It's Just A Jukebox, People! 4 million iPods have been sold this Christmas season, and cultural commentators have been falling all over themselves to define what the new era of portable digital music really, really means - you know, in, like, a really big, cosmic sense. Jim Walsh would like all the technogeeks and live music doomsayers to just settle down for a minute and enjoy the moment. What does it mean? "It means that four million people will be listening to the soundtrack of whatever they call their lives at the moment... It means that four million people will go to iTunes and drink in the celebrity playlists... What it doesn't mean is that four million people will chuck their tapes or CDs." City Pages (Minneapolis/St. Paul) 12/22/04
Posted: 12/23/2004 6:45 am
World's Best Students Bypassing US Foreign students contribute $13 billion to the American economy annually. But this year there was "a sharp plunge in the number of students from India and China who had taken the most recent administration of the Graduate Record Exam, a requirement for applying to most graduate schools; it had dropped by half. Foreign applications to American graduate schools declined 28 percent this year. Actual foreign graduate student enrollments dropped 6 percent. Enrollments of all foreign students, in undergraduate, graduate and postdoctoral programs, fell for the first time in three decades in an annual census released this fall. Meanwhile, university enrollments have been surging in England, Germany and other countries." The New York Times 12/21/04
Posted: 12/22/2004 10:12 pm
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Court Victory For Family Seeking Nazi-Looted Art "A Canadian family scored a major legal victory yesterday when a judge in the Czech Republic agreed that they should gain possession of a valuable art collection -- believed to be worth millions of dollars -- assembled by their Jewish grandfather, then later confiscated by the Nazis and the Communists... [T]he decision, which will be issued in writing late next month, will likely be appealed. That appeal could take more than a year, with the case possibly going as far as the Czech Republic's Supreme Court. As a result, it might be as late as 2008 before the collection ends up on Canadian soil, if ever." The Globe & Mail (Canada) 12/23/04
Posted: 12/23/2004 6:24 am
Texas-Sizing Your Museum "The Dallas Museum of Art has suffered growing pains. Back-to-back expansions of the downtown building, the last ending in 1993, left more space than art to fill it. Recently, it's had the opposite problem. The contemporary collection has snowballed since director John R. 'Jack' Lane's arrival in 1999, but the Contemporary Art Galleries weren't designed for the kind of big works being done today, many of which include films or videos with noisy soundtracks." But now, with a major renovation just completed, DMA may finally have a space that fits its collection. Dallas Morning News 12/23/04
Posted: 12/23/2004 6:12 am
Will Saatchi Sell His Shark? Collector Charles Saatchi is mulling a £6.25 million offer for the massive tiger shark preserved in formaldehyde which he commissioned from artist Damien Hirst in 1991 for £50,000. The shark, one of the early works of the movement known as BritArt, "propelled Hirst to fame after it was first shown in 1992." BBC 12/23/04
Posted: 12/23/2004 5:59 am
African Art Museum Relocating To Harlem "Officials at the Museum for African Art, located in Long Island City, expect to break ground on a new $50-million, three-story building in Harlem early next year. The move will return the 21-year-old museum to its Manhattan roots after a two-year absence and help bolster Harlem's appeal as a cultural destination..." Newsday 12/22/04
Posted: 12/22/2004 10:17 pm
The Next Step In Analyzing Art? We depend on computers to analyze many things. Why not art? Researchers have "digitally scanned artworks into a computer, and then used image-processing techniques to create statistics describing the pen and brush strokes. Like a connoisseur - a blend of Bernard Berenson and HAL - the computer analysis detected subtle differences in these strokes that might help distinguish an artist from an imitator." The New York Times 12/23/04
Posted: 12/22/2004 6:33 pm
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Lebrecht: Why Does Anyone Like Tippett? The British have always been taken with the work of homegrown composer Michael Tippett, although he is hardly a household name elsewhere in the world. This is exactly as it should be, says Norman Lebrecht, and the coming celebration of his centenary will be little more than a tip of the cap to mediocrity. Tippett was, in fact, "an inglorious exemplar of English amateurism... Set beside any of his contemporaries, radical or conservative, British, American or European, Tippett fails the driving test of coherence." La Scena Musicale 12/22/04
Posted: 12/23/2004 5:50 am
MusicMax, Direct-To-You For many composers, the decline of classical recording has meant a lack of new opportunities to get their music memorialized in a permanent recorded fashion. For Sir Peter Maxwell Davies, it meant half a lifetime's work suddenly becoming unavailable to the public when his record label was sold. But Davies' refused to admit defeat, spent months reacquiring the copyrights to his recorded work, and launched a new web site offering the old recordings and more, either by quick-and-easy download for between £1 and £4, or on custom-made CD for only slightly more. "It is a dazzling, breathtaking example of the composer cutting out the middle man and taking charge of his own destiny." The Herald (UK) 12/23/04
Posted: 12/23/2004 5:42 am
How Do You Say 'Merry Christmas' Three Octaves Down? Tuba may seem like an odd instrument around which to center your life and work, but ask the musicians of nearly any orchestra, and you'll find that those brassy low note specialists are usually among the most well-liked members of the band. So it shouldn't be a big surprise that all-tuba Christmas concerts are an increasingly popular phenomenon. "For many, the annual concerts--held in Chicago and 200 other cities worldwide--are a chance to break away from the tubist's traditional role as steady bass accompanist and whale away on the melodies, albeit a few octaves lower than they're normally played." Chicago Tribune 12/23/04
Posted: 12/23/2004 5:25 am
