Burning Out On Pop Culture Pop culture is, by definition, fun. It's fun to keep up with celebrities, fun to gossip with friends about the latest fashions, albums, movies, etc. But these days, there's just so much pop culture to soak in that keeping oneself on the cutting edge is almost a full time job. "How [can] anyone find time to update their LiveJournals, finish reading the new Sheila Heti novel, or get tickets for the just announced M.I.A./LCD Soundsystem show in May? They had to stay up to the wee hours just to kill a few more soldiers in the new Splinter Cell or druggies in Narc. And who had time to wait for the perfect iPod Shuffle moment to magically appear?" Welcome to the phenomenon known as 'hipster burnout.' Toronto Star 04/09/05
Posted: 04/10/2005 9:40 am
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Heinz Kerry Makes Surprise Gift To Warhol Museum Theresa Heinz Kerry (wife of 2004 presidential candidate Sen. John Kerry) surprised the staff and management of Pittsburgh's Andy Warhol Museum with a $4 million endowment gift this weekend. The donation will go a long way toward helping the museum, "Pittsburgh's lively, provocative hub of contemporary art and popular culture," achieve its overall endowment goal of $35 million. Pittsburgh Post-Gazette 04/10/05
Posted: 04/10/2005 11:49 am
Walker Expansion Almost Complete When the Walker Art Center, Minneapolis's popular avant-garde museum, set out to design a major addition to its building, it wanted the architecture to reflect the center's commitment to art that doesn't necessarily fit the traditional mold, but didn't want a building that would seem out of place in the Walker's existing neighborhood, which includes idyllic parks, historic churches, and a massive sculpture garden. The new addition, designed by Swiss architects Jacques Herzog and Pierre de Meuron, opens next weekend, "the first in a string of high-profile projects among Minneapolis cultural heavyweights to be completed. The Guthrie Theater, the Minneapolis Institute of Art and Children's Theater complex and a new downtown library with planetarium are all in progress on expansion or relocation efforts of their own." Minneapolis Star Tribune 04/10/05
Posted: 04/10/2005 10:49 am
- Expanded Form, Expanded Function "Much of what distinguishes the expanded Walker won't even be seen by visitors. The complex sits atop an underground labyrinth that includes a 670-stall parking ramp and a network of art storage rooms, frame shops, photo labs and corridors linking the old and new buildings. Huge elevators will carry art from an enclosed loading dock at the south end of the complex to a 14-foot-tall subterranean corridor that parallels Hennepin Avenue. From it, art can be trollied into storage rooms or elevated nine or more stories to the top of the original Walker, one block north." Minneapolis Star Tribune 04/10/05
Posted: 04/10/2005 10:48 am
A Boston Renaissance "With more than $1 billion being raised for new museums and other arts facilities, Boston is in the midst of an unprecedented cultural boom, one that museum directors hope will elevate the city as a cultural mecca without overbuilding or saturating the market. The construction wave occurs a century after Boston's major institutions -- the Museum of Fine Arts, Symphony Hall, and the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum -- opened their current homes. This time, the projects are more varied, ranging from a contemporary art museum on the waterfront and downtown theaters to a pair of cultural centers slated for open space created by the Big Dig." Boston Globe 04/10/05
Posted: 04/10/2005 10:46 am
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The Rise Of Black British Jazz The era of globalization has done wonders for jazz, broadening its language and bringing new ideas to a genre that had become the province, mainly, of academic-minded American practitioners with very narrow musical values. "One of the new paradigms comes from a circle of mostly black London-based musicians... So what do these new players have? The first answer is a British Afro-Caribbean identity. The second is a movement. They have come together around several guiding ideas: swing, blues feeling, the historical relationship of reggae and jazz, and a commitment to improving stereotypes of Afro-Caribbeans and black Britain in general. The third answer is summed up in a term that's become fairly widespread among these musicians, as well as the English press: black British jazz." The New York Times 04/10/05
Posted: 04/10/2005 11:27 am
Lebrecht: Orchestras Need To Break With Stodgy Routine Norman Lebrecht has been predicting the death of classical music for years, but lately, he has begun to wonder what, if anything, can be done to reverse the decline of orchestral popularity. The short attention-span thesis is popular, but doesn't hold up when you consider the length of movies and rock concerts. Ticket prices, long thought to be a turnoff to potential concertgoers, are also not to blame, since price cuts at several major orchestras have failed to produce significant new audiences. Lebrecht's latest theory is that the traditional formula of an evening concert beginning at 7 or 8pm and lasting two hours simply does nothing to attract modern youth. "In Madrid and Barcelona, concerts begin at 10 pm and are thronged by youngsters." La Scena Musicale 04/05
