If the Alan Lomax collection had a time travel section, that’s where you’d find the 78 Project. Rather than just observing and preserving present-day culture, the project combines technology and traditions from the past with modern musicians—an active exploration of antiquity that’s more mad scientist than history professor.
Filmmaker Alex Steyermark and Lavinia Jones Wright (with the support of executive producer Erik Nelson) created the project, and serve as its field recording team, but the PRESTO recorder—a later model of the device that Lomax used for his Library of Congress recordings in the ‘30s—is the one who’s really in charge.
With Beer Here: Brewing New York’s History opening May 25 at the recently renovated New-York Historical Society (in which you’ll learn that home-brewing has been around in New York City since the 17th century), now is the perfect time to check out some of the city’s newest brew-centric spots.
Top Hops Beer Shop(pictured): A former distributor for Anheuser-Busch/In Bev, owner Ted Kenny is the mastermind behind this Lower East Side beer emporium. The 700- bottle selection fills refrigerators in the back, while the custom wood-and-polished aluminum bar up front offers 20 beers on tap (tip: order a flight). The menu is limited, so don’t come hungry—just really thirsty. 94 Orchard St.; 212-254-4677.
Late last month Denver’s newest museum, the History Colorado Center opened the first phase of its three-tiered reveal to the 90,000 visitors they expect in their first year. Designed to share 10,000 years worth of stories and artifacts about the state and its people, at the same time the museum successfully looks forward to the future with high-tech exhibits and a hands-on experience for a new generation of museum-goers, bringing history to life, and having fun in the process. Night at the Museum anyone? Well, maybe not quite.
The new campus of the Barnes Foundation in Philadelphia represents, simply put, a game changer for what a museum can be, the experience of art, and role architecture plays in both. It is also a game changer for Philadelphia, at a moment of splendid cultural renaissance.
When it opens to the public on Saturday, May 19th, visitors will find the celebrated collection displayed in a series of galleries that preserve the scale, proportion, and configuration of the original institution in Lower Merion (located in suburban Philadelphia), but now placed in a larger setting that invites contemplation and offers many pleasures.
What do the Broadway musical, Leap of Faith, about a charlatan preacher; the NBC musical drama Smash, revolving around the intrigue and egos of the creative types working on a musical about Marilyn Monroe; and the Princess Grace Foundation have in common? The actor Leslie Odom, Jr. Odom, who has received praise and award nominations for his role as Isaiah, the antagonist to Raúl Esparaza’s con man-of-the-cloth in Leap of Faith, has a continuing role on Smash, and has won a Princess Grace Award for Acting.
T+L spoke with the multitalented actor about the stage, screens both big and small, and dancing his butt off in New York.
The dashing American baritone Nathan Gunn is currently starring in Billy Budd in the landmark production by John Dexter at the Metropolitan Opera in New York City. Benjamin Britten’s opera, based on the novella by Herman Melville, revolves around the clash of good and evil embodied in the young, charismatic sailor Billy Budd and the malevolent master-of-arms John Claggart. The Met’s staging of this gripping work of 20th-century music theater, with Britten’s evocative music, was last revived 15 years ago. Gunn talks to T+L about the role, his life as a singer, and the essential part travel plays in it.
This week and through May 12, six North American orchestras arrive in New York to participate in Spring for Music at Carnegie Hall, a festival that celebrates the individuality of musical enterprise, from Alabama to Edmonton, Houston to Milwaukee, and inventiveness and adventurousness in programming. Audiences get the chance to hear these orchestras, some in Carnegie debuts, at which new music or music, familiar or rare, in new contexts is key. And the price of these musical adventures: $25 for all seats, regardless of the location in the hall—front row to top balcony. Carnegie’s celebrated acoustics ensure every ensemble will be heard at its best.
I spoke with Jacques Lacombe, music director of the New Jersey Symphony Orchestra(NJSO), one of the participants who is traveling the least but which brings one of the widest-ranging programs.
The rehabilitation of the quais along the Seine will be completed by this summer (just in time for Paris Plage, which kicks off at the end of July). The Left Bank section, stretching from the Pont Royal to the Pont d’Alma, will open exclusively to pedestrians in June; by the following month, newly installed traffic lights on the Right Bank will make strolling the Seine even safer.
One of this year’s most anticipated openings also takes place on the beloved Parisian river: after a seven-year renovation, the funky green multi-level space known as Dock d’Austerlitz will re-open in late July as the Cité de la Mode et du Design, a center for fashion, design, and all things culture related. Look out for boutiques, restaurants (like MoonRoof on the top floor), fashion shows, museum exhibitions, and even a nightclub run by André Saraiva and Lionel Bensemoun (of the popular Le Baron, Hotel Amour, and Le Montana).
Tina Isaac is Travel + Leisure’s Paris correspondent.
The British are Coming…and the Chinese, the French, the Russians, and the Brazilians…
The most important contemporary art fair in London is coming to New York this weekend, May 4-7. Frieze New York will be like no other. It takes place on Randall’s Island in the East River, housed in a specially commissioned tent designed by SO – Il, a Brooklyn-based architecture and design firm, on a site with spectacular postcard views of the Manhattan skyline.
From hotel openings to cultural happenings, we’ve got the latest in five buzzing cities.
BARCELONA Stay: Primero Primera A stylish boutique hotel in a tucked-away bourgeois barrio alto. Doubles from $255.
Eat: Fábrica Moritz Barcelona Tapas restaurant set in an old Moritz beer factory and made over by French architect Jean Nouvel. 34/93-426-0050; dinner for two $55.
