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Have Images Of Atrocities Ceased To Register On Us? Back in the 1930 Virginia Woolf believed that just seeing pictures of the atrocities of war would provoke a strong reaction against the waging of war. Susan Sontag wonders if that ios the case today in our media-soaked world. "Photographs of an atrocity may give rise to opposing responses: a call for peace; a cry for revenge; or simply the bemused awareness, continually restocked by photographic information, that terrible things happen." The Guardian (UK) 02/01/03
Posted: 02/01/2003 7:26 pm
A New "Self-Tuning" "Microtonal" Piano? A British composer claims to have "revolutionised" the design of the piano. The instrument has until now relied on "only 88 notes from their 88 keys. This limitation has made the piano's 'fixed tuning' unable to cope with the differing scales of Persian, Chinese and Indian music. Mr Smith's device could open up whole new markets for the instrument in places where it has previously been seen as an expensive piece of western furniture. The innovation threatens to make professional piano tuning defunct, since players will be able to perform 'user-friendly' corrections to their instrument themselves, possibly while they are playing." The Guardian (UK) 02/01/03
Posted: 02/01/2003 6:56 pm
Get The Picture? Supersize It! "Like S.U.V.'s and television screens, photographs throughout the 90's swelled to almost irrational dimensions. As technology allowed huge color prints to be processed with ease and buyers paid top prices for them, big became the norm. Younger photographers and students, when asking themselves how large an image should be, often opted for the McDonald's answer: supersize it." The New York Times 02/01/03
Posted: 02/01/2003 7:20 pm
Robert Hughes Recalls His Afternoon With Albert Speer "Who was Roosevelt's architect? Nobody we can remember. Stalin's? No one cares. Churchill's? Silly question. But there is no doubt who Hitler's architect was: Albert Speer. Almost nothing of his buildings survives, either because they were not built or because they were demolished after 1945. Modern art has never had much political power, but modern architecture is a different matter. Architecture is the only art that moulds the world directly. Of all the arts, it is the supreme expression of politics and ideology. It marshals resources and organises substance in a way that music, painting and literature cannot. It is an art that lives from power." The Guardian (UK) 02/01/03
Posted: 02/01/2003 7:05 pm
The V&A - A Prayer Not To Screw It Up As the Victoria & Albert Museum prepares to redo its Medieval and Renaissance galleries, one critic hopes planners don't botch the job like they did the new British galleries a few years ago. "If the faults of the British galleries were caused through inadvertence (by mistake, a remarkable bust is shown looking into a corner) that would be bad enough. But most of these faults are faults of policy: the downgrading of the individual object - whether in the fine or the decorative arts - is a matter of policy. It must have been, to be so systematic. So let's hope the policy has already had its day." The Guardian (UK) 02/01/03
Posted: 02/01/2003 6:45 pm
Ousting Your Museum Director When You're Building A New Home - A Good Idea? Newfoundland is building a huge new cultural complex in St. John's that eventually will house the archives, museum and art gallery of Newfoundland and Labrador. But in a strange move, the province has ousted the "well-regarded" director of the museum who's had the job 20 years. She was told she could reapply for her job when a national search got underway, but in the meantime the government appointed the provincial archivist to run the place. "The institution has no real Crown corporation or arms-length status, and its day-to-day administration is being handled by someone without experience in the visual arts..." The Globe & Mail (Canada) 02/01/03
Posted: 02/01/2003 6:31 pm
Cuba - Capital Of Jazz "Cuba is producing musicians of Herculean technique, many of whom have applied their intensive classical training to the art of jazz - and thus have come to tower over their counterparts around the world. The last two generations have yielded larger-than-life jazz players whose mastery of their instruments and exalted level of musicianship enables them to conquer audiences wherever jazz is played. Exactly why Cuban jazz musicians sound consistently brilliant may be a mystery to the outside world, but in Havana it is no secret..." Chicago Tribune 02/02/03
Posted: 02/02/2003 8:32 am
Today Vs. Yesterday - Are Symphyony Orchestras Better? Are today's symphony orchestras better or worse than the orchestras of yesterday? The technical level of the players is better, but is the way they play together superior? The Boston Globe asked five prominent conductors to make comparisons. Boston Globe 02/02/03
Posted: 02/02/2003 7:50 am
A Grand Night For Booing Does an audience have the right to boo? Certainly there's a long tradition of it (and some would say not enough booing goes on) at the opera. But "at some point, doesn't loud booing cross the line from an expression of displeasure to a disruption of the performance? The issue was raised recently at the Metropolitan Opera during the season's first performance of Mozart's 'Entführung aus dem Serail'..." The New York Times 02/01/03
Posted: 02/01/2003 7:09 pm
Oundjian - A Star Is Born? None of this waiting for years between appointing a new music director and the time he starts conducting your orchestra. The Toronto Symphony announced Peter Oundjian as its music director only last month. This week he gave his first concert. Were people excited? You bet. "Torontonians who, for the most part, have acted with severe ennui to the recent decline in fortunes of the Toronto Symphony" showed up in droves. "Roy Thomson Hall, which has often been half-empty for some of the greatest performers in classical music, was filled to overflowing for the free concert. The place was stuffed to the rafters, with lineups outside the hall and hundreds of people turned away. Hundreds turned away. When's the last time that happened for a TSO concert? Answer: never." The Globe & Mail (Canada) 02/01/03
