Ideas Exploring The Architecture Of Music "Since music is the only one of the arts that is designed for the ears rather than the eyes, we sometimes tend to forget that it is part of the corporeal world, since our sense of reality is so eye-driven. However, all sound must emanate from somewhere, which makes the notion of space in music the most down-to-earth of all of the components that go into the making of music. Thinking of music without acknowledging its spatial possibilities is sort of like the study of plane geometry. You can learn a lot of formulas and neat shapes, but the real world is 3D!" NewMusicBox 01/03 Posted: 01/15/2003 5:53 pm Visual Arts Morant Collection Goes To Banff The Whyte Museum in Banff, Alberta, "is thrilled by the generous donation it has received of one of Canada's most prized photographic collections. Thousands of personal photos taken by world-famous photographer Nicholas Morant, who died in 1999, were recently donated by Morant's widow, Margaret E. Morant, to the prestigious museum in the Canadian Rockies... The 'generous gift' includes 23,000 photographs and three metres of textual material. There are also sound recordings and hundreds of items related to Morant's photographic equipment, including virtually all of his cameras." Calgary Herald 01/16/03 Posted: 01/16/2003 5:50 am End Of A Historical Line Art historian Sir Ernst Gombrich was "the last member of a formidable dynasty of philosophers and historians who, beginning in central Europe during the nineteenth century, devoted themselves to discovering the deep structures of human culture." Gombrich's narratives describe "the progress of art as a slow, successful conquest of the difficulties of perception. The problem with this view is that the tide of taste runs in absolutely the opposite direction..." Yale Review Of Books 12/02 Music Washington Opera's New Digs Washington Opera moves into tiny Constitution Hall while its home at the Kennedy Center is renovated. "Longtime concertgoers have been shaking their heads. An opera house? With that tiny stage? In that vast, cavernous diffusion of bluish space? An opera house. It was not only home to the National Symphony Orchestra for that ensemble's first 40 years, but it has been the site of countless recitals by the great, the near-great and the long-forgotten, both before and after the Kennedy Center opened in 1971." Washington Post 01/16/03 Posted: 01/16/2003 5:58 pm Oundjian To Lead Toronto Canadian-born violinist and conductor Peter Oundjian will be officially introduced today as the new music director of the Toronto Symphony Orchestra. The TSO has been director-less since Jukka-Pekka Saraste quit in something of a quiet huff in 2001, and in the two years since, the orchestra has struggled with massive deficits, the threat of bankruptcy, and an ongoing dispute between the musicians and orchestra management. Oundjian, who took up conducting after an injury drove him from his place in the Tokyo String Quartet, is widely considered to be a rising star among North American conductors. Toronto Star 01/16/03 Posted: 01/16/2003 6:51 am SF Opera Cuts Concerts, But Not Brain Cells The San Francisco Opera, forced by budget constraints to trim its season, unveiled the revised schedule of performances this week, and the results are at least somewhat encouraging, says Joshua Kosman. While the number of productions may be down, the company "has refused to compromise on some of [its] more adventurous programming decisions. The season will open Sept. 6 with the company premiere of Virgil Thomson and Gertrude Stein's 1947 collaboration The Mother of Us All, and will also include productions of Busoni's Doktor Faust, Shostakovich's Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk and Janacek's The Cunning Little Vixen." San Francisco Chronicle 01/16/03 Posted: 01/16/2003 6:46 am And Joni Begat Anne, Who Begat Celine, Who Begat... What is it about Canadian women and their dominance of the American pop music scene? From Joni Mitchell to k.d. lang to Alanis Morissette to Avril Lavigne, Canadians produce an astonishing percentage of America's favorite music. Is it the simple purity of the Great White North, as contrasted with the over-produced, predictable offerings coming out of market-driven L.A. studios? Is it savvy Canadian marketing infiltrating the Yankee sensibility? Is it just a big coincidence? Um, yes. All of that, and probably a few more things we haven't thought of yet. National Post (Canada) 01/16/03 Posted: 01/16/2003 6:18 am Big Times In A Small Town In Annapolis, Maryland, a drama is unfolding surrounding the local symphony orchestra, and while the ensemble may be small, the intrigue is worthy of a much larger organization. It all began when Annapolis music director Leslie Dunner’s contract was not renewed last fall, sparking protests from the orchestra’s musicians, and shock from donors and concertgoers. At the time, the board cited declining ticket sales as the reason for the change. Speculation has been growing that there may have been other, darker reasons for the dismissal. Baltimore Sun 01/15/03 Posted: 01/16/2003 5:48 am There's A Reason - We Just Won't Say What It Is The board of the Annapolis Symphony Orchestra still won't reveal the “true reasons” behind the board’s dismissal of ASO music director Leslie Dunner. At a board meeting last night, Dunner ducked out early, and president Bud Billups wasn’t talking about what he called “a personnel matter.” Baltimore Sun 01/16/03 Posted: 01/16/2003 5:45 am Arts Issues Supreme Court Refuses Copyright Challenge The US Supreme Court, while conceding that a 1998 extension of the Copyright Act might not be good public policy, has rejected the idea that the law is unconstitutional. "The 7-to-2 decision came in the court's most closely watched intellectual property case in years, one with financial implications in the billions of dollars. A major victory for the Hollywood studios and other big corporate copyright holders that had lobbied strenuously for the extension, the ruling had the effect of keeping the original Mickey Mouse as well as other icons of midcentury American culture from slipping into the public domain." The New York Times 01/15/03 For The Majority Read the majority opinion. US Supreme