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Weekend/Monday/Tuesday August 12
First Words... 2.5 Million Years Ago? "Recent evidence suggests we may have started talking as early as 2.5m years ago. There is a polar divide on the issues of dating and linking thought, language and material culture. One view of language development is that language, specifically the spoken word, appeared suddenly among modern humans between 35,000 and 50,000 years ago and that the ability to speak words and use syntax was recently genetically hard-wired into our brains in a kind of language organ. This view of language is associated with the old idea that logical thought is dependent on words." The Guardian (UK) 08/07/03
Plans Line Up For WTC Site "At last month's deadline, some 5,200 designs for the 9/11 memorial cascaded into the Lower Manhattan Development Corp., submitted by architects, artists and amateurs alike. The proposals are now being pared down by the jury--a distinguished panel that includes Maya Lin, architect of the Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Washington, and Vartan Gregorian, former head of the New York Public Library. They'll have their work cut out for them. The program for the competition is of baffling complexity..." OpinionJournal.com 08/12/03
Can New Vinoly Building Help Nasher Forget Its Past? Duke University's Nasher Museum is working towards a new home designed by a star architect. But will the new $23 million building wipe away the museum's troubled history? Weekly Independent (North Carolina) 08/11/03
Scotland's Magnificent New Parliament Edinburgh's new Scottish Parliament building is under construction. "It is a glorious design, but derided by the press for being costly and late. True, its cost has risen from a nominal £10m at the time it was first seriously mooted in 1997, to £40m when its design was approved, to £100m when its scale was tripled, to £300m more recently, and to £345m today. This is a lot of money - but what a building." The Guardian (UK) 08/11/03
Treasure Bazaar "These days, the crisis of looting in Iraq has brought the freewheeling world of art smuggling into the spotlight. But long before the turmoil in Baghdad, the clandestine art market had established itself as a multi-billion-dollar international business. By some estimates it ranks in profitability right after the illegal market for arms and drugs. In Italy, as in Iraq, layers of civilization have graced the landscape with a seemingly unending supply of salable treasures. " Washington Post 08/11/03
A Frame Is A... What difference does it make what frame is put around a painting? A great deal of difference, it appears... Washington Post 08/10/03
Defending The Vision Daniel Libeskind is fighting for his ideas at the World Trade Center site. "The revisions. The redesigning. The new studies. The jockeying. Not just an architect, Libeskind has emerged as a tough defender of his vision, amid the high stakes tug of war that threatens to pick his design apart. Sometimes he wins. Sometimes he loses. And the battle is far from over." Washington Post 08/10/03
Virtual Orchestra Makes Opera Debut The Opera Company of Brooklyn staged its "Magic Flute" over the weekend with a virtual orchestra instead of live musicians. How did it sound? "The Virtual Orchestra, developed by Realtime Music Solutions, which donated the hall and its services, behaved well. It allowed for pauses and shifts in tempo, thanks to the real-time control of an assistant at the synthesizer, and its surround loudspeakers (nearly 30 of them) created a sense of space. It sounded a little thin and tinny in the overture, but it never overpowered the singers and they appeared comfortable with their high-tech partner. " New York Post 08/12/03
Warning The Kids On File-Sharing College studnets will be getting a warning this fall when they return to school. "Specifically they'll be warned they can lose their Internet access or get slapped with a costly copyright infringement lawsuit if they aren't careful about uploading and downloading files using programs like Kazaa." San Francisco Chronicle 08/11/03
The 50 Worst Artists In Music History? Blender magazine takes a stab at a list, and some A-list musicians take some abuse. "Along with expected names like Celine Dion and Vanilla Ice are legends like The Doors and Mick Jagger. Even current top-selling acts, such as the Goo Goo Dolls, Creed and the Gipsy Kings, get savaged." New York Post 08/11/03
Warning Scottish Opera The financially troubled Scottish Opera has been told that it may have to drastically scale back its operations if it wants to survive. "The company’s acclaimed run of Wagner’s Ring Cycle starts today, but observers warn the funding problems are getting so bad that it may not be able to continue in its present form." The Scotsman 08/12/03
When You Can't Even Give Away The Opera Tickets... "Scottish Opera's ambitious complete Ring cycle at this summer's Edinburgh Festival sold out as long ago as October, but the organisers of the Festival held back one performance of Götterdämmerung for people under 27. Faced with frequent attacks that it was elitist, "out of touch", and aimed only at the "middle-aged upper middle class audience", the heavily subsidised Festival hoped that the free ticket offer would help to reverse its demographic. But only 237 young people turned up for the performance on Friday, leaving a staggering 1,660 seats empty in the flagship Festival Theatre." The Guardian (UK) 08/10/03
A New Reality For Arts Funding Are arts organizations facing a new era? An era when government withdraws its support for the arts? "The best advice to nonprofit arts organizations is cold, but realistic: Go out and have a bake sale. The days of generous, hefty, government support of the arts are numbered. The bottom line to dwindling government support isn't hard to figure out. Everything costs too much." San Diego Union-Tribune 08/11/03
