Arts Programming Ranks Last With BBC Viewers What programs do BBC viewers most value? "High quality news topped the list of 'public service' programming - 70 percent of respondents said it was important for society and to them personally. Then came sport, drama and, perhaps surprisingly, soaps. Viewers said they valued them because they dealt with current social and health issues in an engaging way. Right at the bottom came arts and religious programmes - fewer than 10 percent thought these were of particular value to society." BBC 04/21/04
Posted: 04/21/2004 5:55 pm
The Art Of The Expat "The histories of American writers and composers who went to Paris between the world wars have been examined so frequently that it's almost unthinkable the same should not have been true for artists. But [a] new exhibition at the Terra Museum of American Art, purports to be the first to examine the phenomenon in all its diversity, and that has made for a complex, often revelatory experience." American artists drawn to Paris for its comparatively eclectic style and freedom of artistic thought "defined themselves by looking to currents outside their native country even after they returned home, as nearly all of them did." Chicago Tribune 04/22/04
Posted: 04/22/2004 6:18 am
Vettriano Prices Don't Indicate Quality The sale of Jack Vettriano’s painting at a major-league price doesn't mean its great work. "They are not connected to any enduring artistic value, only to current commercial success and that is a very different thing. Remember when, at the Millennium, the greatest musician of all time was chosen by popular vote? It turned out to be Robbie Williams. He left Mozart, Beethoven and all the rest standing. You can’t compare Vettriano to the great Scottish painters just because of his fancy prices any more than you can compare Williams to Mozart." The Scotsman 04/22/04
Posted: 04/21/2004 6:47 pm
Albert Hall Fans Protest Building Plans London's Royal College of Art is planning an extension. But fans of the Albert Hall next door are protesting. "Campaigners claim the Royal College of Art extension - nicknamed 'The Ellipse' - will "disrupt" views of the Hall and "detract" from its historic setting. More than 9,000 people have signed a petition calling for a public inquiry into the proposed six-storey building." BBC 04/21/04
Posted: 04/21/2004 5:39 pm
Will Pittsburgh Tour Without A Music Director? According to a German company which specializes in booking American orchestras into European venues, the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra is planning two major tours of the continent in 2005 and 2006, despite not having a music director. The plans call for Hans Graf to conduct the PSO on the first tour, with Andrew Davis leading the way in late summer 2006. It is highly unusual for an American orchestra to tour without its music director, but the PSO may be attempting to take advantage of the worldwide reputation it earned under departing MD Mariss Jansons as one of the U.S.'s best, if not best-known, ensembles. Pittsburgh Post-Gazette 04/22/04
Posted: 04/22/2004 6:43 am
Detroit Hires NYC Ballet Exec "The Detroit Symphony Orchestra has found its new top administrator at the head of the largest ballet company in America. Anne Parsons, 46, general manager of the New York City Ballet, has been hired as the executive director of the Detroit Symphony Orchestra. The appointment comes at a crucial moment for the DSO, which is coping with a $2.2-million accumulated deficit, searching for a successor to music director Neeme Jarvi and developing a long-range vision for the $60-million Max M. Fisher Music Center, which the orchestra opened to great acclaim in October. The DSO has been without its top administrator since former president and executive director Emil Kang, in the wake of the deficit, resigned in December after 3 1/2 years at the helm." Detroit Free Press 04/22/04
Posted: 04/22/2004 5:49 am
Kahane to Colorado The Colorado Symphony Orchestra has reportedly settled on conductor/pianist Jeffrey Kahane as its next music director, succeeding Marin Alsop. Kahane also heads up the Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra, recently founded a new music festival in northern California, and is a frequent guest with many major American orchestras. There is no word yet on when his tenure with the CSO will begin. Rocky Mountain News 04/22/04
Posted: 04/22/2004 5:40 am
Never, Ever, Ever Leave Your Violin In The Car "A thief recently broke into a car and made off with two 1840s violins owned by musicians in the Vancouver Symphony Orchestra. More than two weeks after the April 5 theft, police have not recovered the rare instruments, which are worth tens of thousands of dollars." The theft was particularly brazen, taking place while the instruments' owners were less than a block away buying a parking pass for their car. Vancouver Sun 04/22/04
Posted: 04/22/2004 5:26 am
Breaking Free of the Jazz Police For the last couple of decades, the ultraconservatove jazz movement known to some as neoclassicism and to others as "The Cult of Wynton Marsalis" has had a profound influence on rising young musicians. But Marsalis's influence seems to be slipping, as a new generation of jazzers raised on hip-hop and R&B comes of age. Some of the new breed feel that the neoclassicisists confuse history with tradition, and are eager to branch out into new realms of musical exploration. St. Louis Post-Dispatch 04/21/04
