When I was a piano student, my teacher gave me some wise advice about playing Schubert. “Pare everything down,” she would say. Simplicity is the key to intimacy, and intimacy is the heart of Schubert’s music. So I worked at stripping away anything theatrical or
The world is in a disordered state with even the United States going its own way without much regard to the interests of allies. In such a world, diplomacy becomes even more important. But diplomacy needs more that just government to government dialogue. It needs art
When Sasha Suda started her work as the 11th executive director and CEO of the National Gallery of Canada, she entered the building by the front door. Right away she had a question. Where was the art? There was none in the area round the entrance, none
Not since the battle over Barnett Newman's Voice of Fire has a controversy hit the National Gallery as hard as the Chagall affair. The uproar followed the revelation that the gallery was putting up the painting The Eiffel Tower by Marc Chagall up for auction in
Had a northern and a southern artist, each unknown to the other, not both signed up for an ocean expedition a few years back, we might not be seeing them (this week) at the Great Canadian Theatre Company in a co-production with the NAC's Indigenous
The Wizard of Oz has been presented in many forms. First as a novel written by L. Frank Baum and published in 1900. In 1902 there was a Broadway musical and in 1939, one of the most watched Hollywood movies of all time featured a
In the National Gallery of Canada, there be monsters. An exhibition of prints and drawings called Beautiful Monsters offers a journey into the dark corners of our imagination. But a two-dimensional print can only do so much to communicate the feeling of looking at things that
Feeling excluded from a space you simply assume is yours can be, for a white, middle-class person like me, disorienting. Not quite sure what to make of the situation, the natural reaction is to seek a mental accommodation that renders the new experience if not
Battleground, the latest offering by Canadian dance icon Louise Lecavalier, is described in the program notes as taking place in a “ring”. But with its rectangular floor marked with black and white squares, a chessboard would be a more apt description of its arena. Lecavalier has
Say what you will about online call-out culture; it can be a catalyst for positive change. Take composer diversity. Over the past few years, a small but vocal group of journalists, musicologists, performers and other advocates have been taking orchestras, opera companies and festivals to
