In Density We Trust For some time, many experts have been saying that high-density cities are no longer essential for business success. The internet has made it unnecessary for workers and companies to always be in close proximity. But "creative activities — whether economic, cultural or political — thrive on density. In a global economy, with uncertain markets and changing conditions, the most advanced and speculative sectors need concentrations of resources — talent, management, technological infrastructure and buildings. They need dense environments where information does not simply circulate but gets produced. The geography of the global economy consists of both world-spanning networks and these concentrations of resources, as provided by about 40 global cities." The New York Times 01/25/03
A Radical Proposal - Let's Cut Copyright Terms Back Long copyrights are choking creativity, and make no sense as incentives to further creativity. "The flood of free content on the internet has shown that most creators do not need incentives that stretch across generations. To reward those who can attract a paying audience, and the firms that support them, much shorter copyrights would be enough. The 14-year term of the original 18th-century British and American copyright laws, renewable once, might be a good place to start." The Economist 01/23/03
Can A Machine Be Artistic? With computers getting smart enough to beat even the best chess players, some are asking about the "artistic" abilities of machines. If a machine, by the use of sheer calculation, creates something artistic, is the machine artistic? Can machines practice art? "Is the system intelligent? It is because it produces intelligent behavior. If it does something artistic, then it is artistic. It does not matter how it did it." The New York Times 01/25/03
Connecting The Dots - The Knowing Network Newtork theory is hot. "As an intellectual approach, network theory is the latest symptom of a fundamental shift in scientific thinking, away from a focus on individual components — particles and subparticles — and toward a novel conception of the group. 'In biology, we've had great success stories — the human genome, the mouse genome. But what is not talked about is that we have the pieces but don't have a clue as to how the system works. Increasingly, we think the answer is in networks'." The New York Times 01/25/03
Ideas That Exceed Our Abilities "Sometime in the next 20 or 30 years, we're going to have, because of Moore's law, machines that will have the computational power and memory of humans." Even now, many of today's new engineering achievements are so complex, they can't really be designed by people - they're invented by sophisticated computers that exceed our own abilities. "But we don't know how to program them yet to interact naturally with people. So it's all a software problem." Discover 02/03
Everybody's Gay! (Everybody Famous, That Is) A new film claims Hitler was gay, based on evidence sketchy enough that historians (even gay ones) are laughing it off. A yet-to-be-released book claims that Abe Lincoln was gay, and the book's author insists that he has evidence that George Washington, General Custer, and either Lewis or Clark (he forgets which) all were, as well. All of which begs the question: isn't this 2003? Haven't we gotten past the breathless whispering over men sleeping with men that dominated the gossip sheets of the 1980s? Or is there still something so exotic about homosexuality that even the suspicion of it in a historical figure warrants an entire cottage industry? The Globe & Mail (Toronto) 01/23/03
Battle For The Mind "American higher education has long had a dynamic tension between intellectualism - represented by the humanities and elite colleges - and more 'practical' education offered up by land-grant universities, observers say. But while the US university system is widely hailed for its quality, some fear the pendulum may be swinging toward an overall anti- intellectual approach." Christian Science Monitor 01/21/03
The Solo Cartoonist Created in the traditional way, a cartoon takes teams of artists and years of work. Produced at a digital animation studio like Pixar, it takes banks of advanced computers and $100 million give-or-take for a full-length feature. Andy Murdock is creating his cartoon feature on home computer equipment, doing all the animation himself. "Even five years ago, it would have been hard to imagine an animator, working alone in his studio, making a 3-D feature. But fast computers and software like 3D Studio Max, Maya and SoftImage are making high-quality animation more of a do-it-yourself process." And Murdock is showing his work-in-progress at this year's Sundance Online Film Festival. Take a look. Sundance Online Film Festival [Windows Media Player required] 01/03
When Van Gogh Met Gauguin An interactive website put up by the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam traces the interactions between Van Gogh and Gauguin. Attaching colors to sounds, allowing the viewer to change the color palette of the website, and linking pictures to paintings, the site explores the artists' lives and work. Van Gogh Museum [Flash Required] 01/03
What Place Animals In The World? "Along with other ecologically concerned citizens, scholars are trying to articulate the place that animals occupy in our world - or, less anthropocentrically, how human and nonhuman animals share this world. This work involves deconstructing the divisions and prejudices that separate people from animals, going all the way back to the Great Chain of Being in Aristotle's scala naturae and the proclamation of human mastery over animals in Genesis. Much of the most exciting current research comes out of the humanities and social sciences rather than the natural sciences." Chronicle Of Higher Education 01/20/03
Arts Are More Than "Targets," "Benchmarks" and "Outcomes" Where is Scotland's vision for the arts that is creative? As far as the government goes, "the dead hand of Treasury control has fallen on the arts, subjecting it to the same criteria that it applies to every other branch of public spending. A presumption has grown up that culture can answer to 'targets' and 'benchmarks' in the same way as hospitals and schools, that unless creativity can be measured against 'outcomes' and 'deliveries' then it does not deserve to be funded." Scotland On Sunday 01/26/03
Juilliard At 100 Juilliard is the top arts school in America. A new documentary looks at the school as it turns 100. "What is perhaps most interesting about the documentary is the unflinching way it confronts the darker side of this famous place. Not that it isn't ultimately celebratory, and rightly so. One comes away almost awed by the devotion and intensity with which the teachers, and the self-motivated students themselves, go about the business of making the best better, a process that goes on every day in the fortress-like building on the corner of Broadway and 65th Street. One has to wonder if an atmosphere like this, despite all the superb teachers and students and alumni, doesn't breed a kind of hard-edged competitiveness that fails to serve all music or dance or theater equally well." The New York Times 01/26/03
