The Schwarzenegger Effect: Politics and American Culture When Arnold Schwarzenegger took the stage to give his first speech as governor-elect of California, he was introduced by none other than talk show host Jay Leno. Leno was careful to avoid making any overt statements of political support for Schwarzenegger, but his very presence at the event raises now-familiar questions about the nature of our increasingly entertainment-dominated society. With the line between "hard news" and softball entertainment programming all but gone from many American minds, the candidacy - and success - of Schwarzenegger is triggering alarm bells for many cultural observers. Washington Post 10/09/03
Posted: 10/09/2003 7:08 am
Kramer: Lamenting The Barnes Deal While some are celebrating the imminent move of the famed Barnes Collection to Philadelphia, Hilton Kramer writes that the deal is a dark one with big implications. "The enemies of the late Albert C. Barnes (1872-1951) are about to achieve their fondest desire: the 'legal theft,' as it has been dubbed, of Dr. Barnes’ great collection of Impressionist and Post-Impressionist paintings." New York Observer 10/08/03
Posted: 10/08/2003 9:04 pm
Russians, Germans, Meet To Discuss Stolen Rubens Russian and German leaders are meeting to discuss the fate of a Rubens painting looted in World War II. "The painting, Tarquin and Lucretia, is believed to have been stolen from Germany by a Soviet officer in 1945. It has resurfaced after being offered for sale by a Moscow estate agent." BBC 10/08/03
Posted: 10/08/2003 4:11 pm
Standoff In Charlotte The Charlotte Symphony strike is a month old today, with no signs of movement from either the CSO management, or the musicians. The latest round of talks, which concluded Friday, left the sides seemingly as far apart as they were a month ago. Four sets of concerts have been cancelled, and starting this week, the strike will affect the city's opera and ballet companies, which employ the CSO as a pit orchestra. However, the orchestra's contracts with the opera and ballet say nothing about strikes, so the two groups are likely to hire the CSO musicians on a freelance basis. Charlotte Observer 10/09/03
Posted: 10/09/2003 6:25 am
Music As Diplomacy Relations between Canada and the U.S. have been a bit frosty ever since the American invasion of Iraq last spring, and the usual diplomatic channels don't seem to be having much of an effect on an increasing divide between the two populaces. So the Canadian Department of Foreign Affairs is writing a $250,000 check to underwrite a two-week U.S. tour of the Ottawa-based National Arts Center Orchestra. "It might not repair the relationship between George W. Bush and Jean Chrétien, who are as chummy as two scorpions can be. But it will put Canada in the newspapers for a couple of weeks in a way the politicians can't. If it's an attempt to buy some good will, so be it." Montreal Gazette 10/09/03
Posted: 10/09/2003 6:10 am
But Will Anyone Use It? Napster is back, and it's legal this time. The embattles song-swapping service was shut down last year after the recording industry filed multiple lawsuits alleging copyright violation. The new Napster is owned by media company Roxio, which had no connection to the original service, and which is hoping that the notoriety of the Napster name will help it cash in on the growing consumer base desiring legal downloading options. BBC 10/09/03
Posted: 10/09/2003 5:53 am
- Shouldn't Somebody Have Checked On This? "With its relaunch on Thursday, Napster, the most notorious name in music downloads, will collide with the hottest music player on the market, the iPod. That's because music downloaded from Napster will not be playable on Apple's insanely popular iPod. The newly legal Napster service and the iPod use incompatible file formats." Wired 10/09/03
Posted: 10/09/2003 5:52 am
Carnegie, NYPhil Talks Never Really Got Off The Ground Talks for the proposed merger between Carnegi Hall and the New York Philharmonic never progressed very far because the two sides couldn't agree on the basics. "The talks about artistic control, shared finances and combined boards came apart mainly over dividing up performance and rehearsal time in the main hall, Isaac Stern Auditorium." The New York Times 10/09/03
Posted: 10/08/2003 8:53 pm
