Reinventing The Recital: Andsnes & Rohde attempt cutting-edge Music/Image synthesis at Lincoln Center

If you've ever been to a church service, you've been to a mult-media artistic experience. Text(s), song(s), built environment, and performance are the basic building blocks of virtually every church service. And more than ever, video is not an uncommon aspect of worship.

But the search for a seamless amalgamation of art forms resulting in a culmination which is greater than the sum of its parts is not only confined to pastors and church-administrators, it's obviously part of the larger arts-landscape as well.

And so, with this pretext/context in mind, we invite you to take a look at this review of a fascinating artistic experiment: A collaboration between one of the most acclaimed pianists of our day, Norwegian Leif Ove Andsnes, and South African-born video artist Robin Rohde. Pictures Reframed is the result of their collaboration, and it premiered this past November in the newly reopened, magisterially redesigned, Alice Tulley Hall at Lincoln Center.

Excerpt Below // Full Article Here

The remarkable Norwegian pianist Leif Ove Andsnes is a self-effacing, substantive and completely unflashy artist. You would not peg him as someone curious to explore multimedia and reinvent the piano recital.

Yet several years ago Mr. Andsnes approached Jane Moss, the vice president for programming at Lincoln Center, to propose collaborating with a visual artist on a performance of Mussorgsky’s “Pictures at an Exhibition.” Ms. Moss embraced the idea as being ideal for New Visions, part of the Great Performers series. After some searching, she introduced Mr. Andsnes to the South African-born video artist Robin Rhode.

The product of that collaboration, “Pictures Reframed,” an intriguing multimedia piano recital 80 minutes long without intermission, was presented at Alice Tully Hall on Friday night. It was the first of two performances, and the place was packed.

Theology & Theater: Playwright David Hare comments on the inextricably linked relationship of Faith & Doubt

A nice article from the Melbourne Australia Herald-Sun asking the question "Why doesn't God reveal himself so obviously that no one could doubt his existence?" New Creation brings this article to you in primary part because of playwright David Hare's commentary in the last half of the article.

Click here to read it!

Sapphire on "Precious", based on her book "Push"

The Wall Street Journal and its arts blog SPEAKEASY has posted a fascinating conversation with novelist Sapphire, author of Push - the book which was made into the movie Precious.

Excerpt Below // Full Article Here

Walking down 125th Street in Manhattan last month, the author Sapphire was stopped by a librarian who told her in an amazed tone how “Push” just won’t die. After a healthy shelf-life following its publication in 1996, the novel — which narrates the tale of Precious Jones, an 80’s-era abused and illiterate teenage girl who learns to read and take charge of her life — is once again atop the bestsellers list thanks to interest spinning from an award-winning film adaptation by director Lee Daniels. Just nominated for eight NAACP image awards, the film — renamed “Precious: Based on the Novel Push by Sapphire” — has grossed nearly $44 million so far and is on its way to winning other awards for stars Mo’Nique and newcomer Gabourey Sidibe. Sapphire recently spoke to us about the evolution of her book.

The Wall Street Journal: Though “Push” was a best-selling book when it was released, now, thanks to the movie, a whole new generation feels as if they’re discovering the book for the first time.

Sapphire: It’s not just a new generation that’s discovering the book, it’s a new population. Because I had been a poet, that’s the way it was originally promoted and it really went strongly into the social service segment of the population. For example, it was used as a teaching tool at Hunter College and psychiatrists at Harlem hospitals used it to show the inner mindset of a rape survivor, and in 2007, a whole conference was dedicated to it at Arizona State. So it had it’s own world, but it hadn’t crossed over into popular literature yet. Now, its spreading beyond the coasts, and hitting the Midwest and the South and I’m excited. Because now, no one is mistaking “Precious” for a documentary. People just want to see where the movie came from. It’s like when I ran out to buy “One Who Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest” and “The Godfather” in the 1970s; I wanted to see the literary document the movie sprang from.

She's Singin' Sondheim: Elaine Stitch at The Cafe Carlyle

Happen to be in the Big Apple anytime before the end of January? If so, this one looks like it's a can't miss -- “Elaine Stritch Singin’ Sondheim ... One Song at a Time,” at the Café Carlyle. Read all about it in Stephen Holden's rapturous review...