Warhol Foundation Sends A Message - Now More Than Ever While many foundations are cutting back arts grants, the Warhol Foundation has increased the amount it is giving away this year by 20 percent. "It isn't that the foundation is such a smart investor, although putting lots of money into bonds has helped. And it isn't just that the foundation continues to profit from sales of Warhol's work. "We wanted to send a message. Even in bad times, a lot of people have a lot of money. Sometimes they can do more, spending some of that money in bad times than in more plentiful times." Los Angeles Times 01/26/03
Crossover - Getting Artists To Think About Science How do you get people to think creatively about science? The Alfred P. Sloan Foundation believes the arts can help. "Sloan's Public Understanding of Science and Technology program spends $8 million to $10 million a year funding a slew of projects in film, theater, public television, books, radio, and new media. "We need people going back and forth between the [science and lay worlds]. And I thought the best way is through media such as film, TV, and theater. It's very powerful." Boston Globe 01/26/03
Copywrongs - Locking Up Happy Birthday It's a myth that copyrights are owned by creative artists. Big companies own them. Take "the ubiquitous 'Happy Birthday,' whose tune was composed by Mildred Hill, a kindergarten teacher in Louisville, in 1893, was copyrighted in 1934 by her sister Jessica Hill, after the ditty with new lyrics attached appeared in the Broadway musical The Bank Wagon and had been used by Western Union for its singing telegram. Rights to the song changed hands several times and today they are owned by Summy-Birchard Music, which in turn is owned by AOL Time Warner, for which it earns $2 million a year in royalties for public usage. (Don't worry about singing it around your dining table; AOL Time Warner has not figured out how to collect on that yet.)" Toronto Star 01/25/03
Medical Journal Argues Arts Are Good Medicine An editorial in the British Medical Journal argues that "the government should divert 0.5 per cent of its £50 billion health care budget into the arts, equivalent to an additional £250 million for the sector. Where health professionals are trained, they should be surrounded by art. They should regard it as one of their duties in later life to see that hospitals, for the benefit of patients, their relatives, visitors and staff, contain art." The Scotsman 01/24/03
London To Cut Arts Funding In Favor Of Sport London theatres are protesting the London arts councils' decision to drastically cut arts funding and give the money to sports. "The ALG, which gives £27 million a year to a wide range of community groups and social service providers, said the changes were necessary if it was 'to properly meet the needs of Londoners'." Arts groups say the cuts will force some groups to close. The Guardian (UK) 01/24/03
The Kennedy Center's New Toll Plaza Jack Shafer thinks the proposed new $400 million plaza for the Kennedy Center looks like little more than...a New Jersey-style toll plaza. Why is it being built? "Isn't the design a tad reminiscent of something out of Albert Speer? It shares the Kennedy Center's coldness and its monumental bombast." Slate 01/23/03
Dreaming Of A New Lincoln Center New York's Lincoln Center is planning a renovation/expansion. What should the new campus achieve? "The goal is still to expose the American citizen to art and music, but the emphasis has changed. Arts institutions no longer see themselves as beneficent agents of acculturation and middle-class homogenization. Instead, they are scrambling to adapt to a crowded entertainment market and recast themselves as democratic, youthful, relevant and diverse. As Lincoln Center rebuilds, its planners are searching for ways to open it up, make it more visible, transparent and permeable." Newsday 01/23/03
Kennedy Center Makes Plans Washington's Kennedy Center has approved a $650 million plan for a "four-block plaza, to be built over existing roadways and flanked by the new glass-and-steel buildings, one housing rehearsal and office space and the other for an educational center and interactive exhibits on the performing arts. 'It puts us in reality where we were supposed to be all along, as a monument in Washington'." The New York Times 01/23/03
- And About Time, Too! Benjamin Forgey is wondering what exactly took the Kennedy Center so long to unveil the new plan to remake its architecturally embarrassing digs. But better late than never: "From opening day 31 years ago right up to the present, the big box on the Potomac has remained a huge urban faux pas -- an outpost of culture separated from the city by a deep moat filled with speeding cars. The plan unveiled yesterday, conceived by architect Rafael Viñoly, does a lot to correct the mistakes." Washington Post 01/23/03
An Ode To The Brooklyn Academy "In New York, there is nothing to match the Brooklyn Academy of Music, affectionately known by its acronym BAM. Its three tiers hold around 2,000, but the embracing curve of its interior makes it seem intimate. What I love most about BAM is the sense that, like Topsy, it just growed. It doesn't seem engineered. So many 'arts centres' - the Barbican and the Lowry not least - are really arts ghettos, plonked down and squashed into the middle of nowhere to suit the exigencies of the town planner." The Telegraph (UK) 01/22/03
Debating Censorship In Singapore Censorship is common in Singapore. But a new set of guidelines concerning censorship are about to come out. "Surveys suggest that a majority of Singaporeans are basically conservative and still want the Government to be responsible for deciding what their children should see and hear. But as our people become more cosmopolitan, there is also a group which argues that Singaporeans should decide for themselves what they want to see, read and hear and what they want their children to read, see and hear." The Straits-Times (Singapore) 01/21/03
Slash And Burn In Massachusetts The state of Massachusetts made the biggest cuts in arts funding of all states in 2002 - slashing its budgest 62 percent. Now arts leaders are surveying the damage - reduced and discontinued programs, a few closings, and more difficulty raising money in the private sector...Arts groups just hope that this year's budget won't be cut even more. Boston Herald 01/21/03
America's Oldest Ballet Company Turns 70 "San Francisco Ballet this year marks its 70th anniversary, which makes it this country's oldest professional ballet company. The great tradition of American ballet today boasts not only the American Ballet Theatre and New York City Ballet, but also vital and unique major companies from Boston to Miami, from Houston to Seattle. San Francisco Ballet paved the way, and, 70 years on, it is still a major force in American culture." San Francisco Chronicle 01/26/03