Posted: 04/10/2005 10:17 am
Following Dutoit: Nagano In Montreal Kent Nagano won't officially become music director of l'Orchestre symphonique de Montréal until fall 2006, but the unusually soft-spoken maestro is already making his presence felt. Compared with the imperious Charles Dutoit, whose 23-year tenure at the Montreal helm ended in bitter fashion two years ago, Nagano is a decidedly new kind of director for the OSM, promoting a studious and humble approach to music-making, even as he speaks of the importance of building trust with audiences and begins to reshape the sound of the orchestra itself. The Globe & Mail (Canada) 04/09/05
Posted: 04/10/2005 9:12 am
New Jersey Symphony Exec Bolts For Scotland "Just days after his one-year anniversary on the job, New Jersey Symphony Orchestra president and CEO Simon Woods announced he will leave, effective July 1, to become chief executive of the 113-year-old Royal Scottish National Orchestra, based in Glasgow, Scotland... The news is devastating for NJSO, which is groaning under a $19.5 million debt, in part due to subscription sales that have declined 41 percent in four years. NJSO also is struggling to regain public credibility following the 2003 purchase of 30 rare Italian string instruments from New Jersey philanthropist Herbert Axelrod, who was sentenced in March to 18 months in federal prison for an unrelated tax fraud scheme." Newark Star-Ledger 04/09/05
Posted: 04/10/2005 9:03 am
Boston, Philly, New York, Cleveland, Chicago... & San Diego? Three years ago, the San Diego Symphony received a $120 million gift from a local couple, and instantly, the ensemble was vaulted from the lower ranks of full-time American orchestras to... well, where the vault ends is still unknown. The SDS is fiscally secure for the future, to be sure, and salaries have risen, as have budgets. But can money - even that unbelievable amount of money - really catapult an orchestra into the upper ranks? San Diego's CEO thinks so, and is even speculating about a future in which the SDS is mentioned alongside America's fabled Big Five orchestras. San Diego Union-Tribune 04/10/05
Posted: 04/10/2005 8:35 am
For That Price, Could We Get Some Decent Speakers? Most attendees at rock concerts in the U.S. probably don't spend a lot of time thinking about audio quality - after all, you just plug in the mics and guitars and crank the amps up to eleven, right? Actually, there's a lot more to it than that, and George Varga writes that some of his most recent experiences suffering through concerts that "sounded as if they were either being performed from inside trash compactors in overdrive or through a giant car stereo with busted woofers... are symptomatic of a troubling decline in audio quality at concerts across the nation – a trend made more annoying by the concurrent rise in ticket prices." San Diego Union-Tribune 04/09/05
Posted: 04/10/2005 8:32 am
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FBI 'Dead Wrong' Yet Again Steven Kurtz is an artist. That much, no one is debating. But Kurtz uses various legally acquired biological agents (read: farm chemicals) in his work, some of which also appear on an FBI list of chemicals frequently sought by wannabe terrorists. When Kurtz's stash was discovered by authorities following his wife's death, he was pursued, jailed, and charged with crimes which could net him 20 years in federal prison. Now the art world is coming together to defend Kurtz, and raise money for his legal defense. Pittsburgh Post-Gazette 04/09/05
Posted: 04/10/2005 9:21 am
Ground Zero Arts Center Plans Put On Hold New York City's $500 million campaign to rebuild Ground Zero has officially kicked off, but buried in the celebratory press conference was a disturbing change of plans: "As originally planned, the $500 million would help finance a memorial and a museum complex as well as [a Frank Gehry-designed] performing arts center, to be shared by the Joyce Dance Theater, which specializes in dance, and the Signature Theater Company, an Off Broadway group. But now the performing arts center will be part of a 'second phase.'" Worse, officials at the Joyce and Signature groups appear to have been left uninformed about the change of status for their new home. The New York Times 04/09/05
Posted: 04/10/2005 8:53 am
The Copyright Debate, Part DCCCLXXVII Too often, the debate over copyrights, file sharing, and new media seems intractable, with those for and against expanded consumer rights dug in and disinclined to even listen to the other side. But there are real thinkers participating in the debate, from musicians to lawyers and everyone in between. And as the issue of downloadable media slowly begins to sort itself out, more and more musicians are coming to the conclusion that the only people hurt by currently illegal file-trading practices are "people who are so rich they never deserve to be paid again." The New York Times 04/09/05
Posted: 04/10/2005 8:42 am
