How Do We Sort Out Violence For Entertainment And Violence For Horror? "Rarely has the dissonance between the news and popular entertainment been so striking. One can react only with horror as Iraq descends into a chaotic bloodbath, Israel continues to be engulfed in a sickening cycle of revenge upon revenge and terrorism spreads to other countries. Some ABC-TV stations refused to carry Ted Koppel reading the names of killed American soldiers on Friday's "Nightline." Yet week after week we're offered supposedly cathartic stories of devastated families and bloodthirsty vengeance to consume." Chicago Tribune 05/02/04
Posted: 05/02/2004 3:38 pm
Qatar's Amazing Museum Plans "Virtually nothing compares with the scale and ambition of the museums planned for Qatar’s capital Doha." The capital is being remade, and five museums, designed by architectural heavyweights, are in the planning. The Art Newspaper 04/30/04
Posted: 05/02/2004 4:22 pm
MoMA: Swapping Picassos For Hirsts? The Museum of Modern Art is selling nine paintings and could raise $27 million from the sale. At the same time, "a London source close to the contemporary art market told The Art Newspaper that the museum is considering the purchase of the 13 Damien Hirsts now on show at Tate Britain in the exhibition “In-a-Gadda-da-Vida” (until 31 May). Could MoMA be trading its Picassos, Légers, and Pollocks for a flock of butterfly paintings and vitrines by Mr Hirst?" The Art Newspaper 04/30/04
Posted: 05/02/2004 4:19 pm
Oklahoma: Rebuilding A Blown-Up Building How do you rebuild the Oklahoma Federal Building that was blown up? It's not easy to make a statement. "With elegant curving walls of glass and brute masses of concrete, the three-story, $42.7 million structure is both anti-fortress and fortress, a self-consciouslessly masculine building that doesn't shy from a show of strength -- and sometimes goes too far." Chicago Tribune 05/02/04
Posted: 05/02/2004 3:35 pm
16-Year-Old Violinist Is BBC's Young Musician of the Year Sixteen-year-old violinist Nicola Benedetti has won the BBC's Young Musician of the Year award. "She triumphed over four other finalists at Edinburgh's Usher Hall and became the first Scot to win the competition. Nicola began playing the violin at the age of four and left school aged 10 to attend the Yehudi Menuhin School for gifted musicians in Surrey." BBC 05/02/04
Posted: 05/02/2004 7:05 pm
Pianists With Personality For a long time now, many pianists have suffered from a bewildering lack of personality. Oh, the notes were (usually) all there, and the technical prowess could astonish. But too many pianists sounded the same. Tim Mangan notes that four young pianists are distinguishing themselves with their individualistic playing. Orange County Register 05/02/04
Posted: 05/02/2004 3:57 pm
Zinman: From Fame And Back Conductor David Zinman has long been the world's greatest unknown conductor, the guy whose commitment to contemporary American composers and less-than-tactful way of getting things done kept him a guest rather than a resident with the world's top orchestras. A man of principles, Zinman relinquished his conductor laureate title at Baltimore because current management hadn't sustained modern American music programming. Then, almost stealthily, the budget-priced Zinman/Zurich recording of Beethoven symphonies on the Arte Nova label - acclaimed for the crisp manner of period performance, but with the "oomph" of conventional instruments - infiltrated the music world with sales that now top 1 million discs. Now, the unknown conductor and the provincial orchestra are thinking about recording all the Brahms and Mahler symphonies." Philadelphia Inquirer 05/02/04
Posted: 05/02/2004 3:30 pm
Casting For Arts Support In Silicon Valley When philanthropists in Silicon Valley give money to charitable organizations, it's not usually to arts and culture. That's a problem when you're trying to build an arts community. "Strong participation by business executives is a prerequisite for generating more money for the arts. But the issue is sensitive, because it's tied to the notion that the valley's corporate leaders often have neglected or undervalued an arts community that is vital to a region's quality of life." San Jose Mercury-News 05/02/04
Posted: 05/02/2004 6:34 pm
Artists: We Struggled Under Saddam What was it like to be an artist in Iraq during Saddam Hussein's regime? "The situation for artists was not good. There was the prohibitive cost of materials and the problem of being blocked off from the outside world, Saddam stopped all government support for art facilities and was interested only in having thousands of portraits of himself made, for which artists were well paid. Although Iraqi art survived underground, State-sanctioned art in Iraq was dying and the galleries were full of works on sale to foreigners at cheap prices." The Art Newspaper 04/30/04
