How The Internet Is Transforming Entertainment "The internet is changing the entertainment business from one that is driven by hits to one that will make most of its money from misses. This is good news for consumers, because it means more choice, and we all like things that will never make the best-seller lists for CDs, books or movies. And although it might sound strange, this "new economics of abundance" is already the basis of the net's most successful companies, such as Amazon, eBay and Google." The Guardian (UK) 03/24/05
Posted: 03/27/2005 8:33 pm
Why Politicians Can Never Understand The Arts People in the arts spend a great deal of time bemoaning the lack of governmental support, but is the ignorance of politicians really a great surprise? After all, the arts are everything that politics isn't: subtle, nuanced, full of deep ideas and gray areas, and imbued throughout with a belief in the intelligence of the audience. "The [UK's] Labour party used to justify its support of the arts rather as a 19th-century curate's wife might advocate distributing informative pamphlets to the deserving poor, by their social usefulness... This approach, of course, swaps the robe of the wizard for the coat of the social engineer: it robs art of its chance to enchant." The Guardian (UK) 03/26/05
Posted: 03/27/2005 9:48 am
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Art Direct To Your Cell Phone "This month, a New York-based Web site that celebrates graffiti and other street art began testing a system" that would allow "art lovers to download images created by emerging artists onto the video screens of their cellphones. Calling it a "curated online art gallery for your mobile phone," the founders of the Web site, woostercollective.com, are hoping it will provide a new way for struggling young artists to make money, in much the same way that a songwriter can earn money from radio play or an actor from reruns." The New York Times 03/28/05
Posted: 03/28/2005 10:13 am
Moscow Art Exhibiters Fined For Blasphemy "A Moscow court has found the organisers of an art exhibition guilty of inciting religious hatred and fined them 100,000 roubles (£2,000; $3,600) each. The January 2003 exhibition called "Caution! Religion" was staged by the Sakharov Museum, named after the Soviet-era dissident Andrei Sakharov." BBC 03/28/05
Posted: 03/28/2005 9:04 am
Storing Art Out In Public The Brooklyn Museum's Luce Center for American Art is "among a growing number of visible storage centers in the world. Art experts say visible storage is a good option for museums to show the public the breadth of a specific collection, but they caution that it must be used to complement, not to replace, traditional exhibits. At the Brooklyn Museum, about 800 objects are housed in the Luce Center, including all American paintings not formerly on display. There are thousands more decorative objects, such as spoons, teapots and toasters, still in storage." CNN.com 03/28/05
Posted: 03/28/2005 9:01 am
Fire Consumes Moscow Art Market A fire Saturday swept through a sprawling Moscow art market noted for a wide array of Russian handicrafts and Soviet-era trinkets and replicas, leaving at least one woman dead and another injured. The Guardian (UK) 03/28/05
Posted: 03/28/2005 8:58 am
Russia's Museum Culture War "Culture wars over blasphemous art, such as Andres Serrano's urine-dipped crucifix or Chris Ofili's elephant dung-decorated Madonna, have flared up periodically in the United States in recent years. A similar conflict is now raging in post-Soviet Russia. But there, the debate is not about whether taxpayer money should be used for museum displays that offend some people's religious beliefs. It's about whether a provocative exhibition at a privately owned museum should be a crime with harsh penalties for the accused blasphemers." Reason 03/23/05
Posted: 03/27/2005 10:25 pm
Marlene Dumas - Setting The Pace What accounts for the astounding rise in fortunes of Marlene Dumas? Her work currently holds the record for highest-selling work by a living woman artist. "In 2002, the record for Ms. Dumas's paintings, only a few of which had come to auction, stood at about $50,000. Yet last month at Christie's in London, after a bidding war between two dealers, her 1987 painting "The Teacher," a rendering of a posed class photograph, went for a startling $3.34 million." The New York Times 03/27/05
Posted: 03/27/2005 10:05 pm
