A hopeful and optimistic treatise that will surely be required reading for performing arts students.
A guidebook for aspiring performing artists to help them navigate the business side of showbiz.
The economic landscape for performing artists is shifting. Technology, evolving tastes, and the financial trouble of institutions like the New York City Opera, which closed in 2013, are changing how performing artists maintain their livings. With this uncertainty comes a greater need for the new generation of artists to understand how their training is equipping them—or not—to deal with infrequent gig cycles and programming that skews more toward popular culture. As Moore, the president and CEO of the Los Angeles Music Center, explains, her experience speaking with young performing artists in schools and at the beginnings of their careers has proven that they are mostly ill-prepared for the realities of the business aspects of their trade. To remedy this, the author has compiled a handy guide that addresses issues as wide-ranging as intellectual property, networking, and self-branding for the betterment of the future of the arts. Moore’s advice is steeped in her professional experience as an arts administrator and enlivened by her experience as a professional ballet dancer. With a genuine passion and desire to help other artists, she outlines her keys to success for a sustainable career. One critical chapter focuses on financial management. As more and more performing arts jobs move freelance, writes Moore, it is crucial that artists understand how to personally manage their incomes, deduct estimated taxes, and plan for periods during which jobs are scarce. Aside from the entrepreneurial tips, the author makes it clear that her most important principle is self-affirmation. The success of any artist, she claims, is dependent on the artist’s ability to remain confident in the face of rejection and not undercut his/her value through needless self-deprecation or comparisons to other artists.
A hopeful and optimistic treatise that will surely be required reading for performing arts students.Pub Date: May 3, 2016
ISBN: 978-1-5011-0595-1
Page Count: 224
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: Jan. 4, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2016
Occasionally wonky but overall a good case for how the dismal science can make the world less—well, dismal.
“Quality of life means more than just consumption”: Two MIT economists urge that a smarter, more politically aware economics be brought to bear on social issues.
It’s no secret, write Banerjee and Duflo (co-authors: Poor Economics: A Radical Rethinking of the Way To Fight Global Poverty, 2011), that “we seem to have fallen on hard times.” Immigration, trade, inequality, and taxation problems present themselves daily, and they seem to be intractable. Economics can be put to use in figuring out these big-issue questions. Data can be adduced, for example, to answer the question of whether immigration tends to suppress wages. The answer: “There is no evidence low-skilled migration to rich countries drives wage and employment down for the natives.” In fact, it opens up opportunities for those natives by freeing them to look for better work. The problem becomes thornier when it comes to the matter of free trade; as the authors observe, “left-behind people live in left-behind places,” which explains why regional poverty descended on Appalachia when so many manufacturing jobs left for China in the age of globalism, leaving behind not just left-behind people but also people ripe for exploitation by nationalist politicians. The authors add, interestingly, that the same thing occurred in parts of Germany, Spain, and Norway that fell victim to the “China shock.” In what they call a “slightly technical aside,” they build a case for addressing trade issues not with trade wars but with consumption taxes: “It makes no sense to ask agricultural workers to lose their jobs just so steelworkers can keep theirs, which is what tariffs accomplish.” Policymakers might want to consider such counsel, especially when it is coupled with the observation that free trade benefits workers in poor countries but punishes workers in rich ones.
Occasionally wonky but overall a good case for how the dismal science can make the world less—well, dismal.Pub Date: Nov. 12, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-61039-950-0
Page Count: 432
Publisher: PublicAffairs
Review Posted Online: Aug. 28, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2019
SEEN & HEARD
These platitudes need perspective; better to buy the books they came from.
A lightweight collection of self-help snippets from the bestselling author.
What makes a quote a quote? Does it have to be quoted by someone other than the original author? Apparently not, if we take Strayed’s collection of truisms as an example. The well-known memoirist (Wild), novelist (Torch), and radio-show host (“Dear Sugar”) pulls lines from her previous pages and delivers them one at a time in this small, gift-sized book. No excerpt exceeds one page in length, and some are only one line long. Strayed doesn’t reference the books she’s drawing from, so the quotes stand without context and are strung together without apparent attention to structure or narrative flow. Thus, we move back and forth from first-person tales from the Pacific Crest Trail to conversational tidbits to meditations on grief. Some are astoundingly simple, such as Strayed’s declaration that “Love is the feeling we have for those we care deeply about and hold in high regard.” Others call on the author’s unique observations—people who regret what they haven’t done, she writes, end up “mingy, addled, shrink-wrapped versions” of themselves—and offer a reward for wading through obvious advice like “Trust your gut.” Other quotes sound familiar—not necessarily because you’ve read Strayed’s other work, but likely due to the influence of other authors on her writing. When she writes about blooming into your own authenticity, for instance, one is immediately reminded of Anaïs Nin: "And the day came when the risk to remain tight in a bud was more painful than the risk it took to blossom.” Strayed’s true blossoming happens in her longer works; while this collection might brighten someone’s day—and is sure to sell plenty of copies during the holidays—it’s no substitute for the real thing.
These platitudes need perspective; better to buy the books they came from.Pub Date: Nov. 1, 2015
ISBN: 978-1-101-946909
Page Count: 160
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: Aug. 15, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2015
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