Cage Legacy: Pioneering Music Theory Finds A Home In Video Games "The computer game industry is a bit like the early days of opera: Composers are exploring untested ways of combining music, story, and visual spectacle. Fifty years ago, avant-gardists like Earle Brown and John Cage were leaving the ordering of musical events up to the players. Now this once-arcane technique is being used by game composers for far more commercial purposes. Composers call it 'branching music' — musical themes or tags linked to specific game events, designed so that any tag can lead un- jarringly to or from any other tag, creating a continuous flow, whatever the player's choices." Seattle Weekly 04/30/03
Posted: 04/30/2003 11:43 pm
Up On The Roof: A Sure Sign Of Spring "Few rites of spring are quite as delightful as the opening, each May, of the sculpture garden atop the Metropolitan Museum of Art. This year the honor goes to the late Roy Lichtenstein. One of the prime movers of Pop Art, Lichtenstein was not exactly a bad sculptor, but he certainly wasn't a good one, either. And yet, such is the magic of the sculpture garden that absolutely anything you put up there will look good." New York Post 05/01/03
Posted: 05/01/2003 6:36 am
Growing The Guggenheim (Abroad) Things haven't been so good for the Guggenheim lately at home. No matter - director Thomas Krens has always had a global vision. So "yesterday he and Cesar Maia, the mayor of Rio de Janeiro, signed an agreement to build a $130 million museum on Mauá Pier in Guanabara Bay. Rio will be the sixth city with Guggenheim museums and exhibition spaces, joining Berlin; Venice; Las Vegas; and Bilbao, Spain, as well as New York." The New York Times 05/01/03
Posted: 04/30/2003 11:24 pm
- Previously: Is Rio Guggenheim A City's Dream Or A Disaster In The Making? Rio de Janeiro officials are hoping that a splashy new Guggenheim museum there will help the city. "Local officials are hailing the proposed museum project as part of a grand new vision of Rio, the South American capital of sun and samba that in the future also could be considered an art lover's tourist destination. But even as the project inches closer to final approval, the new Guggenheim branch's critics are growing in numbers, threatening to derail the city's plans. They say the museum should be subordinated to more pressing social needs such as roads, schools and health care..." Chicago Tribune 04/17/03
Museums - Jumbo Egos, Jumbo Falls Hilton Kramer is cranky about over-ambitious expansion plans of museums chasing glory (and money). "How are we to characterize the narrative of turbulence and disarray that has lately overtaken some of our local institutions? I suggest that we think of it as the Museum Expansion Follies, for it’s in the service of this muddled narrative that a lot of money is spent (and lost) these days without much regard for negative consequences. And not only money..." The New York Observer 04/30/03
Posted: 04/30/2003 10:47 pm
Koons Goes Big "Artist Jeff Koons plans to erect a 360-foot tall sculpture in Hamburg - two cranes with outsize inner tubes dangling down - that he hopes will rival the effect of the Eiffel Tower." Nando Times (AP) 04/30/03
Posted: 04/30/2003 10:42 pm
The Thieves' Childlike Note Who stole three paintings from a Manchester gallery last weekend and left them in the rain? "Police released a picture yesterday of the crude, water-stained note written in dark blue ink, in an effort to find the thieves who stole £4m of artwork by Picasso, Gauguin and Van Gogh from the Whitworth Art Gallery. They also revealed that the thieves had intimate knowledge of the gallery. " The Guardian (UK) 04/30/03
Posted: 04/30/2003 9:58 pm
Change Is In The Air In Pittsburgh The Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra is in full red alert mode. The PSO is facing enormous deficits, little community support, and its search for a new managing director appears to be dragging on a bit, even as other major orchestras begin to snatch up promising candidates. Furthermore, the orchestra's musicians have no input into the search process, which is highly unusual among major orchestras, and no one seems quite sure where the organization is headed. But everyone involved seems to agree that, whomever the PSO settles on as its new chief executive, a major change in the way the orchestra does business is a must. Pittsburgh Post-Gazette 05/01/03
Posted: 05/01/2003 6:47 am
Sawallisch Does Carnegie, But Cancels In Philly It seems that Wolfgang Sawallisch's tenure with the Philadelphia Orchestra is coming to an end none too soon. The 79-year-old maestro, who has been battling severe fatigue lately, managed to muster the strength to conduct his final Carnegie Hall concert with the Fabulous Philadelphians this week, but his exhaustion has forced him to pull out of this week's concerts back in Philly, and the orchestra is making no guarantees that he will even be on hand for his farewell concerts next week, or for a taxing 3-week tour beginning immediately thereafter. All this is unfortunate, says Peter Dobrin, but "Sawallisch's last Carnegie concert will stand as a stunning and poignant musical memento." Philadelphia Inquirer 05/01/03
Posted: 05/01/2003 6:40 am
- Previously: What Sawallisch Means To Philadelphia "As Wolfgang Sawallisch ends his decade with three weeks of concerts that started last week and a forthcoming tour, he is as firm a personification of the Philadelphia Orchestra as Leopold Stokowski or Eugene Ormandy. He restored the Philadelphia Orchestra's famously velvety sound, erasing the more generic, international svelteness Muti imposed. He could be a fiery podium presence - sometimes. He didn't shrink from tough decisions, and several controversial moves only helped to concretize his leadership." Philadelphia Inquirer 04/26/03