The Daily Grind San Francisco Ballet gets ready to open its season. "There's a deceptively languid look to this daily class, a ritual that summons the dancers from bed five or six mornings a week. But in these easy, almost meditative early moves rests the essence of a company. Chaos and order, dissolution and harmony. It will come, this Balanchine marvel, but not without the invigorating grind of more rehearsal." San Francisco Chronicle 01/26/03
All Movement As Dance - Cunningham Company At 50 "It has been 50 years since Cunningham founded his company, 61 years since he presented that first concert of his own solo dances. 'I've remained just as fascinated with movement as when I began. I see something moving, somebody do something, and I wonder, 'How could one do that (in a dance)?'" Orange County Register 01/26/03
The Royal Ballet's Popular New Leader "When Monica Mason was confirmed as head of the Royal Ballet just before Christmas her room filled so thick with flowers that, weeks later, the fragrance still lingers. Hers was a hugely popular internal appointment, a healing unguent after the rough and ready rule of the Australian Ross Stretton who lasted less than a year, leaving abruptly last September." La Scena Musicale 01/23/03
Retirement By Increment Evelyn Hart has been a star with the Royal Winnipeg Ballet for more than a quarter-century, and has been a darling of critics around Canada, and internationally. But now, at the age of 46, Hart is feeling her age, and seems to be on the verge of retirement. The trouble is, no announcement has been made of Hart's departure, and the ballerina continues to dance with the company when she feels able, which is less and less often. Cancellations by the star are coming fast and furious, infuriating audiences and fellow dancers, and relations between the Royal Winnipeg and its brightest light are said to be extremely strained. Ottawa Citizen 01/22/03
MEDIA
http://www.artsjournal.com/media
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
The New Reality - Remaking The TV Landscape "The recent flood of reality programs such as 'American Idol,' `Joe Millionaire' and `The Bachelorette' and the number of viewers they are drawing is unprecedented. They are pulling in young people who had drifted to cable or their home computers, revitalizing the ratings fortunes of both ABC and Fox and - in some cases - putting a serious dent in the viewership for well-established comedies and dramas. The shows have become such a cultural phenomenon in this country."
San Jose Mercury-News 01/26/03
Movie Critics Vs. Movie Audiences "Are movie critics out of touch with the public? Is that necessarily bad? And if so, should average moviegoers or Oscar voters pay any attention to this deluge of critical voting, rehashing and listmaking? Looking over the lists of movies anointed by the critics so far, compared with 2002's top grossing box-office hits, you can understand why some observers - especially movie studio and marketing executives and their cronies - become exasperated." Chicago Tribune 01/26/03
Consolidators, Unlimited Should media companies be allowed to own newspapers, radio and TV stations? The Federal Communication Commission is "studying whether decades-old media ownership restrictions are appropriate in a market altered by the growth of the Internet, satellite broadcasts and cable television. Media companies say outdated regulations restrict their ability to grow and stay competitive. Critics warn that mergers resulting from looser rules could leave a few huge companies in control of what people watch, hear and read." Nando Times (AP) 01/23/03
Has Sundance Become A Hollywood Tool? "Once a festival where unknowns came to be discovered and hungry agents scoured the field for the next big thing, Sundance has gradually become as much of a launching festival as a film market, the sort of event at which a distributor might unveil a film coming out in the next few months in hopes of attracting attention and publicity." The New York Times 01/23/03
Fellini Museum Planned A museum dedicated to the work of film producer Federico Fellini is being planned for the town of Rimini. "The five-room museum will display Fellini memorabilia including the director's personal library, story-boards, sketches and photographs." BBC 01/20/03
Is Big Media A Threat Or An Opportunity? Are our public airwaves and media choices being compromised as consolidation reduces the number of companies controlling media? "Should we totally deregulate the public airwaves and permit the dwindling of major media down to a precious few? Should we reduce choices available to cantankerous individualists who do not want their information and entertainment limited by increasingly massive mass media? 'Luddite nonsense,' answer many merging movie mogul and media magnates, as they point to the seemingly fierce competition from the Internet and the proliferation of cable channels." The New York Times 01/20/03
Golden Globes Share The Wealth "Chicago" picks up two awards, "Adaptation" and "Gangs of New York" also win. "In a harbinger of what is likely to be a closely fought Oscar race, the Globes split its trophies among a variety of critically praised films ranging from late-life crises to historical drama to a sendup of Hollywood screenwriting." Los Angeles Times 01/20/03
Copyright Extension Discourages Performers The recent decision of the US Supreme Court to uphold the extension of copyright terms to 95 years might be a good thing for music publishers. Might. But it discourages performers, particularly small non-profit school ensembles, from performing music written in the past century. And that can't be good in the long run, even for publishers. Rocky Mountain News 01/26/03
Wrecking The Music Business - Plenty Of Blame To Go Around So now the music industry is going to go after people who download big quantities of music. "The RIAA says somewhere out there is a person who downloaded 600 songs in a single day. That's about 40 full CDs, retail value: $720. He or she is the one the RIAA is looking for - to make an example of them and put fans on notice that downloading is a prosecutable crime. The day of reckoning nears. Consumers must face the fact that they can't get music for free forever. And the industry needs to understand that it never would have lost all those customers in the first place had it not been so consumed with greed." Rocky Mountain News 01/26/03
Acoustics Vs. Democracy? "Many acousticians agree that the safest way to ensure a good sound environment for orchestral music is to emulate the old, aristocratically modeled halls of 18th and 19th century Europe: a shoebox shape, with a proscenium arch and a horseshoe of ornate boxes to diffuse the sound. The current wave of concert halls, though, favors a 'vineyard' style, featuring terraced seats rising above the stage and arrayed around its flanks and rear. This arrangement is acoustically risky (though it has also produced wonderful results in the Philharmonie in Berlin), but socially desirable. It blurs visual borders between different sections of the house and brings each seat much closer to the stage than is possible in a traditional 'shoebox,' thereby creating a feeling of intimacy even in a very big room." Newsday 01/23/03