Edinburgh Sticks Up For Itself The Edinburgh Festival requires a public subsidy of about £2 million to survive. This compares to the Edinburgh Fringe Festival, which gets about £64,000. "In recent days, the International Festival (EIF) has been attacked by some arts commentators for lack of artistic ambition and for its relatively high level of public funding, in comparison with the Fringe." The Scotsman 08/10/03
A Hit After Death Crowds are thronging to Jessica Grace Wing's new musical "Lost" "Ms. Wing's death so close to the production's debut — she was said to have finished the musical's final song just a day before dying — has created an unmistakable sentimental momentum for "Lost," which is based on the children's tale "Hansel and Gretel" and has a book and lyrics by Kirk Wood Bromley. Like the Broadway musical "Rent," which also started in the East Village and whose composer, Jonathan Larson, died just after the show's final dress rehearsal, "Lost" is selling tickets to those who knew Ms. Wing's work and those who suddenly want to discover her. " The New York Times 08/11/03
A Life Wasted On The Fringe Critic Dominic Papatola takes in an orgy of theatre at this year's Minnesota Fringe Festival, and comes away disappointed. "Consider my batting average: In one 36-hour period, I saw 13 shows. Two of them were quite good — the kind of thing I would recommend to friends and readers. Three of them were so-so; flawed but with enough merit to make them worth $10 and an hour of my life. But fully seven of those shows — nearly 60 percent, for those of you who like statistics — resided in the oozy quagmire between not-so-good and positively rancid: odious, smarmy, meandering exercises in precious self-indulgence that, even by the somewhat lower standards of the Fringe, were experiences that, at the end of my theater-going life, I will mourn as time utterly squandered." St. Paul Pioneer-Press 08/09/03
Posted: 08/10/2003 7:33 am
Scotland Outside Itself Is a play set is Scotland a Scottish play? And if it is a Scottish play, does that mean it doesn't travel well outside the region? "Scottish theatre, unlike Irish, is seen as regional. The London establishment think that we should have our own plays, but they don't think that they should have to listen to them. They think they won't be relevant to them." The Guardian (UK) 08/09/03
Posted: 08/10/2003 6:56 am
Broadway - Where Are All The Plays? When "Long Day's Journey Into Night" and "Enchanted April" close on Broadway at the end of this month, there will be only one play left running on Broadway. "Nineteen musicals will be around in September, but plays are never very plentiful on Broadway. Last season, though, was particularly dire for new work, and the coming drought is unusual." Chicago Sun-Times 08/09/03
Posted: 08/10/2003 6:08 am
Remembering Evelyn Waugh Evelyn Waugh would have been 100 this year. "His boisterously playful satires of London life between the wars remain unmatched for their technical accomplishment and wicked skewerings of the smart set. Perhaps most famous for his 1945 novel, the sadly over-rated Brideshead Revisited, Waugh had one of the longest and most prolific literary careers of any English writer of the last century, penning some 12 novels, half-a-dozen travel books, several biographies, and scores of essays and reviews." National Post (Canada) 08/09/03
Posted: 08/10/2003 7:25 am
Is Edinburgh The Next Literature Capital? "Edinburgh is making an audacious - and as some see it, a bare-faced grab - to become the world's first official City of Literature.
The town in which Miss Jean Brodie admonished her "gerls" on how "one's prime is elusive", and where the heroin addict Renton shoplifted to feed his habit in Irvine Welsh's Trainspotting, is plotting to steal the honour from under the noses of London, New York, Paris, Dublin and Prague." The Guardian (UK) 08/09/03
Posted: 08/10/2003 6:46 am
Will Toronto Literary Fest Survive? Will Toronto's Harbourfront Reading Series survive the departure of impressario Greg Gatenby, who's now decamped for Berlin? "It is a sad departure for the man who built Toronto's Harbourfront Reading Series and the International Festival of Authors into the premier stop on the North American literary circuit. This is not the first time Gatenby has embarked on a dangerous game of chicken with government funding agencies, publishers and his own employers, but it may well be the last." The Globe & Mail (Canada) 08/09/03
Posted: 08/10/2003 6:31 am
- Previously: The Rise and Fall of Greg Gatenby Greg Gatenby's life was a series of paradoxes and contradictions, says Philip Marchand, and that's exactly what made him such a valuable figure in Canada's literary society. "Like many amateur scholars, Gatenby resented what he felt was the cushy life of professors blessed with sabbaticals and tenure who didn't do nearly enough, in his view, to advance the cause of Canadian literature... He was certainly an elitist — but within the bounds of his elitism, he was remarkably democratic. Every writer was treated the same way at Harbourfront, whether he was Saul Bellow or a poet from Tonga." Toronto Star 08/03/03
When Boston TV Covered The Arts (No Longer) There was a time when Boston TV stations each had arts reporters (or entertainment reporters, at least). But the stations have one by one eliminated the jobs. One explanation: "They have access to so many syndicated sources for entertainment stories, movie reviews and the like, that having a local arts reporter becomes redundant." Boston Herald 08/11/03
Uncommon Pressure - Women In Radio Are female radio hosts discriminated against in Australia? Women in broadcasting say their gender plays a factor in how well they are received by audiences...The Age (Melbourne) 08/11/03
Dancing Together... In Philadelphia, at least eight couples are successfully cultivating hybrid styles of making dance, adding their synergy to one of the nation's most fertile dance scenes. The eight Philadelphia pairs are successful - three have won prestigious Pew fellowships - and their substantial bodies of work suggest a new paradigm of dance-making in which intuition, intimacy, risk and trust are the bywords." Philadelphia Inquirer 08/10/03
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