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Wednesday, November 26




Ideas

Study: There Are Too Many Humans To Be Sustainable A new scientific study concludes that there are about 1000 times too many humans on the planet for us to be sustainable as a species. "Our study found that when we compare ourselves to otherwise similar species, usually other mammals of our same body size, for example, we are abnormal and the situation is unsustainable." Discovery 11/25/03
Posted: 11/25/2003 6:07 pm

Visual Arts

Spare Change For A Proud Lady The Statue of Liberty has been closed to the public since the 9/11 attacks, although most Americans are probably unaware of that fact. The statue won't be able to open again until $5 million of security upgrades are in place, but the money has yet to be found. Several large corporations have pledged the majority of what's needed, but the city of New York is still struggling to attract donors to round out the required funds. Even with all the new security measures in place, the days of tourists being allowed to climb up the inside of Lady Liberty are likely at an end. New York Daily News 11/26/03
Posted: 11/26/2003 6:35 am


SPONSOR
From One Generation To The Next
Some of the world's most distinguished artists gathered at Lincoln Center on November 10 to celebrate the completion of the inaugural year of the Rolex Mentor and Protégé Arts Initiative. www.rolexmentorprotege.com

Music

Cutting The Music In Australia The Adelaide Symphony Orchestra is laying off staff and will shortly be dismissing five members of the orchestra itself, in a desperate effort to get its books in balance. The ASO's problems are not unfamiliar to other Australian orchestras: since orchestras went to a system of private funding, known as "corporatisation," nearly every orchestra involved has struggled financially. Adelaide Advertiser 11/26/03
Posted: 11/26/2003 5:37 am

Why EMI Shouldn't Feel Jilted EMI had wanted to merger with Warner. But it shouldn't feel too bad the deal won't happen. "The truth is that Warner is being bought by a music industry wannabe responsible for one of the worst deals of the 1990s - the sale of Seagram, the Bronfman family's drinks and entertainment firm, to Jean-Marie Messier's Vivendi." The Guardian (UK) 11/25/03
Posted: 11/25/2003 7:24 pm

Big Instruments Down Some of the bigger orchestral instruments are so unpopular with young Britons, that there's a big shortage of players opening up. "It seems that the tuba, bassoon, double bass and trombone are too ugly and expensive for a new generation of teenagers who, if they like classical music at all, prefer the charms of the flute and clarinet. The result, according to the some of the country's leading instrumentalists, is that Britain's bass line is in danger of fading out." The Guardian (UK) 11/26/03
Posted: 11/25/2003 7:18 pm

Older Music Fans Dominate "At a time when the 'MP3 generation' is getting its tracks for free from the internet, fortysomething music fans are beginning to dominate sales. According to current trends, the over-40s will account for more than 50 per cent of album sales in Britain within five years." London Evening Standard 11/25/03
Posted: 11/25/2003 5:54 pm

Arts Issues

How To Make An Arts City Vancouver has become quite adept at creating win-win situations for developers and arts groups, with the city making a push to increase its cultural visibility, even as it fills a need for new housing in the urban core. "In exchange for increased density for their buildings the developers are paired with non-profits that need new public facilities. The developer gets more condos or more offices to sell; the non-profit groups, 13 to date, get free use of programming space built specifically to their needs." The Globe & Mail (Canada) 11/26/03
Posted: 11/26/2003 6:16 am

No Hard Times At Spoleto It's not a good time for the arts in America, with budget cuts, looming deficits, and dwindling audiences seemingly national problems. But somehow, the Spoleto USA festival, based in South Carolina, keeps chugging healthily along, balancing its books and keeping its considerable audience happy with innovative presentations and high-quality music. "Last year's festival set a box-office record, with ticket sales totaling slightly more than $2.5 million. The festival recently concluded a $26 million fund-raising drive that, among other things, increased its endowment fund from $600,000 to $7 million." Among the highlights being planned for next year's Spoleto: a full performance of an 18-hour opera from 16th-century China. Charlotte Observer 11/23/03
Posted: 11/26/2003 5:58 am

Sell 'Em The Hockey, Then Hit 'Em With Arts A local arts advocacy group in Calgary is marketing a ticket package designed to get sports fans to the symphony. "The $70 package includes a ticket to a regular season Calgary Flames hockey game as well as tickets to two arts and culture events, including performances by local theatre troupes, a jazz dance ensemble or the the Calgary Philharmonic." Sports and arts are not generally considered to have much audience in common, but some on the Calgary arts scene see the package as important audience-building. CBC 11/25/03
Posted: 11/26/2003 5:44 am

Of Widow Villages And Wild Geese "There are the so-called 'widow villages' throughout the United States, where Korean wives gather to live for their children's education. Meanwhile, the 'wild geese dads' in Korea send all of their paychecks to their families in the 'widow villages.' The amount of money that Korean husbands send to America is reportedly astronomical. All of this indicates that something is not quite right in Korea these days." Korea Herald 11/25/03
Posted: 11/25/2003 6:50 pm

People

Heppner's Return "The last time he sang at Roy Thomson Hall turned out to be the worst night of Ben Heppner's astonishing career. As they stumbled out of the hall into the cold night air in January, 2002, his hometown fans murmured that he might be finished. And for several agonizing months Heppner — one of the world's greatest dramatic opera tenors — wondered whether they might be right. But Heppner is full of confidence and enthusiasm as he prepares for his Thomson Hall return tomorrow night, his first since that traumatic occasion." Toronto Star 11/26/03
Posted: 11/26/2003 6:49 am