Excerpt Below // Full Article Here

One reason any singing actor with a modicum of talent can’t go wrong interpreting the songs of Stephen Sondheim is that they make whoever sings them sound like a genius and a sage. In a fusion of sensibilities, the composer’s complicated thoughts become the singer’s, so that the performer’s best possible self — a more intuitive, smarter self (Mr. Sondheim doesn’t do stupid) — comes to the fore.

That’s why an all-Sondheim program like Elaine Stritch’s new show, “Elaine Stritch Singin’ Sondheim ... One Song at a Time,” at the Café Carlyle is so touching. The selections — a baker’s dozen — constitute a handpicked, personal anthology of the composer’s observations on life, time, relationships and show business, expressed by supremely articulate stage characters, whose thoughts are indelibly stamped with Ms. Stritch’s outsize personality.

Darwin Goes To The Opera!

Or rather, the opera goes to Darwin! Read all about Swedish indie-rock brother/sister duo The Knife and their opera Tomorrow, in a Year which is based upon Darwin's ultra-seminal The Origin of Species (and then take a sample listen of leaked track "Coloring of Pigeons").

Sidenote: If The Knife and The White Stripes are any indication, it looks as if there is some sort of Apollo/Dionysus-esque alchemical musical magic to be wrung from the primordial brother/sister relationship in the 21st century. Here's to the first Brother/Sister Music Festival!

Click here to take a look at and a listen to The Knife and their opera Tomorrow, in a Year.

What Is Art For? // Lewis Hyde examines “the public life of the imagination”

Here is a classic article from 2008 which profiles acclaimed (but still largely unknown) poet and essayist Lewis Hyde. David Foster Wallace called Hyde, "one of our true superstars of nonfiction," and, as Daniel B. Smith notes in this piece, Hyde's "fans — among them Zadie Smith, Michael Chabon and Jonathan Lethem— routinely use words like “transformative” and “life-altering” to describe his books."

It's a bit of a longer article, but well worth your time since it asks such cogent and thoughtful questions about the meaning of art while leveraging provocative points about topics such as the "cultural commons" in a digital age; the relationship between art and the exigencies of commerce; as well as discussing and elucidating Hyde's lifelong project to "examine the public life of the imagination."

Excerpt Below // Full Article Here

Last April I asked the writer Lewis Hyde if he would take a trip with me to Walden Pond, in Concord, Mass. At 63, Hyde has boyishly tousled brown-gray hair, freckled, soft-looking cheeks and the slightly abstracted gaze of a man who spends a disproportionate amount of his time in library carrels. He has an ironic streak, but his default mode is a kind of easygoing acquiescence, and so one slate gray Saturday afternoon he picked me up in Cambridge, where he lives and works half the year, and drove us the 12 miles west to Walden.

Hyde knows the area well — among his ongoing projects is a detailed series of annotations of Henry David Thoreau’s essays — and he led me down a dirt path from the parking lot to the site of the cabin where, more than 150 years ago, Thoreau wrote his celebrated paean to solitude and self-reliance. The cabin no longer exists. In its place there is a lightly excavated, cordoned-off square of soil and, to its side, a waist-high cairn erected in commemoration by generations of pilgrims.

Our own visit wasn’t commemorative, but it was a pilgrimage of a sort. Hyde has been writing and publishing for more than three decades, and he has received numerous high-profile awards, including a MacArthur “genius grant” in 1991, but his name is still obscure to most readers. His body of work is slim; he has published two books, a volume of poems and a smattering of essays, translations and edited anthologies. His reputation, however, is rich. David Foster Wallace called him “one of our true superstars of nonfiction.” Hyde’s fans — among them Zadie Smith, Michael Chabon and Jonathan Lethem— routinely use words like “transformative” and “life-altering” to describe his books, which they’ve been known to pass hand to hand like spiritual texts or samizdatmanifestoes. The source of much of this reverence is Hyde’s first book, “The Gift” (1983), which has never been out of print (it was recently rereleased by Vintage in a 25th-anniversary edition) and which tries to reconcile the value of doing creative work with the exigencies of a market economy.