Edmonton's Other Orchestra Evolves Metamorphosis, an Edmonton-based chamber orchestra, has had a good first season after being born from the ashes of the relationship between the Edmonton Symphony musicians and their management. Grzegorz Nowak, the conductor who was deposed from the symphony's music directorship only to announce that he would stay in town and start his own orchestra, has backed off his original brash plans of competing directly with his old employer, and crafted a much-needed niche ensemble. In fact, starting next season, the smaller group, which will be renamed the Canadian Chamber Orchestra, will be playing its concerts at the same hall occupied by the Edmonton Symphony. Edmonton Journal 04/30/03
Posted: 05/01/2003 5:20 am
How Cheap Does Music Have To Be? Apple CEO Steve Jobs unveiled the company's long-awaited new music downloading service this week, with a single song going for 99 cents. That's a good price, but many observers are already saying that it isn't nearly good enough to lure consumers away from peer-to-peer file swapping services, where they can get the same songs for free. There seems to be no shortage of opinions on what the proper price of a song really is, but no one really knows how Apple will fare, since their unique non-subscription-style download service hasn't really been tried before. Wired 05/01/03
Posted: 05/01/2003 5:13 am
Porn Gains On Music For File-Swappers Will Apple's cool new music file-trading service put file-swapper services such as Gnutella or Morpheus out of business? Not hardly. Why? Because an ever-increasing percentage of files being swapped online isn't music at all - it's porn. "There is absolutely no way Apple is going to make a dent in file sharing. Smut was the most sought-after content on the Gnutella file-trading system, according to a February survey, with 42 percent of all users hunting for blue pictures and movies." Wired 04/30/03
Posted: 04/30/2003 10:29 pm
Classical Music - Failure To Graduate British Prime Minister Tony Blair's recent admission that he doesn't really appreciate classical music is telling, writes Norman Lebrecht. "The problem is one of late adolescence. Most of us rebel at puberty against parental values, only to adopt most of them willy-nilly when we raise children. It used to be one of the more copper-bottomed truths of the music industry that kids who bought rock and pop in their teens and twenties switched to classics around their mid-thirties. The Blair generation is the first to buck that trend, clinging to decrepit rock idols like Jagger, Dylan and Eric Clapton, and embarrassing their offspring by listening to the White Stripes instead of making a mature transition to more intricate music." London Evening Standard 04/30/03
Posted: 04/30/2003 10:13 pm
Why Are Pulitzers So Shortsighted? Why are vjazz and popular music shut out of the annual Pulitzer Prizes? It's become an award about "serious" composers about other "seious" composers. This year's Pulitzer winner spoke out against the Pulitzers' overlooking of wide swaths of American music. So why is the focus so narrow? Village Voice 04/29/03
Posted: 04/30/2003 6:44 pm
A Thinking Woman's College Ups The Arts Ante Bryn Mawr College, just outside Philadelphia, is a famously intellectual place. But despite great achievement in many academic disciplines, the all-women's school has traditionally shunned such pursuits as education and the arts, perhaps because women have so often been pushed in these directions in the past as a way of keeping them from getting 'real' jobs. But this is the 21st century, where women are no longer expected to be only schoolteachers and housewives, and Bryn Mawr is adjusting its curriculum accordingly, adding an intensive creative writing and literature program in an effort to fill the artistic void. Chicago Tribune (Knight Ridder) 05/01/03
Posted: 05/01/2003 6:02 am
A Legal Right To Be A Thoughtless Fool Owners of an Irish movie theater have been informed that they are breaking national communications law by employing a signal blocker to disable their patrons' cell phones during screenings. The theater had installed the blocker as a response to an epidemic of moviegoers sending and receiving text messages on their phones, or even talking on them, while a film was playing. But as it turns out, such devices are illegal even to possess, and the use of one to block wireless transmissions carries a hefty fine. BBC 05/01/03
Posted: 05/01/2003 5:06 am
The Dark Side Of Official Diversity? "The days when arts organisations could be seen promoting 'traditional' arts to 'traditional' audiences are over. Phrases like 'reflecting diversity', 'breaking down barriers', 'building new audiences' and 'exploring ethnicity' trip off the tongues of arts funders and practitioners. Arts organisations are now seeking to fund and showcase diverse artists, and are employing 'specialist ethnic agencies' to promote arts events to specific communities. From one point of view, this represents a refreshing opening up of British cultural life. But the practice of organising policy on the basis of people's identities - which is a growing trend - has a dark side." spikes-online 04/29/03
Posted: 04/30/2003 10:17 pm
Colorado Cancels Grants Deadline Anticipating darstic cuts in its funding, the Colorado Council on the Arts cancelled this year's filing date for funding (It was supposed to be April 30). "This agency has been all but eliminated. It is no longer business as usual. We will be eliminating most of our programs as a result of these cuts. Nobody can expect us to do a $2.5 million job with only $200,000." In January, the council awarded 97 grants totaling $689,000 to various programs statewide. Last year, it gave out about $1.3 million in 154 grants. Durango Herald (Colorado) 04/30/03
