Does America Exist Because We Shop? America often gets criticized for being consumerist and driven by its appetite for consumption of goods. Yet, writes one historian, it may be precisely this talent for shopping that allowed America to break from Britain back in the 1700s and create a modern nation that works. The New York Times 02/28/04
Posted: 02/29/2004 8:05 am
Frozen Art At The North Pole An unusual village of ice and snow scultures has risen in northern Finland. Teams of architects and artists have created it, and the project's curator "believes the show has spawned technical and artistic breakthroughs in what can be done with snow and ice. But more daringly, he hopes to demonstrate that artists and architects can work together in an environment, on a scale and with a material alien to most of them." The New York Times 02/29/04
Posted: 02/29/2004 9:08 am
Iraqi Art To Go On Tour Plans are being made for a world tour of Iraqi art treasures. "The travelling show, provisionally entitled 'The gold of Nimrud' is being planned as a blockbuster exhibition that will include hundreds of Assyrian objects from Iraqi museums. It will embark on a three- to five-year international tour beginning in early 2005. If all goes according to plan, the show will visit eight to 12 cities in Europe, the US, and Asia." The Art Newspaper 02/27/04
Posted: 02/29/2004 8:31 am
The Barnes In Limbo The judge considering whether or not the Barnes Collection should be allowed to move to Philadelphia has put the brakes on the proceedings. On January 29, "The judge said he was 'hamstrung by the total lack of hard numbers in evaluating these proposals,' calling the construction price only a 'guesstimate.' There had, he said, been no architectural plans, feasibility studies or proformas projecting the Philadelphia project’s success or the costs of maintaining three separate locations." The Art Newspaper 02/28/04
Posted: 02/29/2004 8:28 am
Baroque On The Record Boston Baroque's recordings with Telarc will never earn back the money it takes to make them. But there are other advantages: "The records have invigorated our audience, and the reception the records have earned -- including three Grammy nominations -- has changed us from a local into a national and international ensemble. The recordings have led to invitations to tour in Europe and in America. We have five weekends a year to say `Come and hear us,' but the recordings can introduce us to people all the time. And the recordings have had a tremendous impact on the musicians. The intensity of the recording process is a lot different than rehearsing a concert and presenting it. And of course through recordings, the group can hear itself." Boston Globe 02/29/04
Posted: 02/29/2004 9:39 am
The Sampling Debate - Legalities Aside... Internet protests over Danger Mouse's "The Grey Album" last week show that "there's really no way to resolve the legal issues surrounding sampling. It's a subjective thing: It makes sense for Vanilla Ice or P. Diddy to cough up some cash and a co-writing credit when they appropriate "Under Pressure" or "Every Breath You Take" more or less in bulk to build another song, for example, but does a single snare loop or sampled "Yeah!" from an ancient funk record deserve to be treated the same? Where do you draw the line?" Toronto Star 02/29/04
Posted: 02/29/2004 8:57 am
In RoadTrip: End Of The Tour Sam Bergman on tour with the Minnesota Orchestra: "There are those who would say that it’s foolhardy to schedule back-to-back concerts in Scotland and Finland, that the odds of everything going right with the travel, the cargo, the instrument trunks, the time change, and the weather are just too slim. These cynics are unquestionably right, and we needed every ounce of good luck we could get today for this concert in Lahti to come off as planned..." RoadTrip (AJBlogs) 02/28/04
Posted: 02/29/2004 8:34 am
Revising The Birth Of The Blues In the popular mythology of the blues, Robert Johnson has been credited with a pivotal role in creating the music. Yet a new book suggests that Johnson was really a minor figure, and that his "primacy was largely a creation of white fans and music critics of the 1960's. "Very little that happened in the decades following his death would have been affected if he had never played a note." The New York Times 02/28/04
Posted: 02/29/2004 8:19 am
Royal Academy Buys Menuhin Archive The Royal Academy of Music has bought the archive of papers, photos and memorabilia of the late Yehudi Menuhin. "The archive contains important musical manuscripts by many of the composers who worked with Menuhin, including music from his collaborations with Ravi Shankar and Stephane Grappelli. In addition to detailed correspondence with Edward Elgar, Bela Bartok and Benjamin Britten, the archive includes letters from such non-musical figures as Einstein and Indian prime minister Jawaharlal Nehru." BBC 02/28/04
Posted: 02/29/2004 8:09 am
Attacking The Idea Of The Creative Class Richard Florida's "Creative Class" ideas have been widely embraced in America. But there's a backlash, and he is "taking political hits from the right and the left "There is just one problem: The basic economics behind [Florida's] ideas don't work," writes one critic. Another "calls Florida's city-revitalization theory 'so wrong and backward that it reads like satire.' Florida has mistaken the side effects of a booming economy for the causes of growth. After all, 'Potemkin bohemias' are not going to get old steel cities humming again." Boston Globe 02/29/04