Looking Ahead: Theology, Literature, and the impact of Technology

What is the future of theology and the arts in the ever-evolving electronic age? What are the limitations, along with the advantages, which the digital age bequeathes unto literary culture and the "life of the book" in particular?

These are precisely the questions posed by Duke Divinity's Faith and Leadership to literary luminary Sven Birkerts (author of, among others, The Gutenberg Elegies).

Of the many thought-provoking lines which Birkerts offers, this one is paramount:

"I am deeply invested in the idea that books represent something else besides the transmission of knowledge..."

Excerpt Below // Full Article Here

Sven Birkerts is the editor of the journal AGNI and the author of eight books, most notably “The Gutenberg Elegies: The Fate of Reading in an Electronic Age.” He has reviewed regularly for The New York Times Book Review, The New Republic, Esquire and other publications, and has taught writing at Harvard, Emerson, Amherst and Mt. Holyoke. He lives in Arlington, Mass.

He spoke with Faith & Leadership while visiting Duke to participate in a public conversation about the future of reading hosted by Duke Magazine.

Q: You wrote a book called “The Gutenberg Elegies” about digital culture and concluded it with a call to refuse it. I imagine you’re not in favor of digital culture.

The book was written right when the first great wave of electronic technology was rolling in. People on many fronts were very quickly turning against stodgy old print. I had an investment in print culture as a teacher, writer and bookseller. I began to wonder what we were so happily abandoning and jumping on board with. The resulting series of meditations raised a lot of questions and ended on a very skeptical note.

Some years later, the publisher wanted to do a new edition. Ten years had passed. In traditional time, 10 years is nothing. In terms of what we’re going through culturally, it’s an enormous time period.

Things had also changed for me. Since I had argued against the “salvation” offered by all that is digital, I had been identified as a Luddite. Many people imagined me living in a cabin with no electricity, making my own ink. But I live in the contemporary world, including as a writer.

In order to carry on with my writing life, I had to make concessions. This book was written originally on a Selectric typewriter. When I wrote the introduction to the revised edition it was on a laptop.

Q: Some of your concessions have been due to being a parent, but you certainly don’t make them without circumspection and sadness.

I tried to adopt a tolerant approach, but also made clear that lifestyle decisions have effects. Even though we gradually acquired more gadgets, our house is also wall-to-wall books. The children saw us reading and living the life of the book. We hoped to model one thing while not holding them back from electronic culture.

Both of my children read intelligently, but sadly both read books as just part of the menu. I am deeply invested in the idea that books represent something else besides the transmission of knowledge, so I feel that they’re losing out.

Dreaming Out Loud: Reconciliation Through The Arts

This past Sunday saw the arrival of the sixth Op/Ed piece in The New York Times by indefatigable activist and U2 frontman Bono. In Ten for the Next Ten, he puts forth ten ideas which "might make the next 10 years more interesting, healthy or civil."

Why do we at New Creation post this Op/Ed piece in the belief that you might be better off having known about it? Could it be that one of our editors may be a little too interested in U2's work? Or might it rather be that buried within this list, smack-dab in the middle in fact, is a fascinating and utterly cogent suggestion for inter-faith reconciliation through the arts via a "Festival of Abraham?" Hmm... Better to bet on the second of these options.

Regarding such a notion as a "Festival of Abraham," Bono writes:

Here’s something that could never have happened in the Naughts but will maybe be possible in the Tweens or Teens — if there’s a breakthrough in the Mideast peace process. The idea is an arts festival that celebrates the origin of the three Abrahamic religions: Judaism, Christianity and Islam. Every year it could be held in a different location; Jerusalem would obviously be the best place to start.

In Ireland, at the height of the “Troubles,” it was said that the only solution for rabid sectarianism was to let 1,000 punk-rock bands bloom: music helped create a free space for dialogue (of a high-volume variety). So no politicians allowed. Artists only.

(Read Ten for the Next Ten in its entirety by clicking here.)