An Underground Musician With Tips For The Music Industry The recording industry is at war with its consumers. But "the industry's efforts are counterproductive. About 60 million people in the United States have already swapped copyrighted material over the Internet, and that number isn't likely to shrink. The times are a changin', and record companies should learn to how to profit in this new environment." A musician who sells his music in the New York subways and makes a good living at it has some tips for the industry. Washington Monthly 10/03
Posted: 10/08/2003 6:27 pm
New York Merger Fatality The failure of the Carnegie Hall/New York Philharmonic is a public embarrassment, writes Greg Sandow. "If you ask me, Carnegie Hall and the Philharmonic both look dumb. One issue, as anybody could have guessed beforehand, was how to accomodate all the concerts the Philharmonic gives each year with Carnegie's strong and diverse schedule. How could it take all these months to figure that out? And how could the two organizations have announced plans to merge - actually announce that the meger was a done deal, with everything set except for the details - without settling such an obvious issue before the announcement was made? I can barely believe it." Sandow (AJBlogs) 10/08/03
Posted: 10/08/2003 4:25 pm
10 Years In, and Still In Search Of An Identity "It has been called a godsend for the arts and a major disappointment, 'the Lincoln Center of the West' and 'a conundrum in concrete.' When it opened, in 1993, former San Francisco Mayor Joseph Alioto viewed the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts as a pallid substitute for what might have been. Today, composer Paul Dresher dubs the South of Market complex 'a great institution and invaluable resource.'" So which is it? Well, it seems to depend entirely on who you ask, and what their perpective is on the Bay Area's exceedingly diverse arts scene. San Francisco Chronicle 10/09/03
Posted: 10/09/2003 6:57 am
Cuban Artists Increasingly Kept Out Of US Increasingly, cultural events in the US featuring Cuban artists(primarily in south Florida) are having to be canceled because the US is failing to issue visas. "We did everything on time, knowing all that is happening with the visa process - and nothing. Some big name writers have declined to participate in the Book Fair all together because they don't want to endure the humiliation they are being put through in this process. This situation is creating tension, ill-will, and is hurting our cultural events." Miami Herlad 10/08/03
Posted: 10/08/2003 8:46 pm
Cross-Gender Confusion Cross-arts collaborations are all the rage in London. "Collaborations at their best can be energising creative moments produced by artists headed in unexpected new directions; about extraordinary melting pots of ideas. Or they can be a disaster, like the Steve McQueen and Jessye Norman encounter. They should also be undertaken with enormous care. Hitherto, there have been a few certainties about the capital's artistic life: the Wigmore was the home of chamber music and song; the ENO was the home of opera in English; Sadler's Wells was the home of modern dance. One might have found those certainties deadening or dull, but at least it was clear what those organisations were for. There's a problem with mixing it all up: you can get all mixed up." The Guardian (UK) 10/09/03
Posted: 10/08/2003 8:39 pm
Budget Cuts Slam Alabama Theater Groups In the wake of an overwhelming vote against tax increases by the voters of Alabama last month, the state is making serious cuts to a budget that has already traditionally been stretched to the breaking point, and it appears that the state's theater groups will be some of the hardest hit. The Alabama Shakespeare Festival, arguably the only arts organization in the state with a national reputation, will take a 75% hit in state funding, as will the Birmingham Children's Theatre. Worse yet, legislators have announced plans to eliminate funding for 'non-state agencies' completely in the next budget. Birmingham News 10/09/03
Posted: 10/09/2003 6:19 am
Shakespeare As Glamorous Global Hamburger Rome has built itself a replica of Shakespeare's Globe Theatre. "The Roman Globe will no doubt be celebrated as yet further evidence of the 'universality' of Shakespeare's art. Unfortunately, by the same reasoning, the conquest of Italian city centres by the McDonald's franchise demonstrates the universality of hamburgers (hamburger, in Italian slang, means 'fool'). Don't be misled by the difference in the product being sold: the Globe is the perfect icon of globalisation. Globalisation replaces many cultures with one, and the language of that new international monoculture is English." The Guardian (UK) 10/08/03
