It is no exaggeration to call 2013 the “Era of Lera” in contemporary art. Lera Auerbach, the New Century Chamber Orchestra’s featured composer this week, is also a virtuoso pianist, poet, novelist (in English, Russian and German) and painter; her operas and ballets are being produced internationally; and she is an active member of the Young Global Leaders at the World Economic Forum. Read More

Any doubt that the Billboard Music Awards are anything other than a gigantic infomercial for major label acts was crushed Sunday night after Justin Bieber was presented with the Milestone Music Award for “musical ingenuity and innovation.” J-Bib got so many boos from the audience that he spent most of his acceptance speech explaining why he actually deserved it. “I am an artist and I should be taken seriously,” he said. Read More

Kiss is tired of being dissed by the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame … sort of. “I don’t need the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame,” band frontman Paul Stanley said. But he admits that consistently being overlooked by the music elite kind of sucks. “It’s absurd for anybody to look around and hear the acts and artists who cite us as an inspiration, and then tell me we are not in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame,” he told The Huffington Post. Read More

In her ominously titled feminist revenge comedy, “You’re Going to Bleed,” now world-premiering as part of Exit Theatre’s DIVAFest, playwright Melissa Fall co-opts some characters and tropes from theatrical literature. For example, a marginally employed actor, John (as in Proctor, from Arthur Miller’s “The Crucible”), is seduced by a teenager named Abigail (“The Crucible” again). Here, John is Abigail’s audition-monologue coach. She’s preparing an erotic boy-and-horse scene from “Equus,” and that drama too figures into Fall’s plot in weird and abstract ways. Read More