One thing which Bono does not suggest (explicitly, at least) in this piece but which seems implicitly obvious is that there seems to be no reason why such a "Festival of Abraham" couldn't be organized as soon as this year in America or the UK (and wouldn't a divinity school be a natural fit as the locale for such an event?!!?). Make it an annual Festival and then, after momentum has built for a couple of years, such a festival could then move onto center stage in Jerusalem (as Bono suggests). Three cheers to the divinity school students and faculty who pull this off first!

Finding God in Abstract Expressionism

Here is a fascinating story on the "painting priest" by John Rogers for the Associated Press which has been making its way around the world's newspapers. Our link takes you to the homesite of the Monterey Herald, one of the first newspapers to pick up Rogers' story...

Excerpt Below // Full Article Here

There's no steeple out front, no rows of pews inside, not even so much as a crucifix on display.

Still, this cramped little art studio in the middle of what, until not very long ago, was a Pomona street with as many broken dreams as it has potholes, is the closest thing to paradise the Rev. Bill Moore has found. It's the place where the 60-year-old Catholic priest serves God by creating abstract paintings that he sells by the hundreds.

No ordinary preacher, Father Bill, as he's known throughout Pomona's fledgling arts district, long ago discarded his clerical collar in favor of a painter's smock. Only on Sundays does he trade it for holy vestments to deliver Mass at a local church or one of several detention facilities for young offenders.

All other times, Moore is head of the Ministry of the Arts for the West Coast branch of his religious order, the Sacred Hearts of Jesus and Mary.

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Looking Ahead: The London Times Profiles The Visual Arts of 2010

Another one just up from The London Times, this one previews the year ahead in visual art. Click here and enjoy!

Looking Ahead: The London Times Profiles The Films of 2010

Also just up today, The London Times takes us on a tour through the coming year in film. Click here to read all about it!

Looking Ahead: A New Month, A New Year, A New Decade, and New Art!

Just up today, The New York Times' writers take a look across mediums (from theater to television, painting to dance, film to literature) and peer into January 2010 and beyond. Take a sojourn through the future here.

DC Explores The Body of Christ in Epic Visual Arts Exhibit

The Washington DC Theological Consortium has completed a stunning visual arts exhibit on the theme: The Body of Christ. Click on the link in red to take in a smorgasbord of fantastic pieces!

Documenting The Arts in 2009

The New York Times' Arts Blog documents over 30 of the top arts moments of 2009 at the site linked here. Enjoy!

Documenting the Decade in Photographs

The New York Times asked its readers around the world to submit their photos documenting the decade - everything from 9/11 to Katrina to Obama. The result are these excellent 667 photos selected out of over 2300 submitted.

Click here to begin viewing

Peter Travers' 10 Best Films of 2009

See what the long-time Rolling Stone film critic Peter Travers thinks are the best films of the year by clicking here

Roger Ebert's 10 best films of the Decade

Ebert's list starts with... well, you can read the list in full for yourself by clicking here

The Wall Street Journal: Top Jazz Albums of 2009

The Journal always has good pieces on Jazz, it seems, and this list compiled by Larry Blumenfeld is no different.

Full Article Here // Excerpt Below

Handwringers issuing dire prognoses for jazz are like holiday-season Grinches during a recession: We've known more flush times, but let's not take for granted this year's considerable offerings, nor the spirit that binds them. "There's a revolution going on," trumpeter Terence Blanchard told me. "But it's the quietest one I've ever heard of, because everybody has their own version."

The L.A. Times: Top 10 Architecture Moments of 2009

Another fascinating list from The L.A. Times!

Click here to begin viewing!

The L.A. Times: Top 10 Most Fascinating Museum Exhibits of 2009

The lists keep a' comin'! And this is a fun and interesting one, to be sure!

Click here to begin viewing the slide-show list in full

The Boston Globe's 10 Best Books of the Decade

As New Creation rambles along through the mounains of "best-of" lists, this one seems like it's worth taking a look at: Nicole Lamy's (Editor of The Boston Globe's Book Review) Top 10 Books of the Decade.

Click here to begin reading!

