Kennedy Center thoughts from Grammy-winning librettist Mark Campbell
(Santa Fe, NM) - I met librettist Mark Campbell in 2015, while he and composer Mason Bates were finalizing their Grammy-winning opera The (R)evolution of Steve Jobs. I also had the honor of being at its Santa Fe Opera world premiere in 2017. During the pandemic, he even wrote a piece for OI. But with the arrival of a new regime in Washington, and the hostile takeover of the Kennedy Center by Trump, a political lapdog, and a new board of loyalist supporters, I wanted to know how Mark felt about Washington National Opera’s production of Jobs, which closed two weeks ago…
Co-branding fascism
(Santa Fe, NM) - When a cozy and intimate inauguration happens in the Capitol rotunda, it will be the most co-branded in history. Elon, Mark, Sam, Sundar, and Jeff will be there. So will the TikTok CEO and Apple’s Tim Cook. All made millions in donations to Trump’s inauguration fund, interesting now that outdoor activities are safely free of the unwashed masses (slush fund 2.0)! No more crowd sizes to potentially offend Monsieur, the Capitol rotunda his temporary country club / television studio; the cumulative in-rotunda wealth will be immense, each CEO representing their brand front and center for a global broadcast audience. But the Broligarchy It Girls’ dance with fascism is already ugly…