The Art Of Venice "Considered in the cold light of reason, a visit to Venice might sound pretty grim. It is underpopulated (except by pigeons), overvisited, chronically polluted and notoriously expensive. Subsiding inexorably into theme-park status, the city that built its reputation on hard-nosed mercantile pragmatism has turned to fleecing foreign tourists for a living. But there's no point in taking a down-to-earth view of Venice. This is a city which seems, quite literally, out of this world. Drifting like a mirage upon the surface of its lagoon, it could almost be set, as one early medieval visitor put it, 'between the star Arcturus and the shining Pleiades'.? The Times (UK) 05/21/03
Posted: 05/20/2003 6:28 pm
What Gehry Means To LA Los Angeles is about to get a major new Gehry - the Disney Hall. "For 50 years it's been the world's archetypical sprawling, privatised, centreless city of gated suburbs, fast food, fast, flashy architecture, malls and freeways; a city in which you need never sully your toes by touching a sidewalk. But now that Beijing, Shenzhen and the North Circular are out-LA-ing LA, LA has decided to become Paris. It's been quietly turning its downtown into a proper city centre, like it used to be 80 years ago, before the car screwed it up. It's introduced old-fashioned public space without security guards, lofts, pedestrian (gasp) boulevards, and posh, properly public buildings such as Rafael Moneo's masterly Roman Catholic cathedral, and, the linchpin, the Disney Concert Hall." The Times (UK) 05/20/03
Posted: 05/20/2003 5:38 pm
Pittsburgh Musicians Facing Huge Cuts The Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra, which has been facing choking deficits and cash-flow problems for much of the last two years, has opened negotiations for a new contract with its players by proposing that the musicians' pay be slashed by $10,000 and that benefits be severely cut back. The PSO has cut costs already this year by reducing its cello section to ten players (twelve is standard,) and some musicians are already taking other auditions in anticipation of what many consider an inevitable downgrade in artistic quality. But the orchestra's cash crunch is real: last year, then-executive director Gideon Toeplitz raised eyebrows across the industry when he threatened that the PSO would file for bankruptcy if community support did not increase. Pittsburgh Tribune-Review 05/20/03
Posted: 05/21/2003 7:22 am
- Musicians Not Panicking You won't see the Pittsburgh Symphony musicians screaming over management's proposal to slash their salaries and cut benefits - at least, not yet. The musicians' negotiating committee yesterday turned down the PSO's proposal, but made a point of saying that they understand that the orchestra was only making a first proposal in what is expected to be a long negotiating process. Both sides will likely continue to tread carefully, at least in the near future. Pittsburgh Post-Gazette 05/21/03
Posted: 05/21/2003 7:19 am
Auctioning Off A Masterpiece "In an era when the publishers of such ephemera as comic books and trading cards routinely set aside a few thousand copies as prefabricated 'collectors items,' a spectacular rarity is set for auction at Sotheby's in London tomorrow. It is nothing less than a near-complete manuscript of what may be the most celebrated work of music in the repertory -- the Symphony No. 9 in D Minor by Ludwig van Beethoven." Washington Post 05/21/03
Posted: 05/21/2003 6:29 am
Orchestra To Maestro: Take It Down a Notch Orchestras are not in the habit of telling conductors how to do their jobs - it's supposed to be the other way around. But with Yakov Kreizberg stepping in at the last minute to fill in for the ailing Wolfgang Sawallisch on the Philadelphia Orchestra's South American tour, the orchestra has taken the unusual step of asking the maestro to tone down his 'antics' on the podium, and to leave the tempos where Sawallisch put them. Kreizberg, by all accounts, has taken the chiding in stride, and Peter Dobrin says that the unusual talking-to seems to have done some good. Philadelphia Inquirer 05/20/03
Posted: 05/21/2003 5:21 am
Cutting Out The Middleman The recording industry is going after a website based in Spain, which claims that it has found a legal way to offer downloadable music without the consent of the labels which control its distribution. Puretunes, which plans to offer unlimited downloads for a much lower price than many comparable services, says that it will pay royalties directly to the artists, and will take advantage of a loophole in Spanish copyright law to bypass the corporate side of the industry. Not surprisingly, the industry has a very different interpretation of Spanish law. BBC 05/21/03
Posted: 05/21/2003 5:04 am
Texaco Pulls Out Of Metropolitan Opera Broadcasts After 63 years, ChevronTexaco says it is withdrawing its radio sponsorship of Metropolitan Opera broadcasts. Texaco's sponsorship was the longest in commercial broadcast history. "Beginning in 1940 Texaco was the sole sponsor of the broadcasts, which are now heard live from the Met stage at Lincoln Center 20 times a year on 360 stations at an annual cost of about $7 million. Broadcast December through April, the broadcasts reach an estimated 10 million listeners in 42 countries." The New York Times 05/21/03
Posted: 05/20/2003 6:55 pm
Singing The Legal Blues "Over the past five decades, singers, bands, record labels, managers and songwriters have formed a special bond with the judicial system, particularly in the US where they breed 'em litigious. Given music is such a volatile, mollycoddling, temperamental, creative, high-stakes business, it's not surprising the lawyers are laughing all the way to the bank." Sydney Morning Herald 05/21/03