Top Musicians, Critics, Industry Insiders vote on 100 Best Albums & Songs of the Decade

Chancing by any mag stand over the last month or so and you were bound to bump into a music magazine selecting the "best XYZ" of the decade. Rolling Stone got into the game as well - but with a twist. Instead of limiting the list to their staff, they dolled out ballots to over 100 top musicians, critics and industry insiders and let them each vote for the best albums/songs of the decade. The result is a cross-section of a wide-ranging musical landscape that appeared in flux and fluid motion throughout the decade.

Perhaps one of the coolest side-links made available by RS is a page (linked below) where you can see scanned copies of the actual ballots filled out by everyone from Austin Scaggs (writer for Rolling Stone) to Lars Ulrich (the drummer of Metallica) to Tom Morello (formerly of Rage Against The Machine, Audioslave, and now The Night Watchman) and two dozen others!

As for who was voted the best?

In the album category, Radiohead takes top honors for their seminal 2000 album "Kid A", recorded in Lennon/McCartney's sonic realm of choice Abbey Road (Studio 2).

Gnarls Barkley's "Crazy" was voted best song of the decade for its cross-over appeal in a decade in which true cross-over pop hits were a dwindling, if not extinct, species.

Top 100 Albums of the Decade

Top 100 Songs of the Decade

The Ballots

From "Blueprint 3" to "Backspacer", Rolling Stone editors select Top 25 Albums of 2009

The editors, Jann S. Wenner and others, at Rolling Stone magazine have selected their Top 25 albums of 2009. U2 takes top honors for No Line On The Horizon, but Jay-Z, Bob Dylan, Green Day, Animal Collective, Phoenix, Wilco, Neko Case, Springsteen and others rate high also!

See the list in full by clicking here

Lit in an Age of Wonder: The New York Times' Top 10 Books of 2009

After quite a long nice nap, New Creation is up and raring to go, ready to blast off into 2010! However, before we get there we've got some business to tend to in 2009 posts - namely the year-end/decade-end plethora of "best-of" lists of books, music, films, fruitcakes (well, maybe not fruitcakes, but you get the drift...).

The first one we are posting in this litany of lists is The New York Times' Book Review's Top 10 Books of 2009.

Enjoy!

Full Article Here // Excerpt Below

After so many years, and so many lists, you might think the task of choosing the 10 Best Books would get easier. If only. The sublime story collections alone created agonies of indecision. So did the superb literary biographies we read — and deeply admired. But in the end the decisions had to be made.

Not that drawing up the list — or rather, whittling it down — was a wholly painful exercise. One of the pleasures it afforded was the chance to resample the sometimes surprising chemistry of reviewers and authors, particularly when it came to fiction. Jonathan Lethem, whose “Chronic City” made our list, reviewed Lorrie Moore’s novel “A Gate at the Stairs,” which made it too, while Curtis Sittenfeld, whose novel “Prep” was one of the 10 Best in 2005, reviewed Maile Meloy’s story collection “Both Ways Is the Only Way I Want It,” a winner this year. Any book review editor will attest that persuading fiction writers to assess other people’s fiction can be a struggle. These were heartening exceptions to the rule. May more novelists review for us in 2010!

Spiritual & Artistic Quests: In Search Of Flannery O'Connor

One last article to post before New Creation is put on ice for a few days during finals week: A fascinating piece from February 2007, "In Search of Flannery O'Connor" which follows Lawrence Downes' journey to visit O'Connor's homeland in rural Georgia, a literary pilgrimage that treads lightly between the fictional and the real.

Excerpt Below // Full Article Here

THE sun was white above the trees, and sinking fast. I was a few miles past Milledgeville, Ga., somewhere outside of Toomsboro, on a two-lane highway that rose and plunged and twisted through red clay hills and pine woods. I had no fixed destination, just a plan to follow a back road to some weedy field in time to watch the sun go down on Flannery O'Connor's Georgia.

Somewhere outside Toomsboro is where, in O'Connor's best-known short story, “A Good Man Is Hard to Find,” a family has a car accident and a tiresome old grandmother has an epiphany. The fog of petty selfishness that has shrouded her life clears when she feels a sudden spasm of kindness for a stranger, a brooding prison escapee who calls himself the Misfit.