Posted: 05/02/2004 4:17 pm
Picasso's Battle With France Over Citizenship Picasso tried to get citizenship in France, but authorities branded him an anarchist and held up his application. "Picasso never received a formal rejection of his application but remained in France until his death in 1973. He never mentioned his naturalisation attempt to anyone. 'I think he was profoundly humiliated by the fact that France didn't say yes,' said Charlot. 'He never applied again." The Observer (UK) 05/02/04
Posted: 05/02/2004 7:28 pm
Levine: I'll Keep Conducting Conductor James Levine has responded to a story that said he was suffering from ailments that increasingly make him an ineffective leader. He has signed an extension to his Metropolitan Opera contract to 2011, and will take over as music director of the Boston Symphony as scheduled. "I wouldn't have agreed to it if I didn't think I would be able to fulfill the contract. As I get older, no doubt I'll keep changing in some ways, and I hope it'll mean I keep doing better work. The perception of most of the people I know has been that even when I absorb or deal with something like my back or my tremor, the work gets better. And I think that's true." Boston Globe 05/02/04
Posted: 05/02/2004 3:47 pm
Oboist With An Involuntary Reflex Alex Klein is one of the world's best oboists. He's principal of the Chicago Symphony. But three years ago he was diagnosed with "focal dystonia, a neurological disorder in which the brain, for unknown reasons, sends messages through the nerves that cause muscles in a certain part of the body to contract and curl up involuntarily. The disease is usually painless, and the contractions occur only during specific tasks. For instance, the third and fourth fingers on Klein's left hand might fail him in a Mozart concerto, but they work perfectly when he ties his shoes or uses his left hand for other fine motor tasks." After going through 30 doctors, Klein is resigning from the CSO. Chicago Sun-Times 05/02/04
Posted: 05/02/2004 3:17 pm
Shakespeare - Washed Up At 40 (400 Years Ago Today) "So, 400 years ago today Shakespeare turned 40. The theatre is not kind to ageing talent. Contrasting his own autumnal face with the cruel energy of spring, middle-aged Shakespeare must have wondered whether he had passed his prime. In fact, he had. Shakespeare at 40 was already, like the Julian calendar, conspicuously behind the times." The Guardian (UK) 05/03/04
Posted: 05/02/2004 7:33 pm
Audience Attacks Performers, Tries To Burn Down Theatre In Madrid, "the final night of a Spanish play entitled In God We Shit was in jeopardy yesterday after a week of controversy culminated in attacks on the performers and an attempt to burn down the theatre in the middle of the performance." The Guardian (UK) 05/03/04
Posted: 05/02/2004 7:17 pm
That Sondheim Bounce That Matters Maybe it was predictable - Stephen Sondheim's "Bounce" wasn't a hit when it first played last year. "Though Bounce closed in Washington last fall with an air of failure, any show with a name as big as Sondheim's on it will have the shortest of stints in musical-theater purgatory. It's part of a death-and-transfiguration cycle that has been going on at least since the mid-1950s, when the Leonard Bernstein musical Candide went down like a rock, but whose original cast album became a classic that continues to inspire increasingly successful revisions. Failure? Success? Not for nothing is show biz mythology full of "Springtime for Hitler" instances in which failure and success are mere matters of perception that change from moment to moment." Philadelphia Inquirer 05/02/04
Posted: 05/02/2004 6:38 pm
PEN Lit Awards To Playwrights Wilson, Nottage "Pulitzer Prize winner Lanford Wilson and fellow playwright Lynn Nottage were honored with literary awards announced Sunday by the PEN American Center." Newsday (AP) 05/02/04
Posted: 05/02/2004 3:42 pm
The Global Warming Movie That's Kicking Up Controversy "The Day After Tomorrow, a global-warming disaster flick due to be released this summer, has "become a lightning rod for criticism of the Bush administration's environmental policies. The movie's histrionics and dubious science - New York City is flooded and transformed overnight into a polar metropolis - also raise issues of scientific validity and activist filmmaking." New York Daily News 05/02/04
Posted: 05/02/2004 3:33 pm
Burlesque Is Back "In New York, and other US cities, burlesque is back. The riotous form of musical striptease is sweeping nightspots, becoming the latest trend in entertainment. The craze is dubbed 'New Burlesque', but the ample flesh on display is just the same." The Observer (UK) 05/02/04
Posted: 05/02/2004 7:31 pm