Going Off-Formula - The Norah Jones Case The huge success of Norah Jones in a format that isn't the standard pop formula has the recording industry rethinking... "In an era full of great voices, from Mariah Carey to Whitney Houston, that have been plugged into formats that make them more manufactured than memorable, her success is leading record executives, always on the lookout for the next big thing, to search for singers again, not just voices with hit formulas." Los Angeles Times 01/26/03
Motown Turns Up To Dispute Author Gerald Posner goes to Detroit to talk about his new book chronicling the history of Motown and gets an earful from the audience. "Only in Detroit could you write a book and have all the main characters show up at your book lecture." Mostly they were critical. Detroit News 01/26/03
Ripping Apart The ENO Under plans submitted this week to the Arts Council, the English National Opera would see the company shrink dramatically. "Under the proposal, the chorus would be cut by a third to 40 members, the orchestra by some 20 musicians, and production and administrative staff by 70. Big productions would rely on freelancers." The Times (UK) 01/25/03
Houston Symphony Says Pay Cuts Are Essential Houston Symphony management says an agreement on a contract with the orchestra's musicians can't happen without wage cuts. "The symphony has a near-term financial crisis and a longer-term structural problem of recurring deficits. The society is projecting a deficit of $2.3 million on a $23 million budget, with orchestra costs making up about 50 percent of the budget, management said." Houston Chronicle 01/24/03
Opera In Your Living Room "Ask the man on the street to define opera and you're likely to get adjectives like grand, foreign, expensive. Ask a New York opera patron about opera beyond the Metropolitan and City Operas, and you might get a mention of the Amato Opera, the stalwart 107-seat theater on the Bowery that's been putting on tiny productions of classic operas since 1948. But none of these quite covers the broad spectrum of indie opera companies that produce fully staged opera around New York City in living rooms, church basements and city parks." The New York Times 01/24/03
Australia Music Sales Down Sales of CDs in Australia were down 5.5 percent last year. The Australian Record Industry Association "blamed several factors, including online and offline piracy, increased interest in DVDs and computer games, and tough economic conditions. The newest threat was backyard piracy, in which thousands of CDs were manufactured on home computers." The Age (Melbourne) 01/24/03
Haydn Librettos Surface In Hungary "Hungary's National Library recovered Wednesday 39 original opera librettos from operas of the 18th-century Austrian composer Joseph Haydn that were believed to have been destroyed during World War II, officials said. Curators working for the government had bought the librettos from an antiquarian who had bought them from a private individual... Curators working for the ministry of national cultural heritage formally handed them over to the library where they will be 'under lock and seal' until they are digitally reproduced for research work." Andante (Agence France-Presse) 01/23/03
Escalating the War in Houston The musicians of the Houston Symphony have filed an official complaint with the National Labor Relations Board, accusing their management of bargaining in bad faith, and of planning to impose new working conditions on the musicians by declaring an impasse a few weeks from now. The management wants to slash salaries and eliminate five string players outright in an effort to deal with years of financial problems, but the musicians insist that they should not be forced to bear the burden of management's past mistakes. For a start, they'd like a look at the orchestra's financial records, but so far, orchestra executives have refused to open the books. Houston Chronicle 01/23/03
Doubts About The Music Industry's Survival "This year could determine whether the music business as we know it survives. In the first six months of 2002, CD sales fell 11 percent - on top of a 3 percent decline the year before. Sales of blank CDs jumped 40 percent last year, while the users of Kazaa, the biggest online file-trading service, tripled in number. As recently as 10 years ago, the media conglomerates that own record labels regarded them as cash cows - smaller than Hollywood but more reliably profitable. Now all five major labels are either losing money or barely in the black, and the industry's decline is turning into a plunge." Wired 01/03
Where Music Is Commodity... Like Pork Bellies? The European music industry's winter meetings are going on in Cannes. "No one at Midem talks about art or passion or even, heaven help us, music. They talk about money. I have to confess that I find it all incredibly disheartening. With more than 10,000 delegates of 3,604 companies from 89 countries touting their wares to one another, it genuinely does not seem to make a blind bit of difference whether what they have to sell has any quality whatsoever." The Telegraph (UK) 01/23/03
Bail-Out For English National Opera The British Arts Council has decided to bail out the English National Opera. "The decision was rushed through in less than 24 hours and comes as stalwarts of the ENO audience threatened to show their anger over the management's cutbacks during tonight's Coliseum premiere of Mussorgsky's opera Khovanshchina." How much money will be coming the ENO's way was not revealed, but the council said it would be enough to "stabilize" the company's operations. The Guardian (UK) 01/23/03
A Bevy Of Bohemes One night a few weeks from now, the stars will align and three productions of Pucinni's "La Boheme" will take to the boards in New York City. That's "more than 8200 seats to unload on a quiet, midweek evening" on Broadway, at the Metropolitan Oper and at New York City Opera. "Are that many New Yorkers going to be up for an evening of fake snow and chilly, Parisian garrets after five months of their own winter nastiness?" The Age (Melbourne) 01/23/03
Opera Australia In The Red Opera Australia reports an operating deficit of $2 million this year "as a result of last year's costly season." The compan y is undergoing an audit and is also beginning a search for a new music director after clumsily deciding not to renew Simone Young's contract. Sydney Morning Herald 01/22/03
Nagano to Montreal? "The name game at l'Orchestre Symphonique de Montréal got a lot hotter on Monday, as Kent Nagano was outed as the top contender for the music director post abandoned last spring by Charles Dutoit. Nagano, a 51-year-old American conductor, is in negotiations with the orchestra after being chosen by its search committee, according to a report in La Presse. The Montreal newspaper cited an unnamed source 'very close to one of the most influential members' of the 13-person committee. Marie-Josée Desrochers, the OSM's director of communications, said that the committee has made its selection, but would not confirm that Nagano is the man. She said the matter is in the hands of the OSM hiring committee." The Globe & Mail (Toronto) 01/22/03