Posted: 04/30/2003 6:39 pm
Blurring Art And Politics Randall Packer is the U.S. Secretary of Art & Technology. Didn't know there was one, did you? Well, okay, there isn't. The whole thing is a performance art piece. And a website. And a series of treatises. But there's a considerable amount of real-world crossover in Packer's work, and the questions he's raising about art, politics, money, and government are as valid and fascinating as if his Cabinet-level post were real. Washington Post 05/01/03
Posted: 05/01/2003 7:06 am
Piatigorsky at 100 "Among those whose music-making produced a level of beauty, insight and involvement practically alien to the present, cellist Gregor Piatigorsky will always be regarded highly." But with the decline in classical record sales and a general 'embrace-the-new' attitude in classical music, how many listeners really know Piatigorsky anymore? However many it is, the number should increase soon. Piatigorsky would have turned 100 this month, and several Baltimore-area arts organizations are celebrating with concerts, exhibits, and remembrances from family, friends, and colleagues. Baltimore Sun 05/01/03
Posted: 05/01/2003 5:47 am
Lousy Time To Hold A Festival "The disastrous opening days of the World Stage festival at Toronto's Harbourfront Centre left organizers joking about biblical plagues. The final ones left them facing a modern one." From the war in Iraq to a freak ice storm to cancellations to the SARS outbreak, World Stage was a disaster from beginning to end this year, and the hit came at a time when the festival was already struggling financially. The Globe & Mail (Canada) 05/01/03
Posted: 05/01/2003 6:17 am
RSC Moving Towards Mixed Casting The arts are all about diversity, of course, but in the theatre world, it can be difficult to draw certain lines. Can a black actor play Hamlet? If so, can a white actor play Othello, whose race is central to the play that bears his name? And what about accents? Must actors performing Shakespeare all use a standard, stock 'Shakespeare' accent? (Think Laurence Olivier or John Gielgud.)Increasingly, the answer has been that 'mixed casting' is not only allowable, but useful in many situations, and even the most staid and conservative companies are starting to experiment. Case in point: the venerable Royal Shakespeare Company, which has been raising some eyebrows during a residency in Washington, D.C. Chicago Tribune 05/01/03
Posted: 05/01/2003 6:08 am
In NY: British Flops, Musicals Tops British players and British players haven't been doing well on Broadway this season. "The suspicion occurs that New York critics are tiring of British directors presuming to show them how great classics, and particularly American classics, ought to be staged." But "the really good news in New York is that the renaissance of the home-grown Broadway musical is continuing apace, though it is odd that so many of them appear to be based on old movies." The Telegraph (UK) 05/01/03
Posted: 04/30/2003 11:18 pm
Hallmark & Angelou: A Match Made In The 9th Concentric Circle "Will National Poetry Month never end? I can't thing of any trumped-up, tricked-out, fake 'celebration' that has done more to rekindle my latent disdain for poets as worthless malingerers angling for the main chance... As if on cue, Hallmark Cards just dumped samples on my desk from Maya Angelou's 'Life Mosaic' line of Mother's Day kitsch. Hallmark is peddling gift cards bedecked with empty little maxims penned by the prolific hack and landfill-ready gifts such as a microwave safe, ceramic 'Giving' bowl, stomach-churning sentiment included: 'Gather around the table to pass this bowl of nourishment. And to serve a portion of healing ... .' What happened to this woman's dignity?" Boston Globe 05/01/03
Posted: 05/01/2003 5:52 am
So You're Getting Published....Greaaaat So you got that book of yours published. Great. And against all the odds. You're so lucky. Lucky, lucky, lucky. But by the time your words finally get made into a book, you're feeling compromised and abused and... Poets & Writers 05/03
Posted: 04/30/2003 9:18 pm
The Death Of Poetry? "Consider that poetry is the only art form where the number of people creating it is far greater than the number of people appreciating it. Anyone can write a bad poem. To appreciate a good one, though, takes knowledge and commitment. As a society, we lack this knowledge and commitment. People don’t possess the patience to read a poem 20 times before the sound and sense of it takes hold. They aren’t willing to let the words wash over them like a wave, demanding instead for the meaning to flow clearly and quickly. They want narrative-driven forms, stand-alone art that doesn’t require an understanding of the larger context." Newsweek 04/29/03
Posted: 04/30/2003 6:27 pm
Change of Heart "The [Canadian] government plans to restore the $25-million subtracted from the Canadian Television Fund, sources at CBC and CTV say. 'There will be a fall Canadian TV season after all' is the way one CBC producer reacted to the unconfirmed news yesterday that the federal government will reverse its position and top up the fund that subsidizes Canadian TV programming to its former level of $100 million annually. The cut had resulted in chaos in producer offices and sparked industry protests as dozens of Canadian TV series and TV movies failed to receive funding grants. CBC and CTV were particularly hard hit." Toronto Star 05/01/03
Posted: 05/01/2003 7:03 am
