected edition of his works. The New York Edition of the Novels and Tales of Henry James duly appeared in 1907-9. It presented revised texts of both James’s shorter and longer fiction, with freshly written prefaces to each volume. It didn’t include everything: ‘I want to quietly disown a few things by not thus supremely adopting them,’ as James put it. The ‘disowned’ works included some early gems such as The Europeans. The labour of ‘supremely adopting’ the stuff he still thought worthy was grinding. He worked on the new prefaces, which he described as ‘freely colloquial and even, perhaps, as I may say, confidential’ (though James’s notion of the ‘freely colloquial’ is perhaps not everyone’s) during the years 1905 to 1909. In some respects, the venture was not a success. ‘Vulgarly speaking,’ James said of the New York Edition, ‘it doesn’t sell.’
A week before the start of the Paris Olympics, Shoko Miyata, the 19-year-old captain of the Japanese women’s gymnastics team, was forced to withdraw from the competition by her national association. She had been reported to the Japan Gymnastics Association for smoking and drinking (on separate occasions, once for each offence). The president of the JGA, Tadashi Fujita, announced that Miyata had been sent home, and bowed deeply.
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