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The Intellect Behind The Wall At his core, Saul Bellow was a teacher, but he was never much for disciples or devotees of his own work. "Bellow had himself well shielded from aspirants. Get in line: wives, children, students, writers, editors, lovers, biographers. I don't mean this cruelly; it was part of Bellow's genius. He reminded many people of their incompleteness, perhaps because he knew of his own. There was a rawness to him, almost like a wound, underneath the genteel polish and fiendish wit. His feathered fedora and striped shirts, his elegant manners and silken voice were enameled surfaces, under which he was, like his characters, at sea, the imposing intellect unable to ever lay down any reliable anchor - and not for want of trying, not for lack of greatness." The New York Times 04/09/05
Posted: 04/10/2005 8:57 am
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What's Wrong With Humana? What ails Louisville's venerable Humana Theatre Festival? Michael Phillips thinks it might be something as simple as a lack of competition for contemporary American drama. "The festival would [also] benefit from writers with a sense of honest, vital political engagement with our country today. This year the protestations amounted to a soapbox derby of speechifying, not entirely uninteresting but not persuasively dramatic." Chicago Tribune 04/10/05
Posted: 04/10/2005 11:36 am
Bridging Broadway's Gender Gap The Monty Python-inspired musical, Spamalot, is more than just the latest Broadway smash. It's an actual piece of legitimate musical theatre that has succeeded in attracting a traditionally elusive demographic on Broadway: men. The New York Times 04/10/05
Posted: 04/10/2005 11:17 am
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Liverpool Poets (Not Named John, Paul, George & Ringo) Liverpool is the UK's Cultural Capital designate for 2008, and just to prove it deserves the moniker, the city is hosting its first-ever poetry festival this week. The event will include a reading in the crypt of the city's central Roman Catholic Cathedral, as well as workshops for budding poets and readings by several of the city's best-known poets. BBC 04/10/05
Posted: 04/10/2005 11:02 am
The Great Textbook Price Debate Ask any college student or professor, and they'll tell you that textbook prices are horrendously inflated, and that publishers are taking advantage of a captive group of consumers with no choice but to buy the books at whatever price. But the publishers insist that the problem is overblown, since students can frequently use the same book for multiple semesters, and most college bookstores will buy back used textbooks for up to 50% of their original cost. Boston Globe 04/09/05
Posted: 04/10/2005 9:07 am
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A Bright Beacon In The Floridian 'Wasteland' The Palm Beach International Film Festival may not be Cannes, or even Toronto, but the event has been making big gains in prestige lately, and has even been ranked as one of the world's top 25 film fests. "PBIFF has become a cultural asset in a state that is mentioned in nearly 11 percent of the Google hits returned by the search phrase 'cultural wasteland.'" South Florida Sun-Sentinel 04/10/05
Posted: 04/10/2005 10:42 am
Public Broadcasting Chief Ousted The president of the Corporation for Public Broadcasting has resigned less than a year into her tenure, and will be replaced on an interim basis by a close associate of the controversial former FCC chairman Michael Powell. Kathleen Cox was groomed for years to lead CPB, but she apparently fell victim to an increasingly political workplace as conservative politicians ratcheted up their anti-PBS rhetoric over the last year. One observer has described Cox as "an apolitical bureaucrat in an incredibly polarized agency," an identity which may have been at odds with CPB's desire to ingratiate itself to its critics in Congress. Washington Post 04/09/05
Posted: 04/10/2005 9:45 am
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Dancing & Motherhood: Not Necessarily Opposing Values Ballet is notorious for its devotion to (some would say obsession with) the "perfect" female form. So pregnancy must mean the end of the line, at least temporarily for a ballerina, right? Wrong. "Today dancing during pregnancy and after childbirth, once a privilege of only the grandest stars, is unexceptional. But the fact remains that for dancers who become pregnant, the body is an instrument of art as well as of motherhood, and those roles can sometimes clash." The New York Times 04/10/05
Posted: 04/10/2005 11:07 am
How Do You Please The New Yorkers? When Pittsburgh Ballet Theatre headed to New York for a run of shows at the Joyce Theater two weeks ago, the company was hoping to please both press and public with a pop-influenced program featuring music of Bruce Springsteen and Sting. Instead, PBT garnered a mixed bag of reviews, and while ticket sales were brisk, phrases like "lightweight" and "blatantly driven by marketing" didn't do much for the company's national image. Pittsburgh Post-Gazette 04/09/05
Posted: 04/10/2005 9:33 am
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