Court 01/15/03 Justice Stevens' Dissent "If Congress may not expand the scope of a patent monopoly, it also may not extend the life of a copyright beyond its expiration date. Accordingly, insofar as the 1998 Sonny Bono Copyright Term Extension Act, 112 Stat. 2827, purported to extend the life of unexpired copyrights, it is invalid." US Supreme Court 01/15/03 Justice Breyer's Dissent "The economic effect of this 20-year extension - the longest blanket extension since the Nation's founding is to make the copyright term not limited, but virtually perpetual. Its primary legal effect is to grant the extended term not to authors, but to their heirs, estates, or corporate successors. And most importantly, its practical effect is not to promote, but to inhibit, the progress of 'Science' by which word the Framers meant learning or knowledge." US Supreme Court 01/15/03 Top Editor: Serious About Reinventing New York Times Culture Coverage Howell Raines, the executive editor of The New York Times, has made it his mission to reinvigorate the paper’s cultural coverage. "He called the culture section the 'crown jewel' of the paper and added: 'It is as much a part of our signature identity as the foreign report'." Already the changes have begun... New York Observer 01/15/03 Kantor To Head NYT's Arts & Leisure? Word is that "Jodi Kantor, New York editor of Web magazine Slate - has emerged as the top candidate to become editor of The New York Times 'Arts & Leisure' section." Kantor is 27 and has been at Slate for four years. The move signals NYT executive editor Howell Raines' seriousness about a new direction for the paper's culture page. New York Daily News 01/15/03 People Getting Used To Stardom Ever since Salvatore Licitra stepped in to fill the shoes of an ailing Luciano Pavarotti at the Metropolitan Opera last year and brought the house down with his powerful tenor, he has been tagged as the Next Tenor. These days, preparing for his Carnegie Hall debut next week, Licitra is starting to adjust to being a star, but thankfully, he's not speaking in cliches yet. He complains that Pavarotti never even called to wish him luck on the night of his unexpected Met debut, and jokes that being a tenor has its downside - all the operatic tenor characters, he insists, are "stupido" or "son of a beetch." New York Post 01/16/03 Posted: 01/16/2003 6:32 am Life After Laureate - Quincy Troupe Begins Again Quincy Troupe, who had to resign as California's first Poet Laureate and from his teaching job at the University of California, San Diego last fall after it was discovered he had lied on his resume, has settled into a new life. "I think I did the admirable thing by resigning, but that wasn't enough for some people. They wanted me to bleed. You wouldn't believe the hate mail that I received. The (racial slurs) I was called. I didn't do anything that cost anyone a dime. It wasn't fraud. I didn't do what the people at Enron did. But some people wanted my head." Sacramento Bee 01/15/03 Publishing Growth In Used-Book Sales Let's look at the used-book business. Since 1993 the used-book business has grown substantially. But "between 2000-2002, there was a 4.8% decrease in the number of open shops." Why? Though the business continues to grow, the internet is accounting for more sales. Bookhunter Press 01/03 The New Harry In June The latest installment in the Harry Potter series will be on sale June 21. "Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix will be released on a Saturday so that young fans do not have to skip school to buy it on its first day. More than a third of a million copies of the last Potter book were sold on its first day of release in July 2000 as Potter mania swept the UK." BBC 01/15/03 Media Down Mood As Sundance Opens The mood is not positive as this year's Sundance Festival opens. "Though Sundance continues to be the most important platform for American independent film and the one place where the entire indie world comes together to make deals and to take stock, there is a widespread sense that the market for independent film financing is depressed." The New York Times 01/16/03 Posted: 01/16/2003 6:34 am Thumbs Up For Sundance Pessimism? At Sundance? Well, maybe so, but you won't hear any booing from Roger Ebert's seat. "I have just spent an hour with the 2003 program for the Sundance Film Festival, and I am churning with eagerness to get at these films. On the basis of track records, this could be the strongest Sundance in some time -- and remember, last year's festival kicked off an extraordinary year for indie films." National Post (Canada) 01/16/03 Posted: 01/16/2003 6:25 am Vancouver May Be Hot Again The Canadian film industry has come in for plenty of criticism for its habit of luring Hollywood productions northward with lower production costs and a wide variety of natural locations in which to shoot, and the number of US productions made in Canada has dropped as a result. But after a couple of down years, the nation's biggest film production center, Vancouver, appears to be making a comeback. The Globe & Mail (Toronto) 01/16/03 Posted: 01/16/2003 5:59 am Ma Bell, Now On Your TV! Cable television rates are skyrocketing around the US, as service providers continue to be consolidated into a few, gigantic companies. What used to be an industry of diverse local monopolies is becoming an uncontrollable corporate behemoth with the authority to raise rates, yank channels, and gouge consumers at will, says Monica Collins. “The average household cable bill has climbed to $70 a month for television that used to be free.” And while countless lawmakers have called for Congressional hearings on the way the cable industry conducts itself, that public airing of gripes never seems to happen. Boston Herald 01/16/03 Posted: 01/16/2003 5:46 am Dance Pacific Northwest Ballet Makes Cuts Facing a $500,000 deficit, Seattle's Pacific Northwest Ballet has made some cuts. "The majority of cuts will be made by a two-week unpaid leave for administrative staff; the cancellation of two performances for each of the company's mixed bills in March and April, and the postponement of a new work by Kent Stowell, PNB co-artistic director and principal choreographer, in April." Seattle Post-Intelligencer 01/15/05