Posted: 02/29/2004 10:00 am
A Cultural Wave - Gay Marriage Gay marriage is an inevitable social certainty, writes Frank Rich. "The polls find a clear majority of those ages 18 to 29 in favor of same-sex marriage. In America, generational turnover is destiny — especially when it's plugged into capitalism. In a country where only half the families are intact heterosexual marriages with children, those that break the old mold are a huge developing market — for weddings, tourism, housing and anything else American ingenuity can conjure up for consumption." The New York Times 02/29/04
Posted: 02/29/2004 9:17 am
An Attack On French Intelligence? Members of France's intelligentsia have risen up to complain that the French government is attacking the country's "intelligence." "Underneath the polemics, as usual, lie money and politics. The protesters say that President Jacques Chirac's government has been trimming cultural, educational and scientific budgets to the detriment of the country's 'intelligence.' While the government has a solid majority in parliament and the Socialist opposition is in disarray, the intellectuals are using next month's nationwide regional elections to get attention." The New York Times 02/28/04
Posted: 02/29/2004 8:14 am
The Billionaire Kids Book Author JK Rowling has joined the billionaire's club. "Once an unemployed single mother, she has now sold more than 250 million books around the world. Rowling was ranked at number 552 out of a record number of 587 billionaires in the Forbes list. The writer said last year that the enormous wealth the Harry Potter books have brought her made her feel guilty." BBC 02/28/04
Posted: 02/29/2004 8:12 am
What's "Authentic" About Tevye? "With the arrival of a new production of "Fiddler on the Roof" on Broadway, some commentators have again assumed that the show's value lies in its authenticity. Early responses to the revival have gone so far as to count the Jewish names in the cast and crew, noting incredulously that even the role of Tevye is played by a non-Jewish actor, Alfred Molina. This is hardly surprising: the further removed we are from the Old World, the more we long to recapture it. But what is surprising is that the pseudo-klezmer tunes and schmaltz-laden accents in "Fiddler" were ever assumed to be the real thing." The New York Times 02/29/04
Posted: 02/29/2004 9:23 am
Land Of The Free - US Government Warns Publishers About Books From Iran Iran has a rich tradition of literature, yet Americans see little of it. If the American government has its way, they'll see even less. The US government has "warned publishers they may face grave legal consequences for editing manuscripts from Iran and other disfavored nations, on the ground that such tinkering amounts to trading with the enemy." The New York Times 02/28/04
Posted: 02/29/2004 8:22 am
Playing Tag With The Movies At the movies, "2003 was an off year for copy lines, those punchy epigrams printed above or below the film's title in posters and ads. As studios compete in an increasingly cluttered media landscape, a good line, according to one marketing exec, is needed to reinforce that one iconic image." Boston Globe 02/29/04
Posted: 02/29/2004 10:05 am
When Twyla Met Billy Joel Twyla Tharp didn't have to spend much time convincing Billy Joel to let her use his music for an evening-long show. "It was like archeology. I treated the songs as shards, pieces of pots that had been pulled out of the ground, and I had to reconstruct the whole pot. My other concept was something called living newspapers. It was a short-lived form of American theater -- Orson Welles, among others, practiced it. They took subject matter like electricity, water, labor, and bulked dramatic evenings out of these concepts, and I had the feeling that I would do this with the conflict of war." Boston Globe 02/29/04
Posted: 02/29/2004 9:35 am
The Weight Of Keeping Balanchine Alive "Since Balanchine's death in 1983, the company he founded has been run by Peter Martins, the former star who has been responsible for teaching a new generation of dancers the works of one of the 20th century's greatest innovators. Beloved as he was onstage, Martins's backstage role has made him a lightning rod for blame. Throughout his tenure, critics have complained that the Balanchine repertoire has faded, has lost its vitality. When the vibrancy of a performance appears to dim, it's not as easy to renew as colors on silk and tulle." Washington Post 02/29/04
Posted: 02/29/2004 8:44 am
Dance Fans: The SF Chronicle Wants To Hear From You! Since dance critic Octavio Roca left the San Francisco Chronicle a few months ago, the newspaper hasn't had a staff dance critic. And it currently has no plans to hire one. This week one of the freelancers who's been helping fill the beat raised an alarm on an online dance BB that the Chron was eliminating dance coverage altogether. Not so, writes Chron editor David Wiegand: We have no intention of cutting dance coverage. But "since Octavio left, I have received all of two letters about the fact we haven't yet been authorized by the Hearst Corp. to hire a new dance critic. That's rather sad, don't you think?" Sounds like an invitation to me... Voice of Dance 02/27/.04
Posted: 02/29/2004 8:40 am
