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Wednesday, March 19




Ideas

Iraq: A Looming Archaeological Crisis "Virtually all of Iraq is an archaeological site. Some 10,000 sites have been identified in Iraq, and many more, perhaps half a million, await discovery. They range from the size of a small city to the size of your backyard. Each has its own stories, each is unique, each is irreplaceable, each is crucial. The sum of those stories is a fundamental part of who we are today. Our archaeological heritage is a nonrenewable resource, and when part of it is destroyed, that part of us is lost forever. The political turmoil of the last decade in Iraq has turned its archaeological emergencies into catastrophes." Public Arts (WBUR.org) 03/18/03
Posted: 03/18/2003 6:56 pm

Visual Arts

Should Artists' Estates Be Protected For The World? The estates of Francis Bacon and Andre Breton are currently in danger of being broken up and sold. "Our instinct cries out to protect the 'integrity' of such inheritances by keeping them together. But is that justified? Should the state, as it does in France, have a say? Or should great art have a life of its own when its creator dies, beyond the control of its maker and his loved ones?" London Evening Standard 03/18/03
Posted: 03/18/2003 5:24 pm

Right Project At The Right Time Ada Louise Huxtable is a fan of the winning design for the World Trade Center site. "The design by Daniel Libeskind is not about death and destruction, as some have feared; it is an original and eventful reconstruction of the World Trade Center site that brings the architecture of the 21st century to New York, where it has been sadly and shamefully lacking. Even as we preserve that tragic pit and its sustaining wall, they will become the source of new life. But this will happen only if the spotlight stays relentlessly on the rebuilding process, and if we do not lose the urgent sense of necessity and inevitability that has brought us this far." OpinionJournal.com 03/19/03
Posted: 03/18/2003 5:02 pm

Finalists For UK Museum Of The Year Four English museums have been shortlisted for the first £100,000 Gulbenkian Prize for museum innovation. Finalists include London's Natural History Museum and The Discovery Point in Dundee, the galleries of Justice in Nottingham and Rotherham's Clifton Park Museum. BBC 03/18/03
Posted: 03/18/2003 2:07 pm

Music

The Revolution Will Be Webcast Last week, one of the Dixie Chicks casually mentioned that she was rather ashamed of President Bush sharing her home state, and a furor erupted that has the Chicks' music being pulled from radio stations nationwide. With that kind of wild-eyed nationalism infecting the U.S., it's no wonder that protest songs are hardly in vogue among big stars at the moment. But they do exist - on the web. "From hip hop artists Chuck D and the Beastie Boys to veteran singer/songwriters such as John Mellencamp and Billy Bragg, a general distaste for political fare on commercial radio has lead them to the Web, where songs they've written to protest the looming war with Iraq are readily available for free." Toronto Star 03/19/03
Posted: 03/19/2003 6:50 am

Happy Ending After All in Colorado Less than a week after the beleaguered Colorado Springs Symphony dissolved itself in bankruptcy court, the musicians of the old CSSO joined with their old music director and a new board leadership of their choosing to form the new Colorado Springs Philharmonic. The executive director of the Phil will be Susan Greene, who had been dismissed from the same position at the CSSO a year ago, sparking angry questions from the musicians. Denver Post 03/18/03
Posted: 03/19/2003 6:16 am

Baltimore Symphony Facing Money Woes "Like a persistent virus, the economic downturn continues to infect musical organizations across the country. No immediate cure is in sight... The Baltimore Symphony Orchestra's projected deficit for the current fiscal year has gone from $515,000, estimated last November, to $806,000 as of this month. Underlining the troubling financial picture is the fact that BSO management has unexpectedly opened up negotiations with the musicians, even though their contract, approved three years ago, doesn't expire until 2005. Neither side will provide details of these discussions, but it's clear that the orchestra is looking into every option, including possible financial concessions from the players, to stop the flow of red ink." Baltimore Sun 03/18/03
Posted: 03/19/2003 6:06 am

Cleveland Losing Three Principal Players Major orchestras don't lose their principal musicians very often. After all, these are the plum jobs of the music industry, high-salaried and high-profile. But this year, the Cleveland Orchestra will lose no fewer than three of its principal players, and the scramble for their jobs is on. Two of the three principals are retiring, and the other, who had moved up from second chair, is returning to his old position after not being tenured at the principal position. The Plain Dealer (Cleveland) 03/18/03
Posted: 03/19/2003 6:01 am

