Latest news with #USLibraryofCongress
Mint
2 days ago
- Entertainment
- Mint
The most expensive musical instrument in the world: This rare viola is now valued at $30 million
In May, Roberto Díaz performed at the US Library of Congress using a rare viola made by Antonio Stradivari in 1690. Called the Tuscan-Medici viola, it is now valued at $30 million, possibly the world's most expensive instrument. Díaz, who leads the Curtis Institute of Music in Philadelphia, has played the viola for nearly 15 years. He even recorded a Grammy-winning album with it. Many admire its fine grain and craftsmanship, calling it both simple and deeply beautiful. According to Diaz, the instrument produces an 'incredibly resonant but kind of compact sound'. 'It has a tremendous brilliance to it, and you can hear this. People call it the 'Cremonese spin' inside the sound, which is what makes the sound just kind of travel out into the hall,' the South China Morning Post quoted him as saying. Though he doesn't often think of its price, Diaz calls it 'surreal'. The instrument was recently gifted to the Library of Congress, making its stay permanent after being on loan for years. Díaz showed Curtis board members two violas without telling them which was which. When they heard both, they were surprised. Even without knowing much about music, they could tell the difference in sound. They didn't expect violas to differ so much. Violas are less popular than violins, with fewer concertos and a softer sound. The Tuscan-Medici was made for Grand Prince Ferdinando I de' Medici. It later belonged to Macy's heir Herbert Straus. Later, it was loaned to the Library of Congress by his widow in 1977. Collectors David and Amy Fulton made the gift of the Tuscan-Medici viola possible through a $20 million donation. The previous owners, the Baird family, sold it for less than its market value, giving up $10 million as an in-kind donation. Together, their contributions will help preserve the viola and allow it to be played publicly forever. Only around 10 of Stradivari's violas are known to exist. It makes them rarer and more valuable than his violins. Experts say the Tuscan-Medici is especially prized because it has been actively played and maintained. It will remain at the library, available for top musicians to perform with or take on tour. The most expensive string instrument ever sold at auction is the 'Lady Blunt' Stradivarius violin, bought for $15.9 million in 2011. Though a Stradivarius viola called the 'Macdonald' was offered for $45 million in 2014, no buyer came forward.
Korea Herald
3 days ago
- Entertainment
- Korea Herald
Director Yu Hyun-mok's long-lost 'Im Kkeok-jeong' unearthed in US
Film that went missing after 1961 release discovered at US Library of Congress Renowned South Korean film director Yu Hyun-mok's 1961 film "Im Kkeok-jeong" has finally surfaced again at the US Library of Congress after being lost for over six decades. The historical film was screened at the Cinematheque KOFA in Seoul on Thursday as part of a special retrospective celebrating the 100th anniversary of the filmmaker's birth. "The US Library of Congress had a film titled 'General Rim Kog Jung,' which I thought could be a North Korean film. But it turned out to be director Yu's long-lost film that had been missing for over 60 years when I saw his name in the credits," Lee Ji-young, who is in charge of collecting films abroad at Korean Film Archive, recalled the moment when she found the movie during Thursday's event. Released in December 1961, the film is based on a well-known novel of the same title written by Hong Myung-hee and stars some of the most famous actors at that time, including actors Shin Young-kyun, who played the lead role, and Um Aeng-ran. However, the original film copy of "Im Kkeok-jeong" went missing at some point and KOFA does not know when it went missing or why it was lost. To search for the movie, the KOFA, in 2021, began reviewing over 1,800 Korea-related films held by the Packard Campus for Audio-Visual Conservation — a top US archive that is part of the US Library of Congress that keeps and conserves old films and recordings. A year into the effort, KOFA discovered a 35mm film reel of the movie at the Packard Center. The film then underwent a year-long restoration process, with the physical repair and digital scanning done in the US, while post-production tasks like color correction and sound cleanup were completed in Korea.
