Music On The Brain A study of violinists has shown that mastery of a musical instrument actually causes the human brain to rewire itself to better deal with the demands of the activity. It doesn't mean that musicians are somehow smarter than the average adult, merely that their brains have been wired for greater manual dexterity than non-musicians. The findings can likely be extended to include other specialized areas of human endeavor, such as athletics. Chicago Tribune (Cox) 07/07/05
Posted: 07/07/2005 6:31 am
How Computers Decide Where You'll Shop Wondering how companies decide where to locate stores? Now computers decide. "High tech has given a new twist to the old real estate mantra: location, location, location. Ever wonder why sometimes you see two Starbucks coffee shops located within the same block -- or right across the street from each other? It's not by chance. Site selection has been fine-tuned to a digital art. A retailer can now closely analyze all of the sales information that it has to understand the lifestyles and preferences of its customers. Then, companies can combine that info with mapping and demographic software to decide whether it's worthwhile to open a store at a given location." BusinessWeek 07/06/05
Posted: 07/06/2005 7:20 pm
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Security Concerns Run Amok It's tough to get past the irony of calling a monolithic, fear-inspired fortress the Freedom Tower, and John King says that the revamped design is not only a disappointment, but a betrayal of the resilient spirit shown by New Yorkers in the days and weeks after the 9/11 attacks. "In the 45 months since terrorists slaughtered 2,749 people and toppled the tallest towers in New York, the 16-acre site has mirrored too closely the national response to the changed world scene. The first year brought a resilient courage that suggested New York and the United States might rise from the tragedy in stirring new ways. But since then, the original impulses that united people across cultural and political spectrums have been muddied beyond recognition." San Francisco Chronicle 07/07/05
Posted: 07/07/2005 7:03 am
Price Hike In Philly The Philadelphia Museum of Art is hiking its admission prices as much as 29%, beginning in August. The general admission fee will rise to $12, which puts the museum in the same range as the Art Institute of Chicago, but still well below higher fees at major museums in New York and Boston. Philadelphia Inquirer 07/07/05
Posted: 07/07/2005 6:53 am
Canaletto Sale Shatters Expectations "A painting by Italian master Canaletto has set a world record for the artist after being sold for £11m - twice its expected price - at auction in London. The painting shows the Doge of Venice's barge, the Bucintoro, with crowds on what is thought to be Ascension Day, when the Doge blessed the city. An anonymous telephone bidder bought the work, which had been owned by a Portuguese billionaire." BBC 07/07/05
Posted: 07/07/2005 6:05 am
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A Promotion In Zurich "Franz Welser-Möst, the music director of the Cleveland Orchestra, will become general music director of Zurich Opera in September, a spokesperson for the orchestra confirmed. The appointment is a promotion for Welser-Möst, who served as music director of the opera company from 1995 through 2002 and has been principal conductor since. He has agreed to an initial term of five years, through 2011. He will retain his position in Cleveland, where his current contract runs through 2012." PlaybillArts 07/07/05
Posted: 07/07/2005 5:50 am
Honolulu Looks For Internal Stability The Honolulu Symphony is poised to announce a major overhaul of its management structure today, in an effort to turn around years of fiscal instability. Former Pittsburgh Symphony executive Gideon Toeplitz will be taking over as interim president, and a new board chair will be appointed as well. The changes were precipitated by a period of uncertainty a the orchestra, which began when a consultant criticized the performance of symphony president Stephen Bloom, who promptly resigned. Pacific Business News 07/07/05
Posted: 07/07/2005 5:44 am
Utah Symphony & Opera Back On Track The Utah Symphony & Opera, which has faced mounting criticism in recent months from within its musician ranks and from others in the music industry for a perceived failure of management, has announced that it is on track to implement a financial recovery plan. "The organization had achieved 90 percent of its fundraising goals as of June 6 and ticket sales as of May 31 exceeded goals by $128,000, according to the report, which emerged from a task force set up by the US&O board to ensure recovery from operating deficits that followed the 2002 merger of Utah Symphony and Utah Opera." The success of the plan is critical - the US&O had vowed to consider layoffs if revenue projections were not met. Salt Lake Tribune 07/07/05
Posted: 07/07/2005 5:36 am
What Have You Got Against The Neoromantics? "Neoromanticism has almost always been regarded with suspicion by critics, even though it has been embraced by at least as many composers as has neoclassicism. (The second edition of the New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians devotes twice as much space to neoclassicism as to neoromanticism.) Is this because neoromantic music is inferior in quality? Or is it merely the last gasp of the same prejudice in favor of innovation for its own sake that once led avant-garde composers and their critical sympathizers to dismiss all tonal music as “useless”?" Commentary 07/05
Posted: 07/06/2005 10:40 pm
Ringing Effort - A New Handbell Record A Canadian man sets a record for continuous handbell ringing. "While bell-ringing is usually performed by choirs of 11 people, Devries played solo for close to 28 hours, drawing from the roughly 1,300 songs he had prepared. He began at 8 a.m. local time Tuesday and stopped at approximately 11:45 a.m. Wednesday." CBC 07/06/05