How To Win Friends And Influence People, RIAA-Style The Recording Industry Association of America has discovered a whole new way to tick off consumers looking for ways around being gouged by CD distributors and, well, the RIAA. The new plan calls for the prosecution of internet service providers whose users illegally download and share copyrighted music. The strategy is most decidedly not getting good reviews, and one internet security consultant has compared it to prosecuting the highway department because drug smugglers use roads. "But the RIAA scored a big win against an ISP on Tuesday, when a federal judge ruled that Verizon Communications must turn over the name of a Verizon Internet subscriber who allegedly downloaded 600 songs through file-trading network Kazaa in one day." Wired 01/22/03
The Best-Selling Band You've Never Heard Mannheim Steamroller is a man, a band, and a marketing juggernaut, and no one really seems to understand why. The music is new age pop with just enough intelligence to be slightly more palatable than, say, Yanni or John Tesh. "Mannheim is really just one person, a 53-year-old, bearded, wool-sweatered and slightly rotund former jingle writer named Chip Davis. He lives near Omaha, composing what he calls 'Elizabethan-style rock' by himself, recording with hired hands as he needs them, for his own label, American Gramophone. He pockets about $4 for every album he sells. He owns three mansions and a Saberliner jet. He smiles a lot." Washington Post 01/22/03
Kronos At 30 The Kronos Quartet, which revolutionized the chamber music experience and breathed life into a faltering new music movement when it formed back in the 1970s, turns 30 this year. Thirty years is a very long life for any quartet, let alone one which makes its living, as does Kronos, playing exclusively modern music. And while there are probably more daring ensembles about today, Kronos remains a revered original, and none of today's successful contemporary music groups would deny that they owe much to the San Francisco-based foursome. San Francisco Chronicle 01/22/03
Europe's Day Of Free Music Struggling to develop an online strategy, European music producers have decided to offer free music downloads - for a day. "The campaign - Digital Download Day Europe - will allow music fans to download five euros' (£3.40) worth of music for free from sites that pay royalties. The promotion takes place on 21 March and will be available in France, Germany, Spain, Italy, the UK and The Netherlands. More than 150,000 tracks will be available to download, with a third able to be copied to CD." BBC 01/21/03
Twenty Years Of Opera Supertitles Twenty years ago the first supertitles were used at the Canadian Opera Company in Toronto. "The first titled opera was Strauss's 'Elektra': As Orestes busied himself axe-cleaving his mother and stepfather to death, the audience -- its eyes cast upwards at the titles -- understood opera as never before. There were a few dissenters, but for most it was love at first sight. We had purists who said, 'I'm German-speaking, I already understand every word.' And some people said, 'I have to look up, and it takes away from the action.' But in an audience poll, approximately 80 per cent gave their approval." The Globe & Mail (Canada) 01/21/03
Howells Condemns Pop Singer Robbie Williams For Piracy Remarks UK culture minister Kim Howells is at it again, this time condemning singer Robbie Williams for his remarks supporting music piracy. "He should also realise that many of these pirate operations are linked to organised crime on a worldwide basis. In saying that piracy is a 'great idea', Williams is doing the work for international gangs involved in drugs and prostitution who find music piracy an excellent way of laundering their profits." The Guardian (UK) 01/21/03
Music Jobs At Risk If Piracy Isn't Solved, Says Official Jay Berman, head of the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry (IFPI), tells a conference in Cannes that "all jobs in the European music industry could be in jeopardy if record executives do not tackle the problems of music piracy. That's 600,000 jobs, he said. "In truth, online music piracy is not about free music. The music creators and rights holders, denied the right to choose how their music is used and enjoyed, are in fact paying the price." BBC 01/20/03
The Evolving Opera Opera continues to stretch as an artform. How about a "not-so-underground music world that lives the boundary-less, non-hierarchical ethic of communal musicmaking, an ethic that some classical opera composers might hold up as an ideal but have rarely put into practice with any success. 'Nitrate Hymnal' is described by the Washington Performing Arts Society as multimedia, interactive, post-punk, hybrid and several other things as well, which adds up to: You have to see it to know what it's about." Washington Post 01/19/03
PEOPLE
http://www.artsjournal.com/people
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
John Browning, 69 American pianist John Browning has died of heart failure. "Mr. Browning maintained an active solo career, if never quite at the most glamorous level, and with the name Cliburn dogging his own in many a review and article. Although he lacked nothing in bravura technique, his pianistic style was reserved, elegant and penetrating, more intellectual than overtly emotional yet eminently approachable." The New York Times 01/27/03
Polarising Wynton Marsalis "At 41, Wynton Marsalis is the most famous living jazz musician, named in 1996 as one of Time magazine's 25 most influential Americans. While many jazz players have been classically trained, he is rare in straddling both worlds professionally." Yet he inspires camps of critics as well as admirers. "While friends cite his charm and humility, others find him dogmatic, and worry about the power of his patronage. Marsalis rails against a 'jazz establishment' as 'racist, ignorant and disrespectful of musicians'." The Guardian (UK) 01/26/03
Al Hirschfeld, Artist "As an artist, Hirschfeld, who died at 99 on Monday, cared about visual cues: gestures, mannerisms, the way an actress dashed across the stage or cocked her head while he sat in the dark of the theater jotting shorthand impressions to take home and translate into drawings. Call them abstractions of the drama, which became loopy lines, dashes, dots, curlicues and crosshatches. He was a genius at capturing likenesses in a few serendipitous strokes — as good as they got, week after week, since the 1920's, turning the viewing of his work on this page into an American ritual. But what really separates him from other caricaturists is the vitality and suppleness of his line, an abstract matter." The New York Times 01/26/03
Glory To Slava "Rostropovich is a genuine hero of the Soviet era and what followed, having stuck up publicly for his friend Alexander Solzhenitsyn when the wrath of the Kremlin was upon him, and having flown to Moscow from the West in 1991 to support Boris Yeltsin, who at the time was facing down an attempted coup. He has lived his life as though borders and limits to freedom don't exist, which hasn't exempted him from sometimes having to accept that they do. He's also a human cyclone. Rostropovich turns 75 in March."