Israel's Conductor "The association of the Israel Philharmonic with Zubin Mehta is going into its fifth decade and the symbiosis between the two is closer than ever. Mehta's English is peppered with Hebrew and Yiddish; the food at orchestra outings is peppered with the fiendishly hot chiles that Mehta is famously fond of." The IPO, which has a reputation of being one of the most argumentative collections of musicians anywhere on Earth, genuinely loves this man who, more than any other conductor alive, has crafted his own identity within the national identity of Israel. Jerusalem Post 11/26/03
Posted: 11/26/2003 5:30 am

Theatre

Shocker - Scotland's 7:84 Loses Government Funding In a surprise move, one of Scotland's best-known theatre companies - 7:84 - has lost its core funding from the Scottish government, and its future is in doubt. "It stands to lose about £225,000 a year – half of its annual income – as part of a package of cuts, worth nearly £1m, from nine organisations." Glasgow Herald 11/25/03
Posted: 11/25/2003 6:43 pm

Luring Musicals To Town Connecticut's Goodspeed Musicals has a $45 million theatre it wants to build. Now the theatre is being enticed to Middletown with a package of incentives. "If accepted, the Goodspeed offer would be the cultural crown jewel Middletown is seeking for its downtown development, which includes a newly built hotel, restaurants and cinemas and a tourist-friendly link to its proposed South Cove riverfront development." Hartford Courant 11/25/03
Posted: 11/25/2003 6:33 pm

Publishing

Amazon Gets Into The Cataloging Business "The British Library and online retailer Amazon are helping the public to source and buy rare antique books. The library's catalogue of published works is now on the Amazon website, meaning it has details of more than 2.5m books on the site. Some 1.7m of these books are pre-1970 volumes, not previously available... [However,] the British Library stressed it was only the catalogue records that would be made available, not the archived collection." BBC 11/25/03
Posted: 11/26/2003 5:21 am

India Bans Sales Of Autobiographical Tell-All "Sales of the latest autobiographical book by the exiled Bangladeshi author Taslima Nasrin have been blocked in India after a Calcutta poet complained about the depiction of a three night long sexual encounter between the pair." The Guardian (UK) 11/25/03
Posted: 11/25/2003 6:26 pm

The Tiger Woods Of Short Stories John Updike is master of the short story, writes Louis Menand. "The whole idea is to make language perform its own little supernatural act, which is to turn marks on a page into an emotion, an effect, an apparition of something that is not there, a ghost. You could say that the complexity of the machinery used to produce this is hidden beneath the surface of the writing, except that the writing is the machinery, just as sex is only bodies. The satisfaction comes from the creation of a feeling where there was no feeling, only words, or flesh, or golf balls. People like Updike, or Tiger Woods, make you aware, by what they do, that this satisfaction is possible in life, and that it can be as supreme a satisfaction as there is." The New Yorker 11/24/03
Posted: 11/25/2003 4:37 pm

Media

Getting Sick: Hollywood's Last Taboo When Hollywood composer Michael Kamen died this month, after a years-long battle with multiple sclerosis, few of the news bulletins reporting his demise were able to give the cause. In fact, the afflictions of Hollywood stars are almost never accurately reported, and the very idea of sickness seems to be almost unacceptable in polite Hollywood society. It's a bizarre taboo, but an undeniable one, and Kamen is only the latest example of a star-studded culture obsessed with health, and unwilling to discuss even the idea of sickness. Seattle Times 11/26/03
Posted: 11/26/2003 6:45 am

A Bollywood Nightmare When Troy Niemans scored a job editing a big-budget Bollywood film, he thought his career was finally taking off. But after less than a month in India, the Canadian editor found himself unpaid, unwanted, and eventually jailed for supposedly stealing from the film company. India's film industry is infamous for its heavy-handed tactics and alleged ties to gangsters and organized crime, but Niemans never suspected that he would become enmeshed in it all. The Globe & Mail (Canada) 11/26/03
Posted: 11/26/2003 6:20 am

Nielsen Tries To Explain Ratings Drop Why have younger viewers switched off the TV this fall? The ratings are down. So down, in fact, that network execs have begun blaming Nielsen, the ratings company. Now Nielsen has produced a report attempting to explain the dropoff. "The report from Nielsen, which has stoutly defended its data since the complaints from the networks began, found that changes in Nielsen's methodology that started as long as a year and a half ago are partly - but not wholly - to blame for the decline in viewership of network series among men ages 18 to 34." The New York Times 11/25/03
Posted: 11/25/2003 7:09 pm

Why Are There So Few Women Directors? "In 2001 only 15 of the 250 top-grossing films were made by women. The reasons for this are mystifying. People suggest that women are less good at the kind of hustling needed to get a movie off the ground; perhaps it is related to the way filmmaking requires an obsessive dedication over a period of years; maybe female directors take time out to have children - and a year off is equivalent to death in the industry." The Telegraph (UK) 11/26/03
Posted: 11/25/2003 6:58 pm

Dance

Lofty Goals "On Friday evening, Ottawa's National Arts Centre will come alive with the hopes of an entire art form. Matjash Mrozewski, the 28-year-old Toronto-based choreographer who is rapidly gaining profile here and abroad, will unveil a work commissioned by the NAC for no less a purpose than getting young Canadians turned on to modern dance. It's too early to say whether it will succeed on that lofty level, but given Mrozewski's usual dynamic approach, not to mention the teenage focus group the NAC assembled to help guide his efforts, you can at least bet it won't be boring." National Post (Canada) 11/26/03
Posted: 11/26/2003 6:30 am


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