CARE

Photo credit:  Reuters.

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"There is a direct line from the year 1000 to now in musical culture which is bypassed in popular culture. I have nothing against it. "  (Sir Harrison Birtwistle)

In Memorium: Jonathan Harvey, Modernist And Sacred Classical Composer

Paul Griffiths obituary in New York Times 

Photo credit:   (c) Maurice Foxall/Faber Music, via Associated Press.

In Re Post-Classical Ensemble: Interpreting Shostakovich And Deepening Classical Music Culture And Education In The Nation's Capital

This three-week festival— interpreting Shostakovich the man, Shostakovich the composer, and specific Shostakovich compositions—was developed by composer and conductor Angel Gil-Ordóñez and musicologist  and producer Joseph Horowitz -- and is comprised of three concerts at the National Gallery of Art, Dumbarton Concerts, and Georgetown University, as well as four film events at the National Gallery with musical preludes and a biography-themed seminar. The participants include Solomon Volkov, author of Shostakovich's memoirs; the eminent British filmmaker Tony Palmer; film historian Peter Rollberg; and music historian Roy Guenther.

Starting this autumn, Mr. Gil-Ordóñez will serve as the Music Director of the Georgetown University Orchestra.  Their fall concert will feature music of Beethoven, Chaikovsky, and Musorgsky as orchestrated by Shostakovich.

In Memorium, Andrew F. Brimmer

Dr. Andrew F. Brimmer

Photo credit:  William E. Sauro/The New York Times

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We travelled together to Poland in mid-1993 to conduct a post-Communist economic transition funding program evaluation for the U.S. Department of State.

World Bank To Address Investing in Historic City Cores and Cultural Heritage Assets for Sustainable Development

The Economics of Uniqueness

Investing in Historic City Cores and Cultural Heritage Assets for Sustainable Development

Edited by Guido Licciardi and Rana Amirtahmasebi

This book collects innovative research papers authored by leading scholars and practitioners in heritage economics, and presents the most current knowledge on how heritage assets can serve as drivers of local economic development. What this book tries to suggest is a workable approach to explicitly take into account the cultural dimensions of urban regeneration in agglomerations that have a history and possess a unique character, going beyond an approach based solely on major cultural heritage assets or landmarks.

Read full book here.

Photo credit:  Kyiv, Ukraine, Future European Union.   Wikipedia.

Last year, according to Unicef, 1.7m children under the age of five died in India

Financial Times

Unicef focus on child survival

In Memoriam, Dmitriy S.

 

 

 

 

 My father-in-law, Dmitriy S., was 14 years old when his mother -- my wife's grandmother -- was killed by the German Nazis in early 1941 in a village near Kharkiv, Ukraine. She was one of millions of civilians killed in that war. Earlier, Dmitriy's father, a Tatar village leader and healer, had cured the young Dmitriy of malaria by boiling-down crayfish.  Dmitriy later served as an officer of the Soviet Strategic Air Forces, and with his wife, a doctor, had two daughters -- a cultural scientist and a biomedical scientist -- and two grandchildren.