Of course, that's also the moment that he shoots her in the chest, but in O'Connor's world, where good and evil are as real as a spreading puddle of blood, it amounts to a happy ending. The grandmother is touched by grace at the last possible moment, and she dies smiling.

“She would of been a good woman,” the Misfit said, “if it had been somebody there to shoot her every minute of her life.”

O'Connor's short stories and novels are set in a rural South where people know their places, mind their manners and do horrible things to one another. It's a place that somehow hovers outside of time, where both the New Deal and the New Testament feel like recent history. It's soaked in violence and humor, in sin and in God. He may have fled the modern world, but in O'Connor's he sticks around, in the sun hanging over the tree line, in the trees and farm beasts, and in the characters who roost in the memory like gargoyles. It's a land haunted by Christ — not your friendly hug-me Jesus, but a ragged figure who moves from tree to tree in the back of the mind, pursuing the unwilling.

Global Music Spotlight: The Songs of Senegal

Another article worth posting that showed up this weekend from The Times, giving us a glimpse into the vibrantly majestic and ever-evolving African music scene.

Excerpt Below // Full Article Here

“I LOVE the evening in Dakar,” says Youssou N’Dour, glancing out the darkened window of an S.U.V. at the nocturnal crowds streaming into his nightclub, Thiossane, as a warm West African breeze rustles the palms and stirs up the dirt in the unpaved parking lot.

They arrive by foot, car, scooter and battered black-and-yellow taxi, dolled up in their Saturday best for the imminent wee-hours concert by Mr. N’Dour, Africa’s biggest music star. “It’s a city that really comes alive at night.”

Though he has recently returned to Dakar, the Senegalese capital, from a gala in New York City for the international Keep a Child Alive charity — where he sang with Alicia Keys and was honored alongside Bill Clinton and Richard Branson — Mr. N’Dour sounds more like a wistful local kid than a 50-year-old global icon who has won a Grammy Award and was once named one ofTime magazine’s “100 Most Influential People.” “I’m still very attached to Dakar,” he goes on, adding that he was born in a working-class neighborhood a few miles from the club. “And the people of Dakar are very attached to my music.”

And how. When he takes the stage, an ecstatic roar explodes, and soon several hundred bodies are dancing madly. With its fast-driving, interweaving traditional sabar drummers — rounded out by guitar, bass, keyboards and a rock drum kit — the opening number, “Less Wakhoul,” is pure mbalax, the propulsive, percussive, melodic pop music that Mr. N’Dour popularized starting in the 1970s and that remains the dominant sound emitted from Senegalese radios.

When the sun dips behind the Atlantic, this gritty concrete metropolis — exhilarating, inventive, emotive — flares into a living jukebox of sounds with few African rivals. And with the imminent arrival of the annual Africa Fête — a music festival from Dec. 12 to 19 featuring the mbalax master Omar Pène and many other top local acts — the city’s tuneful bounty is about to go on even larger and more ebullient display.

“Dakar is one of the most musically vibrant cities in Africa,” says Simon Broughton, editor in chief of the Britain-based Songlines magazine, which last year began operating tours of the city and this month features Youssou N’Dour on its cover.

“There’s a large number of clubs,” Mr. Broughton says, “and lots of music as part of the fabric of everyday life.”

Vinyl Records & Turntables Make A Comeback

Just up from The New York Times, an article on the resurgence of vinyl records and turntables amidst the collapse of the larger recording industry. Some say its due to the role of video games like Rock Band and DJ Hero, other vantage points suggest it has something to with the richer, smoother sound that vinyls produce. Whatever the root of the cause, the effect is undeniable: Sales are on the up and up, and it ain't grandpa who's buying 'em - it's the kids!

Excerpt Below // Full Article Here

“It’s all these kids that are really ramping up their vinyl collections,” Ms. Friedman said. “New customers are discovering the quality of the sound. They’re discovering liner notes and graphics.” In many instances, the vinyl album of today is thicker and sounds better than those during vinyl’s heyday in the 1960s and 1970s.