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Youngstown Symphony Releases Music Director Why did the Youngstown [Ohio] Symphony part ways with music director Isaiah Jackson earlier this month? "Though some say Jackson lifted the orchestra during his nine years as director, confusion has superseded accomplishment since the Symphony Society made it appear nine days ago as if Jackson had made the decision to not renew his contract. It remains unclear why he was let go, who initiated the departure and why the board never discussed his contract with him." Youngstown Vindicator 03/27/05
Posted: 03/28/2005 9:47 am
Curtis Institute Chooses New Director Philadelphia's Curtis Institute has chosen Roberto Díaz, 44 - "principal violist of the Philadelphia Orchestra, active soloist, and Curtis faculty member" - to succeed Gary Graffman as director. "Díaz's candidacy was a late entry in the search process, but he was the unanimous choice of the 12-member search committee." Philadelphia Inquirer 03/27/05
Posted: 03/28/2005 9:42 am
The Orchestra, The Concertmaster, And His Tell-All Blog (Oh My...) When the Seattle Symphony fired longtime concertmaster Ilka Talvi last summer, he took the orchestra to arbitration. But this is the internet age, a time when the agrieved... write a blog. In the week since Talvi started Schmaltzuberalles he's dished deep and unflatteringly about his former orchestra and Gerard Schwarz, its music director. Sure names have been changed in the blog, but it's not difficult to figure out who's who. Word of the blog has spread like wildfire through the orchestra world, and evidently has even caught the attention of Seattle Symphony management. Talvi writes that a few days after the blog began, the orchestra called to fire his violinist wife from her contracted SSO work. The next day Talvi writes of getting a visit from Seattle police, acting on a complaint about the blog... Schmaltzuberalles 03/28/05
Posted: 03/27/2005 11:15 pm
The Tribute Cover - As It Happens "For decades, rock bands have acknowledged their influences by reinterpreting the old guys' songs. It was a kind of Oedipal tribute: honor thy forebears by reinventing them. Our post-postmodern era of mash-ups, music blogs, file sharing and near-instantaneous distribution, however, has given rise to a new phenomenon: a certain species of indie bands is covering their peers' brand-new songs - in those first heady days of release when the songs seem to be playing in every cafe and club, or even earlier, before they've made an impression at all." The New York Times 03/27/05
Posted: 03/27/2005 10:16 pm
How To Listen... Without A Roadmap "Your average newbie may not be sure why he or she should want to sit through a 30-minute symphony 200 years old, and the field devotes a lot of energy to trying to explain the reasons. Its methods include program notes, preconcert lectures and, increasingly, thematic programs that set out to illuminate the wonders of Beethoven or Charles Ives or Nordic music (whatever that is). But all of this runs counter to the way more and more people listen to music today. Witness the popularity of features like the iPod Shuffle, which yanks music out of context by randomly combining tracks into a musical stew. It's not about the idea; it's all about the sound." The New York Times 03/27/05
Posted: 03/27/2005 9:40 pm
Playing Through The Pain "Until recently, musicians didn't talk about their ailments -- especially professionals, who feared losing their livelihood. Doctors weren't trained to deal with these specialties, but that's changing; clinics have sprung up. A recent survey of orchestra musicians found that 76 percent had suffered at least one playing-related injury serious enough to keep them from working for a period of time. An ear specialist in Texas, after screening Houston Symphony Orchestra members, found permanent hearing loss in some violinists' left ears, the left being the side exposed to continual sonic blasts from the rest of the orchestra. A 2001 survey revealed that 80 percent of female keyboard players ages 10 to 20 have a muscle-skeletal problem, although no one knows why it's worse for women." The Star-Tribune (Mpls) 03/27/05
Posted: 03/27/2005 9:16 pm
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Ireland Talks About Taxing Artists For more than three decades, Ireland has encouraged artists by providing "tax-free status on income from original works considered to be of creative, artistic or cultural merit. To qualify, a sample or copy of work must be submitted to the Revenue Commissioners. The scheme costs an estimated €35 million a year in lost taxation revenue." Now a list of artists benefiting from the plan has been published under the Freedom of Information Act, and it includes "the names of most authors, artists and musicians who came to prominence in the late 1990s." As least one political party says high-earning artists should start paying tax. Eircom 03/28/05