Posted: 05/20/2003 6:23 pm
Chicago Lyric Opera Posts Deficit Despite selling 97 percent of its tickets, the Chicago Lyric Opera will end its season with a "deficit of $1.1 million, on an operating budget of $48.6 million. The deficit ends a 16-year winning streak in which the company posted operating surpluses every season. Expenses for 2002-03 exceeded budget by about $700,000, including charges related to revising next season's repertory, while ticket revenues fell $400,000 short of expectation." Chicago Tribune 05/20/03
Posted: 05/20/2003 6:11 pm
Nevada Opera Lays Off Staff, Cuts Production After canceling a production, Nevada Opera has laid off three of its four full-time employees. "The Nevada Opera’s financial problems reflect a national trend among arts groups faced with declining donations and grants. Last year, one of Reno’s longest-running arts groups, Nevada Festival Ballet, closed its doors under the pressure of debt. 'Unfortunately, we had to make some very difficult decisions. It’s like taking an organization, stripping it down to the bare bones and then slowly building it back up'.” Reno Gazette-Journal 05/20/03
Posted: 05/20/2003 4:39 pm
Making Music As Kid's Play MIT's Tod Machover has developed a set of toys to help teach children how to make music. "Toy Symphony's toys, developed by the Media Lab's musician-computer whizzes, enable children to "make music" without having to learn notation or engage in the arduous physical and mental process required to play a musical instrument. Through computers, their users can explore musical concepts that are more sophisticated than their actual knowledge would otherwise permit. Music Shapers, soft cloth balls whose sounds are controlled by squeezing, and Beatbugs, which repeat and subtly alter rhythms that are tapped on them, are improvisatory performance instruments. With Hyperscore, a composition software program, the user creates color-coded musical motifs, draws them onto a grid, and plays the score back. If desired, the program will provide a variety of harmonies and modulations. With a little help from its MIT creators, this graphic "score" can be transcribed into conventional notation for acoustic instruments." OpinionJournal.com 05/21/03
Posted: 05/20/2003 4:28 pm
Politics In Art? We're Shocked, SHOCKED! "After grilling Smithsonian Secretary Lawrence M. Small yesterday about the changes to a photography exhibit on the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, a Senate panel asked the Smithsonian to clarify its policy on exhibition captions. The controversy... started last month when the National Museum of Natural History acknowledged that it had moved a show of photographs by Subhankar Banerjee and also had changed the captions because they contained language that advocated no oil drilling in the refuge." Washington Post 05/21/03
Posted: 05/21/2003 6:27 am
Making Art And Finance Get Along The biggest complaint of artists about the society around them is usually that the people holding the pursestrings just don't "get it." Arts administrators, for their part, are continually frustrated by what they see as an unwillingness on the part of creative types to accept basic fiscal realities. But at a small liberal arts school in New England, Katy Davy is trying to change the paradigm, with an approach to education that stresses critical thinking across multiple disciplines, and promotes fiscal responsibility as the friend of the arts and academia, rather than as an unpleasant complicating factor to be stepped around. Boston Globe 05/21/03
Posted: 05/21/2003 5:36 am
Iraqi Artists - How To Cope With Freedom? Being an artist in Saddam Hussein's Iraq was to live under creative oppression, worrying about what was required to work or even survive. Many artists wonder if they will ever be able to develop their own voices after years of tyranny. "My professional life was lived during the years of Saddam Hussein. I developed my style of writing during these years and now it's become my style, set in concrete. Maybe only the new generation can reclaim the Arabic language." The New York Times 05/20/03
Posted: 05/20/2003 4:54 pm
California Governor Proposes To Take Meat Cleaver To Arts Budget After having its budget chpped 50 percent this year, it looks like the California Arts Council is in for another huge cut. "Looking to close an overall deficit now estimated at $38.2 billion, Davis is calling for cuts that would slash the CAC's funding from $22.4 million this year to $8.4 million in the 2003-04 fiscal year." In 2001 the CAC's budget was $32 million. Los Angeles Times 05/16/03
Posted: 05/20/2003 4:23 pm
James Wins Jerwood "An Australian-born artist based in Wales has won this year's £30,000 Jerwood Painting Prize. Shani Rhys James, best known for her colourful self portraits, beat fierce competition to receive the honour - the UK's biggest single award for painters... Ms James was up against shortlist of established and talented artists - John Hoyland, John Wonnacott, Marc Vaux, Alison Watt and Suzanne Holtom." BBC 05/21/03
Posted: 05/21/2003 5:01 am
I, Gergiev Valery Gergiev is one of the world's busiest conductors. Presently he's involved in a whirlwind of concerts celebrating St. Petersburg's 300th anniversary. But he hints at taking a vacation. "A vacation? Gergiev? The two seem mutually exclusive. But maybe there are other signs that, having reached the magic age of 50, as he did at the beginning of this month, he has been tempted to slow down, or at least to go less fast." The Telegraph (UK) 05/20/03
Posted: 05/20/2003 5:48 pm
