Here's a look at what's in the limelight this week in National Arts News.
Salinger Biography Released
Since 2004, Kenneth Slawenski has run a website dedicated to all things J. D. Salinger. Now Random House has published his new autobiography of the famously reclusive author. Eight years in the making, this is Slawenski's first book.
The Kennedy Center Hosts 50th Anniversary Celebration
The three-week celebration of John F. Kennedy's presidency at the Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C. wrapped up this week. The celebration in honor of JFK, who the Center calls "the president who led the United States into the modern era of global participation," includes performances by the National Symphony Orchestra, American Ballet Theatre, Yo-Yo Ma, Denyce Graves, Emanuel Ax. Closing the festivities on February 6 are the final world premiere performances of the newly commissioned play based on two collections of poetry selected by Caroline Kennedy, American Scrapbook: A Celebration of Verse, by Jason Williamson and directed by Kathleen Amshoff.
Small Music Businesses Flourish As Musicians Struggle
As part of NPR's Fractured Culture Series, correspondent Laura Sydell reports this week on the blog The Record that fewer musicians than ever are currently signed with major record labels. The choice to leave big business behind has left a multitude of new opportunities for "small companies…that promise to help musicians manage their fans, their download sales, or their social networks." There is a catch, however: The majority of musicians today do not make a living wage.
‘Wuthering Heights' Retold In Dance
In neighborly, international news, Canadian choreographer Deborah Dunn, who has based dance pieces on literature as varying as T. S. Eliot's The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock and Virginia Woolf's Orlando, has developed a new cycle of dances based on Emily Brontë's Wuthering Heights. The piece is named Nocturnes, for the romantic score, a deconstruction of Chopin's classic preludes by composer David Cronkite. Six dancers, playing the parts of Brontë's characters—including the lovestruck Catherine and Heathcliff—presented the dances around Montreal through the month of January.