The Globe & Mail (Canada) 01/25/03
Bill Viola - Careful Screening "It's been a long journey for Bill Viola, from the small fringe world of video art in the early 1970s to his current position as one of the most highly regarded artists working in any medium, but his odyssey has always been closely tied to the cutting edge of technology." LAWeekly 01/23/03
Rosen Stepping Down From RIAA Hilary Rosen is stepping down as head of the Recording Industry Association of America. Rosen has been the industry's spokesperson in its battle against music downloading. "Rosen's departure comes as the organization sought to soften its image among Internet consumers, many of whom viewed the RIAA and Rosen personally with antipathy over incessant pressure for crackdowns on sharing digital music over the Internet." Wired 01/23/03
PUBLISHING
http://www.artsjournal.com/publishing
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Penguin Hires Ousted Random House Editor Only two weeks after she was fired by Random House, Ann Godoff has has been hired by Penguin as the president and publisher of a new book imprint. Will she bring over some of the big authors she published at Random House? "These are people who I have a longstanding relationship with and I would be surprised if we were not able to work together again at some time." The New York Times 01/27/03
Profit Shouldn't Be A Bad Word The shakeup at Random House in the past few weeks has many fuming about the health the quality book publishing business. But is that really what the message of this story is? So "the country's major publisher made no bones about what's important - profit. And, is that a bad thing? There's no reason why a quality piece of fiction can't make money, and so far, despite the schlock and superficiality found in the bookstores, publishers will continue to offer books worth reading because they sell, too." Pittsburgh Post-Gazette 01/26/03
Missing The Boat - The Book That Got Away Canadian historian Margaret MacMillan tried and tried to get a Canadian publisher to take her book "Paris 1919: Six Months that Changed the World," a revisionist history of the Treaty of Versailles, but without success. Finally she flew to London and sold it there. The book has since become a big bestseller and once again editors whose job it is to pick out books to publish, missed out. How does this happen? The Globe & Mail (Canada) 01/25/03
Aussie Non-Fiction Supplanting Fiction Australian non-fiction has taken over publishing. "Book after book indicating a renaissance in Australian non-fiction, incorporating everything from narrative journalism to memoir, rock'n'roll, history, philosophy, the essay and political biography. Works that often blurred the territory between these forms and fiction, part and parcel of a radical hybridisation of style and content affecting literature internationally and sending our old generic orders into meltdown. When compared with this catalogue, recent local literary fiction was not up to the same consistent standard, let alone able to match en masse the furious energy our literary non-fiction exudes." Sydney Morning Herald 01/26/03
New NYT Arts Editor To Shake Things Up How will the New York Times' cultural coverage change under new Arts & Leisure editor Jodi Kantor? "I do think you'll see us playing around with the format, thinking up novel ways to cover culture, and developing more regular features and columns." Staffers are eager to see how Kantor reshapes her influential section, deals with senior critics and shakes up the ranks of freelance contributors while navigating the paper's often-choppy waters. New York Daily News 01/24/03
Frankfurt Fair To Stay In Frankfurt The Frankfurt Bookfair is staying in Frankfurt. The fair had threatened to move to Munich because Frankfurt hotels had inflated their prices. Last week, representatives of the book fair, the city of Frankfurt, its hotel and gastronomy industry, the German publishing association and the operator of the Frankfurt fair came to an agreement." Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung 01/24/03
How Literary...Or Is It? "What constitutes literary publishing? Is there such a thing as a purely literary publishing house? Is there a literary DNA or special skill set required to publish so-called literary fiction and nonfiction as opposed to broad mainstream books? Some publishers can be driven absolutely crazy by the notion that they aren't considered literary enough. The reality is that there is no longer any such thing as a purely literary publishing house." The New York Times 01/23/03
Bestsellers Before The First Page Is Published Books like the upcoming Harry Potter become bestsellers long before they even hit stores. "The growth of pre-sales is an interesting development in publishing. Of course in the eighteenth century an author could pre-sell his book by subscription as a way of supporting himself, but this is a different kettle of fish. Publishers love it because it lets them lock in sales without having to worry about returns. With enough hype or a strong enough brand name the whole enterprise can turn into a form of print-on-demand. It's quite a testimony to the importance of marketing." GoodReports 01/23/03
Would You Pay $5 To Check Out A Book? Would you pay $5 a book to check out books from your public library? That's what the State of California proposes. Under Governor Grey Davis' proposal released Friday, "the state would cut in half the amount of money it gives California's 179 library systems, reducing annual subsidies from about $32 million to $15 million a year. To recoup some money, Davis proposed legislation allowing county libraries to charge $1 to readers who check out books in libraries outside the county where they live, and $5 to readers who have a book sent to their home library from another county." The Press-Democrat (Santa Rosa) 01/23/03
Kantor Named Editor Of NYT A&E The New York Times has named Jodi Kantor as its new editor of the paper's Sunday A&E section. Kanto comes from the online magazine Slate. "At Slate, Ms. Kantor, 27, had the assignment of developing ways to use the Internet to write about the arts, ranging from short, argumentative 'Culturebox' essays to online slideshows and a weekly e-mail exchange between professional therapists about developments on 'The Sopranos.' In the past, Ms. Kantor has contributed several pieces to The Times Book Review." New York Times Press Release 01/22/03