Posted: 04/22/2004 5:06 am
D-Day For Scottish Opera Scottish Opera's day of reckoning has come, as its funding fate is being decided. "It has been told it must repay a £4 million advance against its £7.5 million funding from the Scottish Arts Council. One plan on the table is said to involve as many as 80 job losses, including the opera’s staff chorus." The Scotsman 04/22/04
Posted: 04/21/2004 6:16 pm
French Unions Disrupt Cultural Events (Again) "Protesting French actors and technicians, who prompted the cancellation of most summer arts festivals last year and forced the resignation of the French culture minister this spring," are again disrupting cultural events in France and threatening the Cannes Film Festival. The New York Times 04/22/04
Posted: 04/21/2004 6:41 pm
Protests Over Philly Arts Cuts Philadelphia cultural leaders are protesting the mayor's plans to cut $4.4 million of cultural funding. "The city now spends just 12 cents per $100 on the city's arts and cultural sector, which in turn supports 11,000 jobs, generates more than $560 million in regional spending and returns $6.5 million in city tax revenue, according to a 1998 Pennsylvania Economy League study." CentreDaily.com (AP) 04/20/04
Posted: 04/21/2004 5:48 pm
NJ Symphony Benefactor Flees Country On Tax Charges "A philanthropist best known for selling millions of dollars worth of musical instruments at a discount to the New Jersey Symphony Orchestra has fled to Cuba to avoid tax fraud charges, authorities said Wednesday." Newsday (AP) 04/21/04
Posted: 04/22/2004 5:35 am
- Never Saw It Coming With Herbert Axelrod on the lam, New Jersey has lost arguably its most dynamic and generous arts supporter. "People in the arts world were stunned. To tell the truth, they said, they had not seen him in months. And perhaps oddly, considering Axelrod said that he wanted to hear his instruments played in New Jersey, Axelrod and his wife were not current subscribers to the NJSO." Newark Star-Ledger 04/22/04
Posted: 04/22/2004 5:32 am
- At Least The Instruments Have Integrity When news broke of Herbert Axelrod's shady financial dealings, the New Jersey Symphony Orchestra could have been excused for panicking. After all, this alleged criminal had just sold them $18 million worth of supposedly priceless instruments. But NJSO officials say that regardless of Axelrod's behavior in other areas, the deal that brought the orchestra its collection of Strads, Guarneris, and Amatis was on the up-and-up, and they've got the papers to prove it. Newark Star-Ledger 04/22/04
Posted: 04/22/2004 5:30 am
Emin Lashes Out At Press Artist Tracey Emin, fresh from being attacked in the press over a dispute about a quilt with a class of 8-year-olds, strikes back at the press: "That's an invasion of my privacy. If I muck up, I'm going to be one of the first people to say. I don't need a paper to write lies about me, to say that I've done something that I haven't done." BBC 04/21/04
Posted: 04/21/2004 5:59 pm
RSC Takes On New Work The Royal Shakespeare Festival is producing a festival of new works, its first serious new work at Stratford since 2001. "The recommitment to new writing signals a return to the RSC's traditional values, widely seen as having been dismantled by Boyd's predecessor, Adrian Noble, who moved the company out of its London base at the Barbican, and threatened to bulldoze the Royal Shakespeare Theatre (RST) in Stratford." The Guardian (UK) 04/22/04
Posted: 04/21/2004 6:34 pm
How Can West End Theatres Justify Ticket Prices? "To many, the West End feels like the airline industry in the days before Easyjet and Ryanair arrived: prices always rise faster than inflation, but the product never really improves. Sure, some of the stuff on stage is superb, but the customer service is terrible. The seats are generally cramped, the toilets are tiny and the bars are usually worse." The Guardian (UK) 04/22/04
Posted: 04/21/2004 6:30 pm
Whatever Happened to the Political Novel? Is the socially conscious novel a dead genre? Whatever happened to the idea that a book can change the world? Are authors so intent on their own characters that they can't be bothered to make their plots politically relevant to our increasingly dangerous world? Ray Conlogue is only asking, but modern authors seem increasingly hostile to the notion that they could actually advance political ideas or social agendas with their works of fiction. These days, novelists are perfectly within their rights to spend hours working on behalf of whatever causes they support, but to put the crusade to paper would apparently cross some invisible line of decorum. The Globe & Mail (Canada) 04/22/04
Posted: 04/22/2004 6:33 am
So You're A Poet? Better Watch Your Back. Maybe it's that poets tend to be such tortured souls. Or maybe the constant battle for public understanding and acceptance is just too much for some. But whatever the reason, a new study makes it perfectly clear: poets die younger than other writers. "On average, a poet had a life-expectancy of only 62... compared to playwrights' average age 63 years, novelists' 66 years and non-fiction writers' 68 years."
