A City's Lessons For A Nation's Leaders The Democratic Party convention arrives in Boston next week, and Holland Cotter says that the pols could do worse than to leave the convention hall for a few hours of good old-fashioned Bostonian-American culture. "Utopian thought is a visionary version of yes-saying; principled dissent among the most constructive ways of saying no. The two are flip sides of the same coin; together they can bring out the best, and curb the worst, in human behavior. Boston knows all about them." The New York Times 07/23/04
Posted: 07/22/2004 9:24 pm
Picking A Fight Over Pencils and Paints Sydney artist Craig Ruddy was awarded Australia's prestigious Archibald Prize earlier this year. But the award has sparked a vicious court fight and is drawing a lot of attention from the media, after painter Tony Johansen took the Art Gallery of New South Wales Trust to court over a technicality. Specifically, Johansen claims that Ruddy's winning portrait is a mixed-media drawing, which should make it ineligible for a painting award. Nit-picking? Sure. But Ruddy is garnering a great deal of support from some interesting corners... Sydney Morning Herald 07/23/04
Posted: 07/22/2004 9:01 pm
Pint-Sized Musicians Take On A Conductor Controversy Proving that major symphony orchestras don’t have a lock on serious conflict between musicians and boards, the Greater Twin Cities Youth Symphonies (GTCYS) are currently embroiled in an embarrassingly public conflict over the attempted firing of the organization’s chief conductor and artistic director. Dr. Jean Montes, a “charismatic, 33-year-old Haitian” who was hired last fall to lead the top GTCYS orchestra, is quite popular with his students and their parents, but apparently quite difficult for his fellow staffers to get along with. Last night, nearly 300 Montes supporters showed up at a hastily called meeting to urge the board to reconsider his dismissal. St. Paul Pioneer Press 07/23/04
Posted: 07/23/2004 6:05 am
Scottish Opera Chair Resigns Duncan McGhie, the chairman of Scottish Opera, has quit in protest of the Scottish Executive's treatment of the company. The board McGhie has led, which also oversees Scottish Ballet, is slated to be disbanded under the terms of the Executive's much-criticized plan to keep the opera company afloat. The resignation is only the latest high-profile protest against the plan. The Herald (Glasgow) 07/23/04
Posted: 07/22/2004 8:33 pm
Boulez At Bayreuth, 35 Years Later It was 1966 when the fiery iconoclast Pierre Boulez, who had once suggested solving "the problem of opera" by blowing up all opera houses, came to Bayreuth to conduct Wagner's Parsifal. "Famously, he conducted the quickest and least pompous Parsifal ever seen at Bayreuth. This year, he's back [at Bayreuth] with Parsifal after a gap of 35 years... To conduct Parsifal as a slow, grandiose celebration of religiosity could all too easily turn into a proto-nationalist ritual, so it's no wonder Boulez wanted to strip away these connotations." The Telegraph (UK) 07/23/04
Posted: 07/22/2004 7:25 pm
Funding Cuts In Music City Arts groups in Nashville were stunned this week to discover that their annual funding from the area’s Metro Arts Commission had been slashed by tens of thousands of dollars. The cuts are partly due to an overall shortage of available funds, but also to the use of “an extensive checklist of performance ratings” for each group receiving funds. The Tennessean (Nashville) 07/23/04
Posted: 07/23/2004 6:04 am
Stopping Piracy The Old-Fashioned Way The war on copyright piracy is looking increasingly like the war on drugs - a few stalwart enforcers desperately trying to hold back an unstoppable global wave of illegal activity. And the battles aren't just in courtrooms and online: "Recently, the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry helped set up a raid on a notorious market near Mexico City called Tepito - using 1500 armed officers. There was a four-hour long battle with racketeers before arrests were made." BBC 07/23/04
Posted: 07/23/2004 5:26 am
- Protecting Copyright Or Stifling Innovation? "The [U.S. Senate] heard strong opposition from the technology industry on Thursday about a bill that would hold tech companies responsible for creating devices that could be used to pirate digital content. But Sens. Orrin Hatch and Patrick Leahy, the sponsors of the bill, are determined to move forward with the legislation." The bill, which has been widely ridiculed for oversimplifying the problem of piracy to the point that devices like Apple's iPod could be made illegal, is being heavily backed by Hollywood studios and the music industry. Those industries, incidentally, have contributed $380,000 to the campaigns of Hatch and Leahy since 1999. Wired 07/23/04
Posted: 07/23/2004 5:18 am
Can An Art Fund Beat The Stock Market? When Bruce Taub looks at art, he sees dollar signs. And his new investment company is hoping that other high-rolling investors will see it that way, too, and diversify their personal portfolios to include works his company invests in. "The company will establish a series of art funds for clients looking to diversify their existing portfolios. The funds will buy art, both privately and at auction, that their consultants think is undervalued." Investors won't actually get to take the art home with them, since the fund would own the works. Instead, they'll reap the financial rewards (if any) when and if the works are resold. The New York Times 07/23/04
Posted: 07/23/2004 5:12 am