Shafaq News
07-05-2025
- Politics
- Shafaq News
Iran condemns US plan to rename Persian Gulf: A hostile step
Shafaq News/ Iranian officials have strongly criticized reports that US President Donald Trump plans to officially adopt the term "Arabian Gulf" during his upcoming visit to Saudi Arabia, calling the move politically motivated and provocative. According to The Associated Press, two unnamed US officials said Trump is expected to announce next week that Washington will begin referring to the body of water as either the "Arabian Gulf" or the "Gulf of Arabia", replacing the widely recognized historical name "Persian Gulf." Reacting to the report, Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi rejected what he described as an attempt to alter a name long established in historical and international usage. 'The name Persian Gulf, like many geographical terms, is deeply rooted in human history,' Araghchi wrote on X, 'Iran has never objected to names such as the Sea of Oman, Indian Ocean, Arabian Sea, or Red Sea. These do not imply ownership, but reflect shared geographic heritage.' He added that any effort to change the name for political purposes would be perceived as a hostile gesture toward Iran and its people. The foreign minister also shared an image from the US Library of Congress depicting the waterway labeled as the Persian Gulf, stressing that the name remains internationally recognized and consistently used in historical cartography and by global institutions. Reza Nasri, a senior Iranian foreign policy expert, warned that a shift in terminology could spark widespread protests from Iranian communities abroad, particularly in the United States and at American diplomatic missions worldwide. 'Few issues bring together Iranians across political divides like any attempt to rename the Persian Gulf,' Nasri said. The naming dispute has resurfaced periodically over the past few decades. The term Persian Gulf has been documented in historical records since at least the 16th century and remains the standard designation in United Nations documents and international treaties. However, in recent years, some Arab Gulf states have increasingly used the term "Arabian Gulf" in their domestic communications. The US military has also used that terminology in official statements, a practice that has previously drawn criticism from Tehran. This would not be the first time President Trump has drawn controversy over the issue. In 2017, during his first term, similar language prompted then-Iranian President Hassan Rouhani to publicly suggest that Trump needed to 'study geography.' The name Persian Gulf, like many geographical designations, is deeply rooted in human history. Iran has never objected to the use of names such as the Sea of Oman, Indian Ocean, Arabian Sea, or Red Sea. The use of these names does not imply ownership by any particular nation, but… — Seyed Abbas Araghchi (@araghchi) May 7, 2025
Euronews
10-04-2025
- Entertainment
- Euronews
Patti Smith announces a new memoir 'Bread of Angels'
ADVERTISEMENT The legendary Patti Smith has shared details of her new memoir, 'Bread of Angels', which will be published on 4 November. Smith, 78, made the announcement on Instagram alongside an image of the poet-writer-musician with her parents as a young adult, writing: 'This is with my mother and father who inspired much of my next book Bread of Angels. The memoir, a bright and dark dance of life, will be published on November 4th, by Random House.' 'Bread of Angels' is Smith's third memoir after the wonderful 'Just Kids' in 2010 and the mesmerizing 'M Train' in 2015. In 'Just Kids,' winner of the 2010 National Book Award, Smith looked back on her early years in New York City and her romance and friendship with photographer Robert Mapplethorpe. Meanwhile, 'M Train' was a chronicle of Smith's later years following the huge success of her album 'Horses' in 1975 and the 40 years that came after which were tragically punctuated by the losses of her husband Fred 'Sonic' Smith, her brother Todd Smith, and Mapplethorpe - who all died within the space of a few weeks in 1994. Voir cette publication sur Instagram Une publication partagée par This is Patti Smith (@thisispattismith) The synopsis for 'Bread of Angels' reads: 'The most intimate of Smith's memoirs, Bread of Angels takes us through her teenage years when the first glimmers of art and romance take hold. Arthur Rimbaud and Bob Dylan emerge as creative heroes and role models as Smith starts to write poetry, then lyrics, merging both into the iconic recordings and songs such as Horses and Easter, 'Dancing Barefoot' and 'Because the Night'.' It continues: 'As Smith suffers profound losses, grief and gratitude are braided through years of caring for her children, rebuilding her life, and, finally, writing again - the one constant on a path driven by artistic freedom and the power of the imagination to transform the mundane into the beautiful, the commonplace into the magical, and pain into hope. In the final pages, we meet Patti Smith on the road again, the vagabond who travels to commune with herself, who lives to write and writes to live.' The book's release date is deeply personal, coinciding with Mapplethorpe's birthday and the anniversary of Fred Smith's death. Later this year, Smith will spend time on the road celebrating the 50th anniversary of her seminal debut album, 'Horses' - which features hits like 'Gloria' and 'Redondo Beach'. 'Horses' has appeared in numerous lists of the greatest albums of all time and was selected by the US Library of Congress for preservation into the National Recording Registry in 2009. Smith collapsed on stage in Brazil in January and later wrote on Instagram that she suffered 'some post migraine dizziness.' The incident has not stopped her from planning her upcoming tour in Europe, which starts on 1 July in Germany and will take her to Italy, Ireland, UK, Belgium, Norway and France, where she'll round off the EU leg of her tour on 21 October at L'Olympia in Paris.
