Top Picks: The book 'Kehinde Wiley: An Economy of Grace,' pianist Leon Fleisher's 'All the Things You Are,' and more

GoodShop.com lets you save money shopping and donate to the organization of your choice, Agnes Obel's new chamber pop album 'Aventine' will hopefully enlarge her circle of fans, and more top picks.

|
The History Channel
|
PBS
|
Pias Entertainment Group

Do it left-handed

Pianist Leon Fleisher returns with his newest recording, All the Things You Are, featuring a collection of classical piano arrangements for the left hand. The title track, by Jerome Kern  and arranged by Stephen Prutsman, sounds lovely and full – evidence that Fleisher continues to succeed in putting music first and the piano second.

Melancholy Dane

It’s called chamber pop – a beautiful mashup of classical and modern. One of Europe’s hottest rising stars, Agnes Obel, is a leading practitioner of the genre, and there is hope that her new album, Aventine, will enlarge her circle of fans. The melancholy Dane sings her impressionistic lyrics like a classically trained Joni Mitchell, often accompanied by a lone cello or the tinkling of piano keys, then suddenly joined by the hair-raising swell of strings. Sadness never sounded so good.

Shop for a cause

GoodShop.com has donated more than $11 million to charity and saved shoppers money. The coupon site collects deals for Nordstrom, Macy’s, Best Buy, and dozens of other retailers. Each time you take advantage of these deals, a portion of the money goes to the organization of your choice. The GoodShop app, now available on iPhone and iPad, makes it easy to browse sales and manage your donations. 

Master of escape

History miniseries Houdini, based on the book “Houdini: A Mind in Chains,” by Bernard C. Meyer, stars Adrien Brody as the illusionist. In “Houdini,” the escape artist perfects and explains his daring feats. Other well-known figures of his time, such as Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, make appearances, too. The miniseries contains adult content. It airs Sept. 1 and 2 at 9 p.m.

Portraits go epic

Artist Kehinde Wiley is renowned for his large-scale classical portraits of African-American men. Instead of using models, Wiley paints re-imaginings of 17th- and 18th-century paintings using ordinary young men he finds going about their day-to-day business. Kehinde Wiley: An Economy of Grace follows the artist as he undertakes a new challenge: creating epic paintings featuring African-American women from New York City. It airs on PBS Sept. 5 at 9 p.m. 

You've read  of  free articles. Subscribe to continue.
Real news can be honest, hopeful, credible, constructive.
What is the Monitor difference? Tackling the tough headlines – with humanity. Listening to sources – with respect. Seeing the story that others are missing by reporting what so often gets overlooked: the values that connect us. That’s Monitor reporting – news that changes how you see the world.

Dear Reader,

About a year ago, I happened upon this statement about the Monitor in the Harvard Business Review – under the charming heading of “do things that don’t interest you”:

“Many things that end up” being meaningful, writes social scientist Joseph Grenny, “have come from conference workshops, articles, or online videos that began as a chore and ended with an insight. My work in Kenya, for example, was heavily influenced by a Christian Science Monitor article I had forced myself to read 10 years earlier. Sometimes, we call things ‘boring’ simply because they lie outside the box we are currently in.”

If you were to come up with a punchline to a joke about the Monitor, that would probably be it. We’re seen as being global, fair, insightful, and perhaps a bit too earnest. We’re the bran muffin of journalism.

But you know what? We change lives. And I’m going to argue that we change lives precisely because we force open that too-small box that most human beings think they live in.

The Monitor is a peculiar little publication that’s hard for the world to figure out. We’re run by a church, but we’re not only for church members and we’re not about converting people. We’re known as being fair even as the world becomes as polarized as at any time since the newspaper’s founding in 1908.

We have a mission beyond circulation, we want to bridge divides. We’re about kicking down the door of thought everywhere and saying, “You are bigger and more capable than you realize. And we can prove it.”

If you’re looking for bran muffin journalism, you can subscribe to the Monitor for $15. You’ll get the Monitor Weekly magazine, the Monitor Daily email, and unlimited access to CSMonitor.com.

QR Code to Top Picks: The book 'Kehinde Wiley: An Economy of Grace,' pianist Leon Fleisher's 'All the Things You Are,' and more
Read this article in
https://www.csmonitor.com/The-Culture/Arts/2014/0829/Top-Picks-The-book-Kehinde-Wiley-An-Economy-of-Grace-pianist-Leon-Fleisher-s-All-the-Things-You-Are-and-more
QR Code to Subscription page
Start your subscription today
https://www.csmonitor.com/subscribe