How Random House Boss Was Ousted Why did Peter Olson fire highly respected Ann Godoff from her perch as the president of the Random House Trade Group? "Mr. Olson's motives are a matter of great consequence in the book business, where Bertelsmann's Random House division is the largest consumer publisher in the world. He said his public condemnation of Ms. Godoff's performance simply reflected honesty about a ruthless devotion to the bottom line: publishers who repeatedly fail to meet financial goals must go." She failed, so she was out. The New York Times 01/20/03
Develop This - Another Gatekeeper On The Road To Getting Published "Some 13,000 new novels are published each year, a 45 per cent increase since 1998. But the deluge conceals a depressing reality for new writers. The slush pile - the derogatory term for unsolicited manuscripts that land on publishers’ desks - has been all but abandoned in this efficient age of corporate accounting and executive accountability. Publishers no longer read novels by unknowns. Nor, increasingly, do literary agents. If you are a first-timer, your chances of getting into print are almost non-existent." Enter a new form of literary life - literary development agencies that for a fee will read and critique your work and make recommendations... The Scotsman 01/21/03
The Thousand-Page Harry Within days of the announcement that the new installment of Harry Potter would be published in June, Amazon reported 30,000 orders. Book stores plan to be open at midnight on the first day the book is sold, and already it's a bestseller before a single page is printed. But this installment looks to be more than 1000 pages long. Isn't that a little long for a kid's book? Boston Globe 01/21/03
Reinventing The National Theatre Nicholas Hytner appears to be reinventing London's National Theatre. And doing it quickly. Along with cutting ticket prices, he's trying to expand the National's tastes. His "particular hope is that by exploring 'the gaps between what we now call 'dance', 'plays' and 'operas',' the National can redefine musical drama. 'Somewhere along the line, "musical" became a dirty word - I want to clean it up'." The Observer (UK) 01/26/03
Will Broadway Continue To Employ Live Musicians? Broadway musicians are getting ready to negotiate for a new contract. The musicians' union says the negotiation will be about whether theatres continue to use live musicians. "They have made direct statements to me that they are or will be prepared to replace us with mechanical devices. They're going to walk in with a proposal to eliminate minimums, and behind it will be the threat to replace us should we go on strike." Backstage 01/23/03
National Theatre Slashes Ticket Prices Nicholas Hytner, incoming director of London's National Theatre has plans to slash ticket prices - to £10 tickets for many of the large productions. "What I want to do is find a way of getting people in to try what we have got to offer, the same way you feel able to try a movie at the weekend even if you do not know much about it." BBC 01/23/03
- A Bold Start "Hytner's first season is full of bold thinking. The news that in the biggest of the NT's three auditoria, the Olivier, two thirds of the ticket prices will be slashed to £10 for six months couldn't be more welcome. It should attract new audiences, and also let people who already attend do so more often. The theatre will be stripped back to basics, and offer "accessible", no-frills productions in this epic ampitheatre space." The Telegraph (UK) 01/24/03
The Theatre Fanatic Sisters The Dalton Sisters are dedicated theatre-goers. They go over and over to the same shows, and even cut back on lunch so they can afford tickets. "Their favourite show by far is 'Les Miserables'. The Dalton sisters have seen Les Mis more than 500 times. They've travelled overseas and interstate to see it, paying $60,000 for the pleasure, watch every performance intently, know all the lines, and notice if they're delivered differently. Joanne still cries at every session." A fascinated documentary-maker has made a film of their obsession... The Age (Melbourne) 01/24/03
Invisible Plays - The Names You Can't Advertise What happens when you're producing a play with a controversial or offensive title? How do you advertise it? How do you get newspapers to accept ads for it? "Boston is the toughest market for controversial titles. Considering that we're called the Athens of the East, it's a very conservative, stodgy and puritanical market." Townonline.com 01/22/03
A New Generation of Russian Playwrights Since Chekhov died almost a century ago, "the West has heard almost nothing from Russian stage writers. Their fame lies buried beneath the cultural glaciers of the 20th century’s big totalitarian chill. Now, though, a new wave of Russian writers is emerging..." The Times (UK) 01/20/03
Seattle's ACT Theatre Cuts Back Faced with a $500,000 deficit, Seattle's A Contemporary Theatre reduces staff, shifts its schedule out of the summer, and cuts its budget from $5.9 million to $4.9 million. "Our revenues are being outpaced by expenses. We decided to take really decisive action. We want to make ACT a center for new plays, and the next five months will be a really important time for us to solidify this mission." Seattle Times 01/17/03
The Forgotten Masterpieces A new book wonders about the wherabout of great works of art that for one reason or another disappeared and slipped from the pages of history. "Supreme among them is Michelangelo’s bronze version of David, a statue he worked on while carving his celebrated colossus of the same biblical hero." The Times 01/27/03
Torture By Art Was modern art used as a torture device in the Spanish Civil War? "A Spanish art historian has uncovered what was alleged to be the first use of modern art as a deliberate form of torture, with the discovery that mind-bending prison cells were built by anarchist artists 65 years ago during the country's bloody civil war. Bauhaus artists such as Kandinsky, Klee and Itten, as well as the surrealist film-maker Luis Bunuel and his friend Salvador Dali, were said to be the inspiration behind a series of secret cells and torture centres built in Barcelona and elsewhere." The Guardian (UK) 01/26/03
Asian Gallery Sells Fakes Backed By "Scientific" Claims Seattle Times reporters buy art purported to be Chinese antiques hundreds of years old from a local gallery. Turns out the art isn't hundreds of years old - it's only a few years old, practically new. "The pieces sold by Thesaurus Fine Arts are a trickle in the flood — but notable in that, unlike many fakes, they are purportedly backed by scientific evaluation. Experts say they know of no other art dealer in the United States that makes such sweeping claims on obviously phony pieces." Seattle Times 01/26/03