Sales of vinyl albums have been climbing steadily for several years, tromping on the notion that the rebound was just a fad. Through late November, more than 2.1 million vinyl records had been sold in 2009, an increase of more than 35 percent in a year, according toNielsen Soundscan. That total, though it represents less than 1 percent of all album sales, including CDs and digital downloads, is the highest for vinyl records in any year since Nielsen began tracking them in 1991.

Sales of CDs, meanwhile, have been falling fast, displaced by the downloading of digital files of songs from services like iTunes. Sales of albums on CD, which generally cost half as much as their vinyl counterparts, have dropped almost 20 percent this year, according to Nielsen.

With overall sales down, numerous big music-store chains like Tower Records, Virgin Megastore and HMV have pulled out of Manhattan, leaving music sales largely to online merchants and the few small, die-hard record shops scattered about Greenwich Village and Brooklyn.

One exception has been Best Buy, a national electronics chain that recently opened its sixth store in Manhattan. A year ago, the chain started stocking vinyl albums in about 50 of its stores, including one on the Upper East Side. Their presence, with their alluring cover art, still has the power to stun.

“Some individuals come into our store and they stop in their tracks,” said Andre Sam, a sales representative at Best Buy’s store on East 86th Street. “They don’t expect to see this.

Reading Lists (Part 2): Theology And/Through The Arts

Back on November 15, New Creation posted the first of our "Readings Lists In Theology And/Through The Arts". Today we unveil the second part of this on-going series by offering up an impressive list from Michael Paul Gallagher. Among other things, it's a great place to look for last-minute Christmas presents!

See the extensive list in full here

For College Football's Best Wide-Receiver, The Time Between Saturdays Is Spent With A Six-String And In Prayer

We've been saving this piece for the biggest Saturday in college football. A fascinating article on the role of music and faith in the life of college football's best wide-reciever (and likely Biletnikoff Award Winner), Jordan Shipley of the University of Texas.

Excerpt Below // Full Article Here

DALLAS — He arrived with the nickname the Great White Hope. Vince Young nicknamed him ESPN for his highlight catches and Cedric Benson, seeing his blazing speed, began calling him White Chocolate.

But Jordan Shipley, 23, did not become a complete player and person at Texas until leg injuries kept him off the team in 2004 and 2005, nearly ending his playing days. Facing football mortality, Shipley found himself. “There just came a defining moment in his life where he made the decision that his commitment to football was not going to define him as a person,” Bob Shipley, Jordan’s father, who coached Jordan in high school, said in a telephone interview. “And that’s really when he really started being successful.”

Texas Coach Mack Brown said he considered telling Shipley to give up football.

But Shipley took his time away from the game to develop in other ways. He discovered a passion for music as a guitar player, a singer and a songwriter. When football was taken away, “I had to kind of figure out who I was as a person and what I stood for,” he said in a telephone interview.

“He’s awesome,” Colorado Coach Dan Hawkins said of Shipley in a telephone interview. “He’s obviously very talented, but he’s got that divine spark.”

Shipley’s rhythm on the field is in sync with his life off it. Shipley describes his music as a mix of country and Americana, styled after musicians like John Mayer and Jack Johnson. He has stopped watching television because he prefers to play his Alvarez acoustic guitar while singing and writing songs at his house.

“It really just soothes me,” Shipley said.

Shipley recently started playing in a band at Fellowship of Christian Athletes worship meetings at Texas, and has written nearly a dozen songs and recorded a few of them. In July, it only took him a few hours to write his first song, “Moving On,” about being stuck in the city and longing to get away.

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Tonight At The Mary Lou: Art & Soul

Tonight (December 4) at 9:30 at the Mary Lou Williams Center for Black Culture at Duke University, will be "Art & Soul: A Family Affair"

Food, Music, Family, Fun!

Check out The Mary Lou's home site to learn more

At Duke Divinity: Simeon Law Photographs "God's People"

If you're a student at Duke Divinity School, you've already been stopped dead in your tracks more than once this semester outside the Cokesburry bookstore by the uncanny beauty and deep humanity of Simeon Law's photography exhibit "God's People" from his summer 2009 Field Education assignment at Church of the Savior in Washington, DC. But if you live in the Durham, NC area and have not yet seen Law's photos, you need to make time to do so ASAP!