Posted: 03/28/2005 8:54 am
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Amazon's Book Review Champion Harriet Klausner is Amazon's most prolific book review. "In terms of productivity (8,649 reviews as of mid-March) and the ability to turn out what the site calls helpful information, Ms. Klausner is in a league of her own." She reads four or five books a day, and publishers have taken to sending her everything they publish in hopes of getting a thumbs-up... OpinionJournal 03/29/05
Posted: 03/28/2005 5:16 pm
Billy Taylor Comes Back Jazz pianist Billy Taylor seemed to resist the passing of time like the ageless standards he's always loved to play. But in December 2001, he awoke one morning unable to blink. He has been working his way back ever since, recovering from the stroke that affected the right side of his body, including the right hand that once danced across the keys like Astaire." Washington Post 03/27/05
Posted: 03/27/2005 9:08 pm
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Theatre Of Major Reality London's Tricycle Theatre is staging a series of enactments of real events. "Critics have hailed the 'tribunal' productions as more revealing than any news report. For a start, we can go where cameras are banned. And, thanks to painstaking verisimilitude (every word in the script was spoken by the characters to whom they are attributed), the key players come alive. We see lawyers exchanging notes, water being poured, secretaries looking bored. Lights remain up during the performance, so you can't help feeling implicated as witnesses lie or prevaricate." The Guardian (UK) 03/26/05
Posted: 03/27/2005 9:49 pm
Pulling Strings Puppetry has not traditionally been one of the more respected theatrical forms (witness the hapless practitioner in the hit movie, Being John Malkovich), but in recent years it has begun to emerge from a fifty-year malaise in which puppeteers were relegated to entertaining young children who presumably didn't know any better. "In the era of special effects and computer-generated imagery, it is unabashedly low-tech. And it's an art form that stubbornly refuses to die." Baltimore Sun 03/27/05
Posted: 03/27/2005 8:42 am
Is American Idol Killing The Broadway Sound? The way performers sing in Broadway musicals is changing, and not for the better, says Ben Brantley. "Close your eyes and listen as their larynxes stretch and vibrate with the pain of being an underdog and the joy of being really loud. Bet you can't tell them apart. For that matter, bet you can't distinguish the heroines of the current Broadway musicals Wicked, Little Women and Brooklyn from the average female finalist on American Idol... The accent is on abstract feelings, usually embodied by people of stunning ordinariness, than on particular character. Quivering vibrato, curlicued melisma, notes held past the vanishing point: the favorite technical tricks of Idol contestants are often like screams divorced from the pain or ecstasy that inspired them." The New York Times 03/27/05
Posted: 03/27/2005 7:28 am
Sweet Charity Turns Sour The supposedly Broadway-bound revival of Sweet Charity starring Christina Applegate won't be making it to New York, after all. Intial test runs of the show in Minneapolis, Chicago, and Boston garnered mixed reviews, and Ms. Applegate broke her foot midway through the Chicago run, further depressing already-slow ticket sales. Facing the possibility of an expensive Broadway flop, the producers pulled the plug this weekend. New York Daily News 03/26/05
Posted: 03/27/2005 6:39 am
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Foetry: Exposed In Public "Foetry.com launched on April 1st of 2004 to expose the status quo in American poetry publication: many books published are winners of contests that are often large–scale fraud operations. Judges select their friends, students, and lovers from pools of manuscripts numbering in the hundreds or thousands, accompanied by an entry fee, usually around $20–$25. Some of the competitions are sponsored by university presses. As soon as Foetry.com was launched, the defenses began." MobyLives 03/28/05
Posted: 03/28/2005 12:24 am
Where Are Those Trivial Books? "In A Room of One's Own, Virginia Woolf wrote of the necessity of writing that covers all aspects of our lives, and of women, in particular, making the subject of what they know an honourable and serious one: 'I would ask you to write all kinds of books, hesitating at no subject however trivial'. Where are these books now, that hesitate at 'no subject however trivial'? Despite the burgeoning interest in houses, gardens and cooking on television, in non-fiction and a certain kind of popular novel, in literature it seems we continue to gloss over the significance of home." The Guardian (UK) 03/26/05