Posted: 10/08/2003 8:41 pm
Royal Shakespeare Homeless In Capital The Royal Shakespeare Company is running out of time. If the company can't find a theatre by the end of the week, it will be the first time in 40 years the RSC hasn't performed a season in London. "If, as seems likely, that deadline passes without a result, it will be the first time in the RSC's history that its Stratford season has failed to transfer to the capital. As so often happens with the Bard, tragedy has followed farce: the RSC's disastrous decision to quit its long-standing London home at the Barbican is blamed for its embarrassing predicament." The Guardian (UK) 10/09/03
Posted: 10/08/2003 8:29 pm
Lawson Wins First Novel Award A 57-year-old Canadian ex-pat was the surprise winner of this year's Amazon.ca/Books In Canada First Novel Award. Mary Lawson, who lives in the UK, and whose first novel, Crow Lake, has garnered critical acclaim and made the New York Times bestseller list last year, beat out authors Christy Ann Conlin, Aislinn Hunter, Clint Hutzulak, Michael V. Smith, and Marnie Woodrow for the prize. Toronto Star 10/09/03
Posted: 10/09/2003 7:03 am
A Librarian With Her Own Action Figure Is Nancy Pearl America's most famous librarian? "Ms. Pearl's fame has its roots in the most elementary function of the librarian: pressing a book into a patron's hands and saying, 'Read this.' She fills many roles, but in each of them Ms. Pearl returns to the same transaction. At the Washington Center for the Book, part of the Seattle Public Library and a sponsor of author readings and events, she oversaw the 'If All Seattle Read the Same Book' program, which is essentially one gigantic book recommendation. (The program has since been tried by other cities, including New York and Chicago.)" The New York Times 10/09/03
Posted: 10/08/2003 8:57 pm
Carson Wins The Forward "Ciaran Carson, the Belfast writer who has spent his life pondering the perfect fry - bacon, eggs, sausage, black pudding with fadge [fried bread] and soda farls, cut in triangles, washed down with Punjana tea, and a cigarette - wins the Forward Prize, poetry's answer to the Booker." The Guardian (UK) 10/08/03
Posted: 10/08/2003 8:28 pm
Canada Not So Keen On Governor Arnold "The election of Arnold Schwarzenegger as California's governor has sent a shiver through the Canadian film industry, which is worried the superstar and former body builder could flex his new political muscles to try to keep movie production in his home state," possibly through a series of tax incentives. "Most [Canadian] provinces have tax credit systems that give incentives to produce films, so it would be hypocritical to condemn any U.S. states from considering similar incentives... But it would still be very damaging to the Canadian industry if California moved in this direction." The Globe & Mail (Canada) 10/09/03
Posted: 10/09/2003 6:42 am
Atlantic SE Ballet Folds, Lawsuits To Follow A bizarre situation is unfolding in Charleston, South Carolina, where a newly formed ballet company has folded unexpectedly, and its CEO has apparently skipped town, leaving unpaid bills and furious dancers and musicians in his wake. The Atlantic Southeast Ballet Company was founded 18 months ago, but performed only once in September 2003 before a financial crisis began to rear its head. "About noon Wednesday, Gordon Crowder, the artistic director and CEO of the nonprofit ballet company, left a message on the answering machine of the ballet orchestra's conductor. The message said Crowder and his wife, Susanne Crowder-Puerschel, who is associate director of the ballet, 'have no money and have gone on a little vacation.'" Charleston Post & Courier 10/09/03
Posted: 10/09/2003 6:04 am
Forsythe: New Movement Required As choreographer William Forsyth contemplates moving on from the Ballett Frankfurt, he says his priorities in dance have changed. "He is interested in subtler, more inward kinds of movement in dancing that is more 'behavioural' than display, in dance that requires new arenas and new ways of working. He wants the freedom to work outside theatres, in smaller, more versatile spaces. 'Theatres are inherently ideological. It's us - the dancers - and them, the public. What about finding other ways of being together'?" The Guardian (UK) 10/08/03
Posted: 10/08/2003 8:33 pm