The Independent
25-03-2025
- Entertainment
- The Independent
Patti Smith's Horses at 50: How a reluctant musician made a punk-rock classic
Patti Smith never planned to front a rock band. In 1971, when the music producer and manager Sandy Pearlman approached her about making music, she laughed and told him she had a perfectly good job in a bookstore. Pearlman had seen her performing her poems at St Mark's Church in New York's Bowery against a backdrop of feedback courtesy of guitarist Lenny Kaye. (Also in the audience that night: Lou Reed, Andy Warhol, Todd Rundgren, Sam Shepard and Smith's ex-boyfriend, the photographer Robert Mapplethorpe.) In Smith, Pearlman saw a rock star in the making, but it took four more years for Smith to warm to the idea. Finally, in 1975, her first LP, Horses, was born. This November, Horses will be 50, an anniversary that is being honoured first with a tribute concert this month at New York's Carnegie Hall featuring Michael Stipe, Kim Gordon, Karen O and more, and in the autumn by Smith herself in a string of concerts where she will perform the album in its entirety. Horses – which is included in the National Recording Registry in the US Library of Congress for being a record that's considered 'culturally, historically or aesthetically significant' – was not only one of the most explosive debuts of the 1970s: it lit the touchpaper for the New York punk rock scene. It arrived five months before the Ramones' self-titled debut, and two years ahead of Richard Hell's Blank Generation, Sex Pistols' Never Mind the Bollocks, Here's the Sex Pistols and Television's Marquee Moon. In her 2019 book Revenge of the She-Punks, the music journalist Vivien Goldman describes Smith as 'a new breed of autonomous, self-defined and uninhibited female rock star'. At the time, Smith didn't give much thought to being a woman in a male-dominated scene – at least, not until men started shouting 'Get back to the kitchen' at her during gigs. In the sleeve notes to Horses, she wrote of being 'beyond gender', later explaining that as an artist 'I can take any position, any voice, that I want'. Nowadays she is often called the godmother of punk, or punk's poet laureate, yet it is men who still dominate accounts of the scene. But it would be wrong to attribute that entirely to misogyny. Smith may have provided a template for a new generation of musicians, but musically she existed in a category of her own; you might call it 'punk adjacent'. Horses had a furious passion, and cared little for musical proficiency, but it didn't sound like the work of a snotty upstart reflexively railing against authority. Instead, it bridged the gap between punk rock and poetry, with vocals that shifted between singing and spoken word. Smith was loud in her appreciation of writers and poets such as Baudelaire, Rimbaud, Blake, Genet, Plath and her beat-writer friends William Burroughs and Allen Ginsberg. As she noted in her 2010 memoir Just Kids, when it came to making music, poetry was her 'guiding principle'. Horses was, for her, 'three-chord rock merged with the power of word'. Prior to releasing the album, Smith had taken her first steps as a recording artist with a cover of Jimi Hendrix's 'Hey Joe' in 1974, about a man on the run after killing his wife, but with the murderous protagonist replaced by the kidnapped heiress Patty Hearst. It was decent, but it was the B-side that gave a glimpse of what was to come. 'Piss Factory', a raw, incantatory track that started out as a poem, and that recalled her time working in a New Jersey factory aged 16, was Smith's cri de coeur against production-line drudgery. She had been mercilessly bullied by her colleagues, who were annoyed by her insistence on carrying a copy of Rimbaud's Illuminations in her back pocket and instructed her to leave it at home. When she refused, they dunked her head in a toilet bowl of urine to teach her a lesson. Smith's lyrics on Horses would prove similarly visceral, never more so than in the opener 'Gloria (In Excelsis Deo)', a reworking of a Them B-side that wove in excerpts from Smith's poem 'Oath' and began with the electrifying refrain: 'Jesus died for somebody's sins, but not mine'. More than just a rejection of religion, it was a perfect distillation of Smith's spirit: hypnotic, primal, uncompromising. Elsewhere on the album, there are tales of female suicide (in the reggae-inflected 'Redondo Beach', wrongly interpreted as a same-sex love song at the time), alien visitations ('Birdland') and a dream in which Jim Morrison of The Doors is bound like Prometheus on a marble slab, only to break free ('Break It Up'). In 'Free Money', the most straightforwardly propulsive rock song on the album, she dreams about winning the lottery, climbing out of poverty and 'buy[ing] you a jet plane, baby'. Horses was recorded at Electric Lady Studios, near Smith's New York apartment. Among the musicians were Kaye, Television's Tom Verlaine, Allen Lanier, Smith's then boyfriend from Blue Öyster Cult, drummer Jay Dee Daugherty, and Richard Sohl on keyboards. Together, they fashioned a spiky garage-rock sound partly honed during live performances at the soon-to-be punk mecca