All Of A Sudden, Broadway Tickets Seem Like A Bargain If you're a classical music aficionado living in Korea, you'd better be prepared to dig deep for concert tickets. A recent tour performance by the Vienna Philharmonic featured an average ticket price of $214, and a show featuring the La Scala orchestra wasn't far behind. In fact, the cost of seeing a concert in Korea is considerably higher than the cost of the same concert with the same ensemble in Europe. Promoters say that the discrepancy is due to a lack of government subsidy and corporate support for the arts. JoongAng Daily (South Korea) 07/23/04
Posted: 07/22/2004 7:45 pm
Is Spurned Edwards Leaving NPR? Since being forced off the mike as host of Morning Edition several months ago, Bob Edwards has kept a relatively low profile as he travels the country promoting his latest book. But as the book tour draws to a close, Edwards admits that he has been listening to job offers from around the country, and while he declines to say if he plans to leave National Public Radio entirely, it seems a very real possibility. Houston Chronicle (AP) 07/23/04
Posted: 07/23/2004 6:28 am
Ronstadt's Crusade Continues Linda Ronstadt apparently isn’t bothered by having her encore drowned out by shouting and booing audience members. A week after being booted out of a Las Vegas casino hotel for the awful crime of dedicating her last song of the evening to controversial filmmaker Michael Moore, Ronstadt is continuing to reference Moore as “a great American patriot” at the end of her performances, causing walkouts, a mix of boos and cheers, and the occasional cry of “Traitor!” wherever she goes. Contra Costa Times (CA) 07/23/04
Posted: 07/23/2004 6:02 am
Sir Simon's Extracurricular Activity Famed conductor Sir Simon Rattle is making headlines of a sort usually reserved for pop musicians. This week, Rattle admitted that he has separated from his wife of eight years, and is living with the famous Czech mezzo-soprano Magdalena Kozena, who is 18 years his junior. The affair is causing quite a stir in Europe's normally staid classical music scene... The Telegraph (UK) 07/23/04
Posted: 07/22/2004 7:09 pm
West End Story Attendance at theaters in London's famous West End are at a record low point, and at least one British arts executive is blaming the district's overly careful and conservative selection of shows. But the problem may have as much to do with a lack of consistency at the theaters, and with the fact that few shows are being given a chance to dig in and establish an audience base. The Guardian (UK) 07/23/04
Posted: 07/23/2004 6:22 am
RSC Won't Demolish Theater The Royal Shakespeare Company has abandoned its plans to demolish its theater in Stratford-Upon-Avon as part of a major renovation project. The 72-year-old Royal Shakespeare Theatre had been slated for possible demolition under the RSC's initial plan, but public opposition convinced the company to backpedal. BBC 07/22/04
Posted: 07/22/2004 8:02 pm
- Previously: Does The RSC Really Need London? The Royal Shakespeare Company has been looking for a London Home. "But why does the RSC need a London base? Partly because it is the will of the Arts Council that the company has "a regular and sustained presence in the capital", and partly because the management finds it difficult to persuade agents to sign their actors up for a Stratford season unless a London transfer is part of the deal. These are not altogether cogent reasons." The Telegraph (UK) 07/21/04
The Year Of The Documentary It's clear now that we are in the midst of a documentary boom, says Geoff Pevere, and the more controversial, the better. So what's driving the rush to fact-based films? Well, technology has made such films a lot easier to make than they used to be. The world is a polarized and dangerous place at the moment, which whets the appetite for information. And the Bush administration, with its constant attempts to "manage" information, has certainly made a certain sector of the populace thirst for alternative knowledge. "One more thing: When [documentaries] work, they can knock you flat on your ass." Toronto Star 07/23/04
Posted: 07/23/2004 6:56 am
How iPods Could Fail Lost amid all the hype surrounding the iPod and its copycats is the fact that, despite the obvious consumer interest in digital music, no one audio file format has yet emerged as the industry standard. Songs downloaded in iPod's format, for instance, cannot be played on Sony's player. More importantly, with a few major media companies (like Sony) controlling the majority of the available product, Apple is running a significant risk of having the iPod become the new Betamax if its format doesn't become the standard, and soon. The Telegraph (UK) 07/22/04
Posted: 07/22/2004 8:46 pm
The Feminine Ideal Wears Toe Shoes What is it about ballet that has always caused the form to be inextricably linked to the adoration of women? John Rockwell says that, no matter how many male dancers achieve stardom, "a gauzy Romantic image of womanhood, no matter how tweaked with grandeur or anger or rage or seductiveness, remains central to the art." The Royal Ballet, in New York this week, emphasizes the point with a new young crop of principal dancers, including four ballerinas "[representing] different facets of the ballerina archetype, past and present." The New York Times 07/23/04
Posted: 07/23/2004 5:04 am
Flamenco Legend Dies "The world of flamenco lost part of its soul this week with the death of Antonio Gades, who died in Madrid at the age of 67 after a long battle with cancer." A lifelong Communist, Gades claimed to view dance not as a vocation or an art, but as a means to overcome the societal oppression and poverty into which he was born. Financial Times (UK) 07/22/04
Posted: 07/22/2004 8:12 pm