Of Goalies I Sing... Any doubt that opera is the high-art form of the moment? "The Czech National Theater said on Monday it was working on an opera to commemorate the surprise gold medal victory of the Czech men's Olympic ice hockey team in Nagano in 1998. 'It is a kind of modern Czech legend and operas have always been based on legends. We know it is an unusual motif but it is quite interesting and able to carry some kind of a musical form'." Yahoo! (Reuters) 03/18/03
Posted: 03/18/2003 5:05 pm

Debate On The Future Of English National Opera The English Arts Council is meeting to discuss the fate of the troubled English National Opera. How much money will it take to save the company, which has been plagues by cutbacks, strikes and defections? "We are not going to give them any money as long as we think it is going to be bad money after good. What ENO must do is take their own destiny into their own hands." BBC 03/18/03
Posted: 03/18/2003 2:01 pm

Getting It Together To Sell Music Pretty much everyone agrees that digital copying of music isn't going to stop any time soon. And there's a growing consensus that the recording industry needs to "loosen up" if it wants to emerge with a viable business in the "rip, mix, burn" era. Finally tech companies and recording producers are getting together to explore nw ways of distributing and selling content. Village Voice 03/18/03
Posted: 03/18/2003 1:37 pm

Arts Issues

Art Or Finance - Is This Any Way To Run An Arts Organization? Arts management is a vicious circle, writes Rupert Christiansen. Here's the way it goes: "Some ambitious romantic, out of touch with audience taste and budgetary actuality, leads the accounts to the brink of financial catastrophe and plug-pulling threats from the subsidising bodies. The board panics and appoints someone with experience of the 'real world' of business or industry. He or she imports a management consultancy. A lot of paper-pushing, a lot of bellowing, a lot of sacking ensues. Morale among the creators and curators is decimated, and the quality of the art plummets." It doesn't have to be this way... The Telegraph (UK) 03/19/03
Posted: 03/18/2003 5:29 pm

People

Portrait of a Patron It's not that most wealthy supporters of classical music don't like new and challenging works. It's just that, well, we all love our Beethoven, don't we, and so many of these young composers nowadays just insist on writing the most horrid, unlistenable stuff, and who wants to throw their money away on that? Kathryn Gould is an exception to the rule. An amateur musician and devoted lover of new music, she is pumping large amounts of her money into an effort to create a 'renaissance of new music' in Northern California. Her efforts will result in multiple high-profile performances of new works by orchestras around the Bay Area, at a time when most organizations are cutting back on commissioning. San Jose Mercury News 03/19/03
Posted: 03/19/2003 6:44 am

Writers To Get Sheep Permissions Five notable writers will soon have the right to drive sheep through the city's main street. Liverpool city council formally votes at a special meeting tomorrow to honour Alan Bleasdale, Carla Lane, Willy Russell, Jimmy McGovern and Dame Beryl Bainbridge as freemen of the city. It's an honorary title, but it does carry the benefit of the sheep thing. And free rides on ferries... The Guardian (UK) 03/18/03
Posted: 03/18/2003 5:17 pm

Theatre

Keeping Women Off The Stage? At the Guthrie Theater in Minneapolis, a city which prides itself on being home to several great theater companies, women make up over 50% of the audience. So why does the city's leading theater troupe present so few plays written or produced by women? Is it misogyny? Tradition? Simple oversight? Other area theaters have expanded their offerings over the years to include more works by women, with much success, so why hasn't the big dog in town followed suit? "On some level the Guthrie's record is so gaudily bad as to be almost a mystery." City Pages (Minneapolis/St. Paul) 03/19/03
Posted: 03/19/2003 6:54 am

Why Can't Opera People Leave Broadway Alone? What is it with opera stars that they aren't satisfied with their own extensive repertoire, and feel the need to try to belt out Broadway showtunes in their over-the-top, ridiculously stylized voices? David Patrick Stearns doesn't like it one bit, not even when the offender is as critically acclaimed a performer as Renee Fleming. "So what if operatic vocal amplitude overwhelms the words, rhythm, and any number of other things? It sounds so pretty!" Philadelphia Inquirer 03/19/03
Posted: 03/19/2003 6:37 am