Posted: 02/01/2003 6:38 pm
The 50s Boring? Really? The 1950s were boring. Dull. Nothing happened. Nothing changed. The mythology about the 50s is that it was a decade "so constricting that the '60s had to come along to blow things up." And yet - look at the art that was created then. "The '50s produced an amazing body of art, one that we revisit time and again not for kitsch or nostalgia, but for the sense of excitement it conveys." Boston Globe 02/02/03
Posted: 02/02/2003 7:44 am
Wanted: Someplace You Can Hear Atlanta has an active arts scene. But the city is practically barren of good performance spaces. Those theatres and concert halls that do exist are acoustically dead. But a new arts center at Emory University holds out some promise the city might get its first real concert space, writes Pierre Ruhe. Atlanta Journal-Constitution 02/01/03
Posted: 02/02/2003 7:38 am
Creating The Iconic Writer Mordichai Richler was a major literary presence in Canada. But his cult fame has grown sionce his death a year and a half ago. "Since his death, at 70, in July, 2001, from complications related to kidney cancer, Richler has continued to be a significant, vibrant presence in Canadian culture. There's even a type font named after him, for Yaweh's sake. But it seems we're going to be hearing, seeing and thinking about him even more if various plans to enhance and heighten his legacy come to fruition in the next five years." The Globe & Mail (Canada) 02/01/03
Posted: 02/01/2003 6:26 pm
Running An Opera Company, Focused On The Future Richard Bradshaw is conductor and administrator of the Canadian Opera Company. And right now he and his company are "so focused on the new facility that everything - from subscriptions to programming - is calculated around the projected opening of the opera house in the summer of 2006." So what's a typical day like, running a big opera company? The Globe & Mail (Canada) 02/01/03
Posted: 02/01/2003 6:23 pm
The End Of Dinner Theatre? Classical dinner has vanished in cities like Chicago. It thrived in the 70s and 80s when minor Hollywood and Broadway stars looking for work would take to the dinner theatre circuit. Then the attraction was more the star than the play. "Now, a different story: Marginal TV stars can score a USA Original teleplay, or a one-shot movie on the Lifetime channel. 'There's plenty of work for all of 'em. That's why the star system doesn't exist'." Chicago Tribune 02/02/03
Posted: 02/02/2003 8:40 am
Nunn's Parting Shot - A £2.5 Million Gift Outgoing National Theatre director Trevor Nunn has made a surprise gift to the London theatres - £2.5 million. Nunn was severely criticized during his tenure when it was learned that he was making as much as £25,000 a week from the West End transfer of his award-winning revival of My Fair Lady. "But in a move that will silence his detractors, Nunn has given the theatre £208,000 this year as a first instalment of a legacy to support new work, with £2.3m more coming over the next two years. All the money he has earned from the transfer of 'My Fair Lady', as well as 'Oklahoma!', which is now on Broadway, will go back into the National's coffers." The Guardian (UK) 02/01/03
Posted: 02/01/2003 6:49 pm
Books - It Is After All, A Business Should we be surprised when a major publisher ousts a popular literary editor when sales gols aren't met? "In the fat times of the late '90s and into 2000-2001, publishers signed up the biggest author names for mega-millions in much the same way major-league baseball owners paid superstars in amounts equating to Monopoly money. The tough economy caught up to major-league baseball, and it's apparently hit the book business, too." The Star Telegraom (Fort Worth) 02/02/03
Posted: 02/02/2003 10:01 am
New Look Classics Last year Steinbeck's "Grapes of Wrath" sold 2 million copies, big business for a book that has been around for a long time. The classics are big business for publishers, and classic editions of those books are getting facelifts. "The classics ain't what they used to be – in some cases, they're New and Improved. All this 're-branding' activity, all this new ink and paper, is going on in a corner of the bookstore that is widely seen as deservedly stuck somewhere behind the coffee bins. Who, after all, gets excited about a new edition of Herodotus?" Dallas Morning News 02/02/03
Posted: 02/02/2003 9:37 am
Hollywood's New Plots - Government Get The Bad Guys It wasn't so long ago that Hollywood's favorite movie was the little guy against the bureucrat - the rogue CIA, the power-hungry FBI, even a misbehaving Congress or White House. But that's all changed. "Big and small screens are awash in portrayals of honorable officials struggling to hold back a menacing tide. "The old, tired and hackneyed representation of us as a bunch of rogue operatives, with everything dark and gloomy and sensational, that doesn't wash any more." The New York Times 02/01/03
Posted: 02/01/2003 7:13 pm
Martha Graham Company - Putting A Life Back Together The 26 dancers of the Martha Graham Company are back, finishing a week in New York. They "expect to go on tour soon, to engagements that are being negotiated and should be announced in coming weeks. With a current annual budget projected at $7 million, the company is seeking at least $3 million in outside funding. Next week, the Martha Graham School of Contemporary Dance is moving from various Manhattan locations to a building on East 63rd Street where Graham had taught for many years. The property was sold during the company's financial crunch of the 1990s, and repurchased recently." Baltimore Sun (AP) 02/01/03
Posted: 02/01/2003 6:13 pm | 