Posted: 07/06/2005 7:35 pm
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Does Crime Really Give You Cred? Probably Not. Hip-hop culture has often been said to be inextricably bound together with thuggery and crime, and the genre's biggest stars are also frequently the ones with the longest rap sheets. It's all about the mysterious notion of "credibility," a measure of personal and professional success considered vitally important to American rappers. But the conventional wisdom probably misses the point about hip-hop's crime connection, and so, too, do many rappers: "if your rhymes don't ring true to begin with, an arrest will probably just make matters worse... For a rapper, having your name printed in the police blotter is likely merely to reinforce whatever perceptions fans already have." The New York Times 07/07/05
Posted: 07/07/2005 6:45 am
A Tax Break For Performing Arts Radio? A proposal before the US Congress would give tax incentives to a commercial radio station that gave over its license to performing arts groups. "The Cultural Radio Tax Credit Act of 2005 (or HR 2904) was introduced June 15 and would provide a tax credit to the owner of a radio broadcasting station that "donates the license and other assets of said station to a nonprofit corporation for purposes of supporting nonprofit fine arts and performing arts organizations." Backstage 07/06/05
Posted: 07/06/2005 7:38 pm
UK's Australian Invasion Why are Australians running some of the UK's biggest arts institutions? "Little in their sunkissed insularity has equipped them for the ethnic and economic diversity of British arts and their focus is so short-term that only the most desperate of boards would, it seems to me, choose a second-string Aussie above a locally experienced, lifelong committed Brit. It makes no sense at all. More alarming still is the effect of their mass defection on the morale and infrastructure of Australian culture." La Scena Musicale 07/06/05
Posted: 07/06/2005 7:11 pm
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Plays Rarely Require 63 Acres Of Stage Space, Anyway Shakespeare & Company, a summer troupe based in the Berkshire Mountains of western Massachusetts, is selling half of a 63-acre parcel of land it bought in 2000 in an effort to wipe out a $2.2 million debt and give the company a modicum of financial stability. "The sale also means that company founder and artistic director Tina Packer's stalled campaign to re-create on the site London's Rose Theatre, where several of Shakespeare's plays were mounted, can move forward again." Boston Globe 07/07/05
Posted: 07/07/2005 6:21 am
A West End Check Up - How To Keep It Healthy London's West End is doing well right now. But how to keep it thriving? How might it have to change to stay succesful in 20 years time? Herewith some strong opinions... The Guardian (UK) 07/06/05
Posted: 07/06/2005 10:17 pm
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The Cover With Two Books (Uh-Oh) "Sometimes the photographs on book covers are not just similar, but exact duplicates. Rather than pay photographers' day rates, most book designers turn to stock-photography agencies. Top agencies charge $1,200 to $1,500 a photograph, and twice that for exclusive rights, a premium publishers are loath to pay. That's where the trouble starts." The New York Times 07/07/05
Posted: 07/06/2005 10:26 pm
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Getting Ahead Of The Pirates A new movie-download site sponsored by chipmaker Intel is promising to allow consumers to legally download films while they are still being shown in theatres. The project was conceived as an effort to avoid the years of infighting and lawsuits faced by the music industry when consumers began illegally sharing digital music files online. Key to the service's success will be the industry's ability to convince consumers that it is easy to use, convenient, and preferable to the various illegal methods of obtaining bootlegged movies. Wired 07/07/05
Posted: 07/07/2005 6:08 am
The Decline Of The Movie Audience Over Many Decades "Whatever the box-office blips, the regular movie audience has been so decimated over the past 56 years that the habitual weekly adult moviegoer will soon qualify as an endangered species. In 1948, 90 million Americans—65 percent of the population—went to a movie house in an average week; in 2004, 30 million Americans—roughly 10 percent of the population—went to see a movie in an average week. What changed in the interval was that virtually every American family bought a TV set, and home entertainment largely replaced theater entertainment. More important than mere numbers, the nature of the audience changed in this secular decline." Slate 07/05/05
Posted: 07/06/2005 10:34 pm
Blockbuster In Perilous Times "Blockbuster, with $6 billion in annual revenue, still dominates the movie-rental industry, but lately that business has been shrinking faster than Lindsay Lohan's waistline. As DVDs have replaced VHS tapes, more Americans have shifted to buying movies instead of renting them—and most don't buy them at Blockbuster. In 2003 U.S. movie rentals were an $8.2 billion business, but by 2009 that will shrink to $6.3 billion." So what to do? Newsweek 06/27/05
Posted: 07/06/2005 7:29 pm
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Dance USA (It's Thriving) "Dance in America is very much alive, and the competitive dance circuit - in which children as young as 6 strut their sequined stuff in jazz, hip-hop, tap and lyrical dance numbers at dozens of events across the nation - is among the most exhilarating and, some say, least artistic of its manifestations. The proliferation of competitions, which were sparse 30 years ago but now draw tens of thousands of participants, most between the ages of 10 and 16, has helped to fuel the growth of private dance studios and to raise the caliber of dance teachers and students." The New York Times 07/07/05
Posted: 07/06/2005 10:24 pm
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