Baz's Boheme Bubble May Be Bursting Baz Luhrmann's critically acclaimed staging of La Boheme may be in some unexpected trouble on Broadway. "Last week's gross receipts rang in at $590,000, just a fraction above the break-even of $550,000. According to Variety, "Boheme" grosses have been plunging tens of thousands of dollars every week since a high of $830,000 in February." Michael Riedel blames the show's lack of popularity on the unwillingness of Broadway fans to take a chance on anything more mind-stretching than John Waters's Hairspray. New York Post 03/19/03
Posted: 03/19/2003 6:31 am

CBS Extends Tony Broadcast CBS has decided to expand its broadcast of this year's Tony Awards to three hours. "For the last five years, the Tonys were shown for two hours on CBS, with an initial hour on PBS, which usually featured the design awards as well as awards for director of best play and best musical." This year PBS was unable to handle the broadcast and some feared that the first hour wouldn't be televised. Nando Times (AP) 03/18/03
Posted: 03/18/2003 5:58 pm

The West End - For Better And Worse London's West End theatres offer the kind of dramatic range and diversity that Broadway can only dream of. The West End generates more than $2 billion of economic impact each year. About 12 million people attend West End productions every year, and there was a 3.2% rise in attendance last year - a remarkable statistic considering the current depressed states of the economy and tourism." Still, there are some problems, not the least of which is the shabby condition of West End theatres. Backstage 03/18/03
Posted: 03/18/2003 1:54 pm

Publishing

Are British Readers Abandoning Newspapers? British newspapers are ailing. "Advertising revenue shows no signs of recovering after falling for the past two years, and the latest circulation figures suggest that nearly all titles have lost sales over the past year. Journalists are worrying about their jobs, and managers about the newspapers they manage. An article in the Economist suggests that the newspaper industry is in long-term decline, and that even those young people who can actually read are turning away from papers in increasing numbers. The sense of gloom is infectious." The Spectator 03/03
Posted: 03/18/2003 5:53 pm

Media

Giving Back To The City "The Toronto International Film Festival Group announced yesterday that it had pumped $67-million into the economy in 2002, more than double the nearly $30-million the organization generated in 1993, the date of its last study of economic impact. In addition, the September film festival, widely considered second only to Cannes on the global stage, was responsible for $22.2-million in documented sales of four films, based on reports in trade papers such as Variety. However, the festival office says that sales figure is conservative, because a total of 41 films were sold, although not all prices are known." The Globe & Mail (Toronto) 03/19/03
Posted: 03/19/2003 6:22 am

Gandolfini Back On Board Sopranos obsessives, you may resume breathing now. HBO reached a contract settlement with disgruntled star James Gandolfini this week, and the hit (no pun intended) series will not have to delay production. Gandolfini and HBO had filed lawsuits against each other after the network missed a deadline in the actor's contract process. Conventional wisdom held that Gandolfini was angling for a raise. He got one. Dallas Morning News (AP) 03/19/03
Posted: 03/19/2003 6:13 am

A Rocky Road To Chicago Now that "Chicago" is a favorite for an Academy Award, those involved in the project are putting up a happy front. But the years it took to wrestle "Chicago" to the screen was a battle - stars and songs and collaborators and scripts coming and going... The New York Times 03/19/03
Posted: 03/18/2003 6:24 pm

New York's Bid For The Movie Big Time New York is building a $150 million 15-acre movie studio complex in the Brooklyn Navy Yard. "Steiner Studios, named for the shopping center tycoons who are funding the mega-project out of their own pockets, promises to be in operation next year. Their hope is to regenerate a Gotham entertainment business that peaked back in 1998—when 221 films were shot in the city (compared with 180 last year) and the plans for the Brooklyn studio first emerged. But now, while producers, crews, and city officials agree that New York's film and TV infrastructure seriously needs a face-lift, there are doubts about whether our entertainment sector—already struggling with the flight of productions to cheaper locales—can sustain such an ambitious venture." Village Voice 03/18/03
Posted: 03/18/2003 1:25 pm


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