FRIDAY

Sievert/Reteris/Kashioboy/Pixyjunket/Mysterious H/Peopleodian (Hailey’s): Chiptune themed show, so if you’re one of those people that hates that “Nintendo music,” avoid this at all costs. Chiptune and 8-bit inspired music isn’t nearly as prevalent as it was a few years ago, so you have less to complain about.

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Via Glenn Hunter on Frontburner:

Citing “health concerns,” Bill Lively says he’s stepping down as president and CEO of the Dallas Symphony Orchestra. The DSO made the bombshell announcement today, just 29 days after the fund-raising maestro took over the position part-time. The announcement quoted Lively, 67, as saying that on the advice of his physician, he would have to “prematurely” resign and “devote significant time this summer to rest and recuperation.”

In an interview this morning, Lively said that in recent weeks he’d lost 10 pounds and begun having headaches and became alarmed, mindful that two of his brothers had experienced strokes. His doctor suggested that working long hours for many years had led to “cumulative fatigue and stress,” Lively said, and that, in order to get better, he needed to recuperate. He’ll do that this summer at a second home in Estes Park, Colo., Lively said, before returning to Dallas in the fall and “considering another assignment.”

DSO Board Chair Ron Gafford said the board would “start the process of identifying interim leadership” immediately. Lively had been scheduled to wrap up his commitment with the North Texas Super Bowl Host Committee late next month, and then to start full-time with the DSO in June.

Because of his fund-raising prowess with Super Bowl XLV and in previous positions, Lively had been widely viewed as a “savior” for the symphony, which has been plagued by budget deficits in recent years. At a D CEO event just last week, he hinted at a methodical plan for revamping the organization significantly. Lively said this morning that the DSO is in good shape overall, except for one thing: “Their only weakness is that they’ve been leaderless for too long.” Now, it appears, they’ll be leaderless for awhile longer.

Continuing with our look back at the 24 Hour Video Race‘s first decade, here is the fifth best video as chosen by the race’s organizers: Scotty Don’t's “Cover Story” (2006). And after the jump there’s an interview with co-videomaker Deva George.

To view all the videos in the countdown, go here.

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The 2011 Texas Biennial kicked-off in Austin, Houston, and San Antonio (the three venue-hosting cities) on April 9, but this weekend the state-wide art exhibition comes to Dallas with a series of shows opening at the biennial’s participating organizations.

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That’s what University of North Carlina professor and urban planner Thomas Campanella argues in this long, but fascinating overview of what has happned to urban planning in the wake of Jacobs’ influence. The problem, Campagnella writes, is that planners no longer know what their role is in a city, and they lack the power to effect real change. As a result, the “Tools and processes introduced to ensure popular participation ended up reducing the planner’s role to that of umpire or schoolyard monitor. Instead of setting the terms of debate or charting a course of action, planners now seemed content to be facilitators — “mere absorbers of public opinion,” as Alex Krieger put it, “waiting for consensus to build.”

This brings us to the first of the three legacies of the Jacobsian turn: It diminished the disciplinary identity of planning. . . .

The second legacy of the Jacobsian revolution is related to the first: Privileging the grassroots over plannerly authority and expertise meant a loss of professional agency. . . .

The third legacy of the Jacobsian turn is perhaps most troubling of all: the seeming paucity among American planners today of the speculative courage and vision that once distinguished this profession.

Image: “Construction Potentials: Postwar Prospects and Problems, a Basis for Action,” Architectural Record, 1943; prepared by the F.W. Dodge Corporation Committee on Postwar Construction Markets. [Drawing by Julian Archer]

The Dallas Opera has announced a new series of public conversations hosted in partnership with the Museum of Nature and Science which will feature contemporary music composers, beginning on May 24 with Tod Machover. Machover, a professor of music and media at MIT, will talk about is critically acclaimed opera Death and the Powers. Here’s the full release.

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The Dallas Museum of Art has annoucnced its new BooksmART Fest, a daylong festival at the museum that will feature authors and illustrators of children’s literature. Included on the list of participates are a few Caldecott winners as well as some other decorated masters of the children’s story. Here’s the line, and after the jump, full info:

• Rick Riordan is the number one New York Times bestselling author of the Percy Jackson and the Olympians series. While at the BooksmART Festival, he will discuss his latest book in The Kane Chronicles series, in which he turns his attention to Egyptian mythology.
• Norton Juster is the author of the beloved children’s classic The Phantom Tollbooth, which is celebrating its fiftieth anniversary this year.
• Laurie Halse Anderson is a two-time National Book Award finalist for her books Speak and Chains. Anderson will discuss Forge, the recently released historical fiction book and follow-up story to Chains.
• David Wiesner is a three-time winner of the Caldecott Medal, making him only the second person in the award’s history to have won this honor three times. He has also received two Caldecott Honors during his career as an author and illustrator. He will share insight about his popular picture book Art & Max.
• Jerry Pinkney has received a Caldecott Medal, Five Caldecott Honors, and Five Coretta Scott King Awards, has illustrated over 100 titles, and was recently elected to the Society of Illustrators Hall of Fame. He will discuss the body of his work, including the Caldecott Medal winner The Lion and the Mouse.

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Denton’s Jessica Minshew plays under the moniker Dreamed, a title that is dangerously literal considering the fog and haze that envelops the eight tracks on the artist’s SoundCloud page. The atmospheric recording style employed by Minshew on this solo song-cycle of strikingly beautiful music is only one of her numerous strengths. Indeed the work presented here is so varyingly captivating that it might lead you to the same arrogant conclusion that strikes many an attentive local music observer: “Well, why haven’t I heard of this before?”

After all, there is the oft-referred to drought in new and worthwhile North Texas musical activity lately, and I’ve personally found it hard to find singer-songwriters in particular that are worth championing.

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Here are this weekend’s new releases — reviews in our movies section.

Scottish-born guest conductor Douglas Boyd managed to pull off a mostly-Richard Strauss concert with the Dallas Symphony Thursday night at Meyerson Symphony Center, while avoiding the Strauss war horses all the way up till about 9:35 p.m.

The evening began with the strikingly delicate opening notes of the Entr’acte from the opera Intermezzo. Conductor Douglas masterfully balanced the intermingled elements of late romantic lyricism, sturdy contrapuntal technique, and Straussian orchestration for a winning performance and appealing curtain-raiser.