Information regarding the exhibit are below (photo(s) from the exhibit to be added soon).

ABOUT THE EXHIBIT:

The photos were taken by Simeon Law during his Summer 2009 Field Education at Church of the Savior in Washington DC. Church of the Savior is an ecumenical church that is committed to both the inward and outward journeys of discipleship. These photos offer a glimpse of the Church of the Savior - a community that crosses the racial, cultural, and class boundaries of society.

ABOUT THE ARTIST:

Simeon Law is a third year M. Div student who is currently seeking ordination in the New York Annual Conference of the United Methodist Church. He has had a passion for photography since high school that has been cultivated over the years by books, internet art communities, and friends. Photography has helped open his eyes to the beauty that is always around us.

NOTE ON THE EXHIBIT FROM THE ARTIST:

During my time at Church of the Savior, I have seen glimpses of what transformed community looks like.

While at CoS I served several days a week at the Potter’s House, a cafe and bookstore ministry located in the Adams Morgan neighborhood. What sets the Potter’s House apart from the other businesses in the neighborhood is its open door policy. All comers, regardless of who they are or what they may have done, or are still doing, are welcome inside. This open door policy is an example of radical Christian hospitality in a time when it is common to be suspicious of the stranger. According to the world’s “wisdom” it is unwise to allow ex-offenders, those struggling with addiction, or the homeless to freely come and go as they please. Yet it is by foolishly welcoming everyone that the Potter’s House is a living witness of Jesus’ love and the wisdom of God.

It is my hope that these photos offer a glimpse of the kind of community that is formed by hospitality that transcends societal boundaries.

Drowning In A Culture Of Detachment: Up In The Air

A number of good-or-great reviews are coming in for George Clooney's Up In The Air. This review, by Entertainment Weekly's Owen Gleiberman, may be the most thoughtful one out there - especially in terms of laying bare where the film intersects with larger theological questions/concerns.

Excerpt Below // Full Article Here

Here are a few of the kinds of movies that I wish Hollywood made more often (like, you know, two or three times a year): a drama that connects to an audience because it taps, in a bold and immediate way, into the fears and anxieties of our time; a romantic comedy in which the dialogue pings with stylish wit and verve; a film that keeps surprising us because its characters keep surprising themselves. The beauty of Up in the Air is that it's all those things at once. Adapted from Walter Kirn's 2001 novel, it's a rare and sparkling gem of a movie, directed by Jason Reitman (Juno) with the polish of a master.

Ryan Bingham (George Clooney), the film's debonair hero, is a new kind of no-sweat corporate executioner. Each day, he walks into a different office somewhere in the United States — Wichita, Detroit, St. Louis — and gets a list of employees who are about to be downsized. One by one, he sits opposite each of them, bringing them the bad news that their bosses are too weaselly to deliver personally. The victims are mostly hardworking middle managers who've been let go because of the economy. None of them ''deserves'' to be fired, and so their reactions — terror, confusion, rage, despair — are notably intense, even as Ryan reassures them that opportunities await, that this is a beginning not an ending, and blah blah blah. (He's also a part-time motivational speaker, pepping up the very sorts of people he fires.)

The ''interviews'' that Ryan does with the folks he fires give you a chill. They're a vision of what's going on in the country today, and Up in the Air is the rare film that does justice to economic desperation by expressing it with an honest populist embrace. At the same time, it's a movie about how one man living inside the cocoon of an overly detached culture comes to see the error of his own detachment. Up in the Air is light and dark, hilarious and tragic, romantic and real. It's everything that Hollywood has forgotten how to do; we're blessed that Jason Reitman has remembered.

If Ryan had been played by anyone but George Clooney, we might not believe in (or like) him. But Clooney, with his effortless, cracklingly smart yet maybe slightly-too-polished charm, knows here, as he did in Michael Clayton, how to play a rogue who's in danger of losing his soul yet holds on to it anyway. In Up in the Air, Clooney gives his most fully felt performance to date as a smooth hedonist who comes to realize that he may be drowning. This is movie-star acting of the sort that no one else today can bring off.