Posted: 03/27/2005 11:03 pm
N. Ireland Arts Mag Cut From Gov't Grant Rolls "Have you heard the one about the magazine that has been promoting arts and culture in Northern Ireland for more than 30 years but no longer gets a grant from the Arts Council of... er, Northern Ireland? This is not the beginning of some in-house south Belfast joke but sums up the current predicament of Fortnight magazine, the arts, culture and politics review that has been covering life in the Troubles-torn north of Ireland since the early 1970s." The Observer (UK) 03/27/05
Posted: 03/27/2005 10:02 am
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Broadcast "Indecency" Wars Are Just Heating Up "Leading lawmakers and the new leader of the F.C.C. have proposed a broad expansion of indecency rules, which were significantly toughened just last year. They are also looking for significant increases in the size of fines and new procedures that could jeopardize the licenses of stations that repeatedly violate the rules." The New York Times 03/28/05
Posted: 03/28/2005 10:21 am
Why Are There Now Ads On "Public" TV? "To raise money for noncommercial programming, producers and distributors increasingly allow their corporate underwriters to turn their credits into something resembling regular commercials. Since the mid-1990's, the underwriter announcements that precede and follow many public television programs (and usually conclude with the narrator thanking "viewers like you") have gradually adopted many trappings of regular advertising, despite appearing on "commercial-free" television." The New York Times 03/28/05
Posted: 03/28/2005 10:17 am
Who Will Control Phone Entertainment? "The rush is on to deliver music and video to mobile phones, with wireless providers and device makers jockeying for position to grab their share of the payday, all parties mindful of the surprising billions being spent on musical ringtones. At the same time, the media companies who produce the entertainment, which also includes video games, are approaching cautiously, determined to avert any Napster-like, file-sharing bonanza among cell phone users." Pittsburgh Post-Gazette (AP) 03/28/05
Posted: 03/28/2005 10:04 am
A Supreme Court Case That Could Change The Course Of Technology The US Supreme Court hears arguments in a case this week that could determine the future development of technology. "The highly anticipated case, MGM Studios v. Grokster, pits all the major movie studios and record labels against Grokster and StreamCast Networks, two operators of file-sharing services." The case is an appeal of a decision that "file-sharing companies are not liable for their users' copyright infringement. The decision upheld a lower-court ruling from April 2003." Wired 03/28/05
Posted: 03/28/2005 9:15 am
Emmy Tape Ban Angers TV Writers TV journalists are complaining that access to tapes of performances nominated for daytime Emmys has been "shut off, and the National Television Academy won't even let them know which specific episodes are being judged. The head of the committee that instituted the ban conceded it was done because some academy members were annoyed at previous years' stories written about the awards, but characterized the decision as innocuous." Back Stage (AP) 03/28/05
Posted: 03/28/2005 9:09 am
Why Woody Doesn't Work Anymore "Back in the 1970s, a Woody Allen movie was the way you measured your humanity. Allen's nebbish persona represented the thinking everyman, assuming you also valued intellectualism, high culture and complicated, brilliant women. The collective high point of the Allen gestalt was "Annie Hall," Allen's ode to love in all its messy, modern dysfunctionalism, and, two years later, "Manhattan," his salute to the city of dreams, culture, love and Gershwin. But in the past few decades, as Allen's casts became collective ensembles, as he started aping Chekhov, things changed. His movies got crowded with East Side untouchables." Washington Post 03/27/05
Posted: 03/27/2005 8:56 pm
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Fonteyn & Nureyev: The Untold Chapter The onstage chemistry shared by Margot Fonteyn and Rudolf Nureyev was unlike anything the dance world had seen before, and the magic they created together has, arguably, never been equaled. But a new biography and its soon-to-be-made companion film assert that they weren't only partners onstage. But wait, you ask, wasn't Nureyev gay? Well... yes. Sort of. But maybe not always. The Observer (UK) 03/27/05
Posted: 03/27/2005 9:50 am
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