A $600,000 Tree Stump? John Davis saw a giant rootball unearthed in a tornado 27 years ago and decided to dig out the roots and make a sculpture out of it. After 2 1/2 years he was finished revealing the 14 foor-by 16 foot, 3000-pound piece. Then he listed it on Ebay for $2.7 million and got no offers. Now he wants $600,000, but the artworld doesn't seem interested. "From the photograph, it looks like an incredible object. A question that I'm asked a lot is, 'What is it really worth?' And there are different qualifications for intrinsic artistic value and what the art market will bear. ... On the art market, it's worth whatever someone is willing to pay for it." Dallas Morning News 01/26/03
City In The Sky (And Under) The World Trade Center project is about more than big buildings. "The process of thinking about this unique site expanded into an exercise in imagining a new future for the skyscraper in an increasingly dense and urbanized world. In a number of proposals, the towers are interconnected rather than autonomous, so that they work horizontally as well as vertically. In effect, they create another ground plane to accommodate the kinds of public spaces historically limited to the street: parks, gardens and cultural facilities. The nine diverse schemes all conceive of urban life as a vertical proposition - cities in the sky." Atlanta Journal-Constitution 01/26/03
The Scottish Parliament Building Fiasco Hopes were sky high back in 1997 for the new Scottish Parliament building "designed by the Catalan architect Enric Miralles as 'the visual embodiment of exciting constitutional change'. How those hopes have turned to ashes. The Parliament, once estimated to cost between £10 and £40 million and scheduled to open last December, is now expected to come in at £338.1 million. Completion is not expected before November." It's all a big mess - so what happened? The Telegraph (UK) 01/25/03
Man Glues WTC Picture To Met Museum Painting A former museum guard defaced a famous painting at the Metropolitan Museum of Washington crossing the Delaware by glueing a picture of the World Trade Center's twin towers to the bottom of the famous Revolutionary War scene last weekend. The painting was undamages and has been restored. New York Daily News 01/24/03
Italy To Return Parthenon Fragment Italy will return a fragment of the Parthenon to Greece as a "gesture of goodwill". "The fragment is part of the statue of Peitho, the daughter of Mercury and Venus, which once adorned the eastern side of the Parthenon. A 14-by-13.6- inch piece of marble, it depicts the goddess's foot and a portion of her tunic. The frieze was regularly purchased by the museum between 1818 and 1820 from the widow of Robert Fagan, the British consul for Sicily and Malta" and has nothing to do with the Elgin Marbles. Discovery 01/22/03
Christo Gets Okay For Central Park Project Since 1979 Christo has been trying to get permission for a big project in New York's Central Park. Now the city has approved it. Mayor Michael Bloomberg says "the project would attract some 500,000 visitors and generate $72 million to $136 million in spending. 'When our natural instincts are to retreat to the comfortable and the familiar, we have to reassert the daring and the creative spirit that differentiates New York from any other city in the world'." The New York Times 01/23/03
Art Or Junk? Who Gets To Decide? "When art changes because of elemental forces, becoming what some would call an 'eyesore,' is it no longer art? Should it be removed? When the land on which a work sits, and for which it was designed, is needed for other purposes and the art is moved, is it the same work of art?" A dispute between a Florida temple that wants to remove a piece of art and the the artist who created it is forcing some answers to these questions. St. Petersburg Times 01/18/03
Boston ICA Gets New Leadership "Boston's Institute of Contemporary Art has hired a new curator, Nicholas Baume, a 37-year-old Australian who has been the contemporary curator at Hartford's Wadsworth Atheneum since 1998. Baume, who assumes the job in March, replaces Jessica Morgan, who resigned from the ICA in November to move back to her native England, where she is a curator at London's Tate Modern." Boston Globe 01/22/03
Berlin's Troubling Deal For A Big Collection At virtually no cost, debt-ridden Berlin got the chance last month to "show one of the most distinguished private collections of its kind in the world — one that, moreover, has never been shown in its entirety to the public. Yet the collection has been unwelcome elsewhere because it belongs to Friedrich Christian Flick, the multimillionaire heir of a leading Nazi arms manufacturer. And for Berlin, a city that has served variously as the epicenter of the avant-garde and Nazi despotism, that fact presents a troubling dilemma." The New York Times 01/22/03
A Gallery In Your Room One of Scotland's "pioneering" online galleries has made a deal with a hotel chain to provide 1,500 works of art for hotel rooms. "We believe that art is part of daily life and we are challenging the way that people normally view and buy art." The Scotsman 01/21/03
How Scotland Yard Recovered "The Scream" The colorful story of the recovery of Edvard Munch's painting "the Scream" back in 1994 is just now coming to light. "While it is known that the £50 million painting was eventually returned to the National Gallery in May 1994, following a trap set by Scotland Yard, it has emerged that the British strategy for finding 'The Scream' stretched the limits of international law and involved meticulous research, false identities and high risks for two unarmed officers. Twice, the operation was put in peril by the unlucky intervention of other police forces. Twice, the swift action of the undercover officers averted disaster." The Observer (UK) 01/19/03
Star Turns - The New Celebrity Collectors "Celebrities and stars figure more and more in the art world. Indeed, Madonna, David Bowie, Elton John, Jarvis Cocker of Pulp, Brian Eno and Bryan Ferry are not only avid buyers but part of the group of patrons that supports young talent in Britain. ‘This group of pop and rock stars has truly put its stamp on the market. Such is its impact that it even affects artistic tendencies, but the phenomenon has to be seen as part of a whole movement that includes music, painting and all the arts'." The Art Newspaper 01/17/03
Thief Steals Art For Fake Gallery A man who took art from artists for a gallery that didn't exist, has been arrested in Florida. He portrayed himself as a Miami Beach gallery owner or lawyer, and "aspiring painters and sculptors sent him their work to be displayed in galleries. Several artists gave Evan Carter their credit card numbers to pay gallery dues or other fees, then noticed unfamiliar charges, police reports said." Nando Times (AP) 01/20/03