Are Yank TV Stars Good For London's West End? The West End's thirst for American TV and movie actors seems insatiable. But are they good for London theatre? "Some months, it seems that any Yank with their TV or film career on the skids can come over here without a by-your-leave and grab worthless showbiz headlines with the revival of some hoary play that only serves to confirm Richard Eyre's thought that London's West End has all the appeal of a yawning grave. Worse yet, many of the West End plays in which American actors have starred have been by US playwrights exploring US themes." The Guardian (UK) 05/21/03
Posted: 05/20/2003 8:23 pm
Not Your Mother's Theatre "Not so long ago, high-profile revivals tried to be time-travel experiences, replicating the original sets and disinterring original cast members. Now, the pressure is on old works to reveal new things. Sometimes they are forced into it, with revised librettos and resequenced songs. Yet truly canonical works rewrite themselves by not changing a word or a note. History does that for them..." Philadelphia Inquirer 05/18/03
Posted: 05/20/2003 5:02 pm
There's That Vast, Right-Wing Conspiracy Again! Conservatives may be fond of compaining about the 'liberal media,' but increasingly, right-wingers are becoming the most audible media voices. Books written by right-wing pundits to repudiate the liberal worldview are flying off shelves, and the Book-of-the-Month Club recently announced plans to launch a conservative-themed series. Pundits like Ann Coulter and Michael Savage are nothing new to American politics, of course, but their embrace by a traditionally wary New York publishing industry is a very recent development. Boston Globe 05/21/03
Posted: 05/21/2003 5:51 am
Endangered Speaking Languages are disappearing at an alarming rate. "According to new measurements, human languages face a greater threat of extinction than birds or mammals. Previously, the life of a language was measured rather arbitrarily by counting the people speaking it. But William Sutherland, a British ecologist, applied the standards of species classification to the 6,809 living tongues in the world to demonstrate what probably comes as little surprise to linguists: There are more extinct languages than species and more languages on the brink of vanishing." Chicago Tribune 05/20/03
Posted: 05/20/2003 6:06 pm
Up The Amazon With A Review Newspapers are devoting less space to book reviews. "But one review venue is going strong and getting more attention of late: Amazon.com. Its customer-written reviews - some signed, some anonymous - are linked to book titles on Amazon's website. Anyone can write one (sorry, you don't get paid) and get it posted, and the opportunity has created a small cadre of people who have written hundreds - in some cases, even thousands - of reviews." Amazon reviews are getting more and more attention from publishers and authors because they influence sales. Boston Globe 05/20/03
Posted: 05/20/2003 5:59 pm
Reading On The Decline In Japan Japan has a proud literary tradition - it has one of the highest literacy rates in the world. But reading seems to be in a sharp decline. "Once upon a time, one could look into a Japanese train and expect to see people doing one of two things: either sleeping or reading. But today one sees commuters who are preoccupied with portable electronic games, digital assistants and cell phones which enable them to send e-mail and surf the Net." Korea Herald 05/18/03
Posted: 05/20/2003 5:11 pm
Is Literature Outgrowing Us? Is reading an activity adults grow out of? Really? Alex Good wonders "how did a habit of mind (not to mention a form of artistic expression) traditionally associated with maturity and intellectual depth get turned into an essentially juvenile activity? I never would have thought, as a young man, that a love of literature would be something I would grow out of. Was I wrong?" GoodReports 05/20/03
Posted: 05/20/2003 4:33 pm
Disposable DVDs: Instant Waste, or Cynical Cash-Grab? Disney is preparing to release a new disposable technology: DVDs, available for sale for around the cost of a rental, which self-destruct after 48 hours. So far, the idea isn't garnering much positive response. Viewers don't see the point; environmentalists are furious about the unnecessary waste material; and at some point, you've got to figure that consumers are going to wonder why a DVD with a chemical erasing agent embedded in it is less than half as expensive as the exact same DVD without a self-destruct mechanism. Wired 05/21/03
Posted: 05/21/2003 5:28 am
"Hitler" Will Lose Money For CBS Despite good reviews, CBS' mini-series on Hitler looks to lose plenty of money. The first installment failed to attract premium advertisers. "The lack of a major advertisers will mean that CBS will not be able to recoup anything near its costs for the miniseries. The losses could top $6 million for the two nights, according to estimates. Apparently, advertisers were scared away by the movie's provocative subject - the early years of Hitler - and by the controversy that was sparked last year before filming even began." New York Post 05/20/03
Posted: 05/20/2003 6:49 pm
Yawning At Cannes "Walking out of bad movies has been all too common for many American studio film buyers at this year's Cannes Film Festival. Even films that stirred early interest have met with a tepid response from U.S. film distributors. That's a major disappointment for companies such as Miramax, Lions Gate, Focus Features, IFC Films and others that rely on what they can pick up from film festivals for as much as half of their total slate." Los Angeles Times 05/20/03
Posted: 05/20/2003 6:36 pm