The Last Orchestra Settlement of 2004 (We Think) The musicians of the Rochester (NY) Philharmonic have a new contract, albeit one which will last only eight months. After playing without a contract for several months as negotiations continued, an agreement was reached on a one-year deal (retroactive to September) which will freeze the base salary at $36,100. There is little time for either side to catch its breath, though, as negotiations will need to begin anew in the spring. Syracuse Post-Standard 12/23/04
Posted: 12/23/2004 5:19 am
Melbourne's "Commonsense" Opera Merger Why are Melbourne's two opera companies merging after all these years? "The merger is 'primarily one of commonsense' for companies staging the most expensive of artforms on private patronage and box-office income alone - that is, they get no government subsidy. 'You can't have two non-funded companies struggling in competition against each other and against [companies such as Opera Australia] which are subsidised'." The Australian 12/23/04
Posted: 12/22/2004 9:54 pm
NJ Symphony Reflects On Critical Report The New Jersey Symphony takes stock of its position after a critical report about its handling of a purchase of a group of rare violins. The report found that though the orchestra hasn't done anything illegal, it had not been careful in how it made the purchase. The New York Times 12/23/04
Posted: 12/22/2004 9:48 pm
Jellinek Signs Off After 36 Years After about 1900 broadcasts, 84-year-old opera lover George Jellinek is signing off his WQXR show. "New York is losing one of the oldest and best-loved facets of its opera life: after some 36 years, George Jellinek's weekly radio program, "The Vocal Scene," is going off the air. The final broadcast is tonight at 10 on WQXR-FM, where the show originated in October 1969. The first program was titled "Love in Opera." Tonight's finale will be called, appropriately enough, "Leave Taking" and will be devoted to operatic farewells and Mr. Jellinek's own." The New York Times 12/23/04
Posted: 12/22/2004 6:43 pm
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That's The Ticket Many of Toledo's arts groups are banding together in an effort to devlop a joint ticketing service which would save them all money on their individual box office costs, and make it easier for patrons to plan their nights out. "The idea was generated at a series of town-hall meetings about the arts in 2002 and 2003. The strategic plan that grew out of those meetings recommended more collaboration and a calendar of events. An on-line calendar - www.toledoarts.org - has been established." Toledo Blade 12/23/04
Posted: 12/23/2004 5:31 am
Artists Sign Letter Of Support For Sikh Playwright More than 700 artists have signed a letter of support for Sikh playwright Gurpreet Kaur Bhatti, who has gone into hiding after her play was threatened with violent demonstrations. "Actors, writers, directors and others - ranging from Prunella Scales to Tariq Ali, via Terry Jones and the poet laureate, Andrew Motion - have signed the statement, published today in the Guardian." The Guardian (UK) 12/23/04
Posted: 12/22/2004 9:56 pm
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Second Theatre pulls Plan To Stage Controversial Sikh Play A second UK theatre has abandoned plans to stage a controversial play. The theatre had planned to "invite theatres across the country to read the play and discuss it afterwards, to have a debate so there was more understanding about the whole issue. But that plan was canceled after the play's author called and asked for the cancellation because of "increased threats" to her safety. The theatre itself had also received several threatening phone calls.
The Guardian (UK) 12/23/04
Posted: 12/22/2004 10:29 pm
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Here's Ten Grand. Go Learn Farsi. It's been well documented that the English-language market for books in translation has nearly dried up in recent years, with the increasing global dominance of American culture and declining American interest in literature in general. But now, the Association of American Publishers is attempting to jumpstart the translation market by offering $10,000 to any publlisher willing to release one of several translated Iranian novels. The money comes from a grant by philanthropist and Democratic power broker George Soros. Pittsburgh Post-Gazette (AP) 12/23/04
Posted: 12/23/2004 6:33 am
Slate Gets Adopted By WaPo News that the Washintgton Post is buying Slate Magazine was greeted "less as a business transaction than as a loving pet adoption." "Microsoft has been a terrific home for us editorially, but we’re very small, and they’re very big." Slate 12/22/04
Posted: 12/22/2004 10:23 pm
Harry's Publisher's Stock Zooms Too "Immediately after it was announced that Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince would go on sale in the USA and Britain on July 16, sooner than expected, stocks of its book publishers and some booksellers shot skywards." Yahoo! (AP) 12/22/04
Posted: 12/22/2004 9:51 pm
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How Long Before They're Paying Us To Rent Movies? Locked in a price war with WalMart, Blockbuster Video has announced that it will slash the cost of a monthly subscription to its mail-order movie rental service by $2.50, and will increase its film inventory for the service. The new Blockbuster price undercuts WalMart by 55 cents. Meanwhile, the original online/mail order movie service, NetFlix, which had previously cut its monthly price by $4 to compete with Blockbuster, says the latest cut will drive customers away from Blockbuster's own brick-and-mortar stores. Denver Post (AP) 12/23/04
Posted: 12/23/2004 6:18 am
The FCC's Moving Target On "Indecency" Michael Powell has taken the FCC into a tougher and tougher stance in regulating "indecency" (a moving target). "As Mr. Powell nears the end of his time in office, critics say he has evolved into the most heavy-handed enforcer of speech restrictions in decades. But with Mr. Powell now widely expected to step down, they are hardly gloating about the prospect of his departure; the short list of candidates to succeed him includes another Republican member of the five-person commission, Kevin J. Martin, who - echoing those who say television is too tawdry - has repeatedly argued that the commission and Mr. Powell are not tough enough. But the broadcasters are also beginning to fight back." The New York Times 12/23/04
Posted: 12/22/2004 6:37 pm
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