CBGB, and that would become the signature sound of the late 1970s scene. John Cale of the Velvet Underground, the producer, encouraged improvisation in the studio and avoided smoothing the band's rough edges. Even so, he and Smith clashed repeatedly during the five-week recording, with Smith saying it was 'like [Rimbaud's] A Season in Hell' for them both. Cale later recalled the experience of working with her as 'confrontational, and a lot like an immutable force meeting an immovable object'. Smith's transgressive spirit also inhabited the cover image, which reinforced her 'beyond gender' approach. Taken by Mapplethorpe and shot in black and white at a penthouse apartment owned by the art curator Sam Wagstaff, it showed an androgynous-looking Smith in white shirt and slacks, a jacket slung insouciantly over her shoulder as if she were the sixth member of the rat pack. When Smith's label, Arista, suggested the hair on Smith's upper lip be airbrushed out, they might as well have asked her to don heels and a sparkly dress. She instructed them to leave it be. When Horses came out on 10 November (the death date of her beloved Rimbaud), Smith had already published several poetry collections and was making money writing for music magazines including Creem and Rolling Stone. In her early years in New York with Mapplethorpe, the pair had lived in squalor and often couldn't afford to eat, but by now she was comparatively solvent. With her album finished, she imagined she would keep on writing and perhaps go back to working in the bookstore. As she told an interviewer in 2007, rock'n'roll was something she was 'just gonna do for a little while and then get back to work'. What she didn't bet on was the album's rapturous reception, which led to requests for her to perform all over the world and to record more music (one of the few dissenting voices was that of Greil Marcus, who snippily declared: 'If you're going to mess around with the kind of stuff Buñuel, Dali and Rimbaud were putting out, you have to come up with a lot more than an homage'). In the five years after Horses was released, Smith would make three more albums including 1978's Easter, her most commercially successful LP. Easter included the single 'Because the Night', an air-punching ode to love and hedonism that was co-written with Bruce Springsteen. It remains Smith's biggest hit. Fans accused her of selling out, but she was unrepentant. She told New York Magazine: 'I liked hearing myself on the radio. To me, those people didn't understand punk at all. Punk-rock is just another word for freedom.' To me, those people didn't understand punk at all. Punk-rock is just another word for freedom Patti Smith Smith was still on a commercial high when, in the late 1970s, she retreated from the limelight. By this time, she had met her husband, Fred 'Sonic' Smith of the Detroit band MC5, and was pregnant with their first child. For the next 15 years, she would concentrate on raising their two children; aside from 1988's Dream of Life, made with her spouse, there would be no new music. But then, in 1989, her former soulmate Mapplethorpe died from an Aids-related illness at 42. Five years later, her husband and her brother both died within a month of each other; both were in their forties. As the sole breadwinner, Smith had no choice but to go back to work. Now 78, Smith has outlived most of her New York contemporaries, bar Kaye, who still performs with her, and Cale, with whom she has long made up since those fraught Horses sessions. Her work transcends not just genres but mediums too. The last 15 years have seen her triumph as a memoirist: the award-winning Just Kids, a chronicle of her relationship with Mapplethorpe, is a bona fide masterpiece, a poetic account of youthful love, and a deliciously grimy portrait of the late 20th-century New York scene where music, art and literature collided and culture was remade. Her two subsequent memoirs, 2015's M Train and 2019's Year of the Monkey, provide portraits of the latter-day Smith: always writing, photographing, performing, tending to her cats and paying loving tribute to the artists, dead and alive, who paved the way. Not for nothing does she have the rare distinction of having been awarded an Ordre des Artes et des Lettres by France's ministry of culture for her poetry and, for her musical achievements, a place in America's Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. The influence of Smith on successive generations cannot be overstated: The Clash, Sonic Youth, Madonna, Courtney Love, Michael Stipe, PJ Harvey, Florence Welch, The Raincoats, Bikini Kill and The Waterboys' Mike Scott have all talked of their debt to her. Stipe said that when he heard Horses, it 'tore my limbs off and put them back in a whole new order'. Go to her concerts now, and you'll see old punks standing in rapturous communion alongside teenage and twentysomething fans all celebrating Smith: an accidental icon and rock's most remarkable renaissance woman. 'People Have the Power: A Celebration of Patti Smith' is at New York's Carnegie Hall on 26 March. Smith performs 'Horses' in full at the London Palladium on 12 and 13 October. Tickets here.