BBC 04/22/04
Posted: 04/22/2004 5:15 am
Cannes's New Look "Comedies, documentaries, animated features and genre films join the usual art-house fare in this year's Cannes International Film Festival, which has undergone a substantial overhaul following numerous complaints that last year's selection was one of the worst in the festival's history. After three years in the understudy role, Cannes artistic director Thierry Frémaux is completely in charge of the festival for the first time this year and he seems determined to shake off Cannes's cobwebs, along with its reputation as a self-congratulatory club for a handful of admired but little-watched veteran directors surrounded by photo opportunities for many famous movie stars." The Globe & Mail (Canada) 04/22/04
Posted: 04/22/2004 6:38 am
Should FCC Be Allowed To Police Cable? FCC Chairman Michael Powell is hoping that he can convince Congress to give his commission authority over cable TV networks, as part of an ongoing effort to wipe everything that Powell finds indecent or obscene from the national media landscape. At the moment, the FCC has no power over cable, since such networks do not use the public airwaves and are a subscription-based service available only to those viewers who choose to pay for it. Joanne Ostrow finds Powell's attempted power-grab alarming: "An activist FCC must not trample the free-speech provisions of the Constitution, even if Powell thinks he is a hero, saving America from itself." Denver Post 04/22/04
Posted: 04/22/2004 6:26 am
BBC Assailed For Lack Of Creativity The BBC has been criticzed in a report that says viewers think the originality and creativity of TV has slipped. "The BBC was singled out by Ofcom yesterday and told to stop chasing ratings and making copycat television shows as the media regulator claimed current affairs, the arts and religious programmes were being pushed out of peak viewing hours on terrestrial channels." The Independent (UK) 04/22/04
Posted: 04/21/2004 6:21 pm
The Top-Grossing Canadian Movie Of All Time? (You Won't Believe It) There's talk of a remake of the 1980's teen gross-out comedy "Porky's. But that isn't the news. The real news is that "Porky's" is the Canadian movie box-office champ of all-time. "The hard things to remake are the ones that were good. But this one was terrible." CBC 04/21/04
Posted: 04/21/2004 4:44 pm
FCC Chairman Weighs In On Indecency FCC chairman Michael Powell says he doesn't support a bill in Congress that would penalize broadcasters over "indecent" conent. "I don't believe the First Amendment should change channels when it goes from seven to 107. I don't want to defend that distinction because I don't believe in it. I think the government should be exceedingly conservative about any regulation of content for anyone." Washington Post (AP) 04/20/04
Posted: 04/21/2004 4:38 pm
The Uneven Martha Graham Robert Gottlieb writes that one of the most interesting things about the rejuvenated Martha Graham Company is that it shows the unevenness of her work. "Since this reconstituted company emerged two years ago, after the resolution of the legal struggles that had bedeviled Graham loyalists for so long, emphasis has been placed on disinterring Graham relics from the 30’s. This has proved a mixed blessing. Although these pieces all have historical interest, without her animating presence they tend to remain curiosities—foreshadowings of the greatness to come rather than great in themselves." New York Observer 04/21/04
Posted: 04/21/2004 3:19 pm
