Giving Up On the Avant Garde? Margo Jefferson has lost interest in the avant garde. "Is a urinal art? Is elephant dung a fit substance for creating art? Can walking be dance? Is sampling or silence or noise music? Are fractured words and stories truer to the shape of our experience than traditional narratives? Will the virtual and simulated realities made possible by the digital age threaten our identities or layer and expand them? At one time all these things were controversial. Now they are familiar. That's why I don't really like to use the words avant-garde anymore. I don't really believe in them right now. They don't take in enough variety." The New York Times 07/08/05
Posted: 07/07/2005 9:28 pm
Internet Justice - Can It Go Too Far? A woman's dog poops in the subway and she refuses to clean it up. A fellow passenger takes her picture and posts it on the internet. Soon an internet mob forms, ferreting out details of her life, including where she lives and what she does... "Increasingly, the Internet also is a venue of so-called citizen journalism, in which swarms of surfers mobilize to gather information on what the traditional media isn't covering, or is covering in a way that dissatisfies some people. But what happens when the two converge, and the Internet populace is stirred to action against individuals?" Washington Post 07/07/05
Posted: 07/07/2005 6:57 pm
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Five Laid Off In D.C. Five long-tenured employees have been laid off from the Smithsonian's National Museum of African Art in Washington, D.C., as a result of what the museum's director says are serious budget concerns. The firings came out of the blue, and the decision to go ahead with a staff reorganization was apparently that of the director alone, who says that belts have been tightening all over the Smithsonian. The museum has 32 remaining employees. Washington Post 07/09/05
Posted: 07/09/2005 1:19 pm
More Layoffs In Cleveland The Cleveland Museum of Art has laid off six employees, including a paintings curator with 18 years service time, as it prepares to close for several years during a $258 million expansion and renovation. "The number of employees at the museum now stands at 370, down from more than 500 before an earlier and more extensive round of layoffs in 2003 meant to bring the museum's budget in line... The museum complex will be largely closed during construction, but will start reopening in phases beginning in the fall of 2007. Special exhibitions and other programs will continue, with the exception of a complete shutdown in the first six months of 2006." The Plain Dealer (Cleveland) 07/09/05
Posted: 07/09/2005 1:08 pm
Is It Art? Or Is It Just Stupid? What are we to make of an artist who crafts a bar of soap from fat liposuctioned out of the Italian prime minister, sells it to a collector for $18,000, then claims that his work has no political overtones? "There is something vexing about Gianni Motti and his bar of soap. It could be a neat contemporary commentary on politics, the media, image-consciousness and postmodern portraiture - and therefore worthy of its plexiglass pedestal. Or it could just be a tasteless, overpriced idea that dissolves in seconds, like soap in a hot bath." Financial Times (UK) 07/08/05
Posted: 07/09/2005 12:17 pm
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Competing For A Career Being a young conductor is no great shakes, what with everyone from critics to musicians to the public just waiting to pass judgment on your every move. So how do you manage to create great art, keep your orchestra happy, please the experts, and promote yourself all at the same time? Well, you could start by winning the Leeds Conductors Competition... The Guardian (UK) 07/08/05
Posted: 07/09/2005 12:38 pm
Austin S.O. Ticket Sales Go Through The Roof Orchestras across America are struggling to fill their concert halls, but in the indie-rock capital of Austin, Texas, residents are apparently devoted to music of all kinds, filling the local symphony's concerts to such an impressive capacity that some concerts even attracted ticket scalpers. In fact, the Austin Symphony registered a 43% ticket sales increase in 2004-05 over the previous season, a dramatic rise the ensemble attributes to programming decisions and strong community support. Austin Business Journal (TX) 07/08/05
Posted: 07/09/2005 11:27 am
- Pop Sales Take A Dive Orchestras aren't the only ones with ticket woes: attendance at popular music performances in North America dropped 12% in the first half of 2005, despite lower average ticket prices. Revenue generated by the concerts - mainly touring rock, pop, and hip-hop shows - fell more than 17%. Philadelphia Inquirer (AP) 07/09/05
Posted: 07/09/2005 11:25 am
Swed: Tindall's Tales Miss The Point Blair Tindall's now-infamous stories of sexual favors traded for career advancement in New York's freelance scene are less troubling than her characterization of the music business as a whole, writes Mark Swed. "Classical music doesn't mean much to the average American's life, and she condemns the major orchestras, opera companies and performing arts centers for acting as if it does. They can't sustain their high budgets, and they get by, in part, by taking advantage of the little guy, the musician... There are serious inequities in the system and a lot of jerks who manipulate musicians and the public for their own profit. But there are musicians who engage in the world in a meaningful way — and not just the Rattles, Tilson Thomases and Salonens — who get out and make music that matters, who change lives." Los Angeles Times 07/09/05
Posted: 07/09/2005 11:17 am
Branching Out In La-La Land There aren't a lot of career options for classically trained musicians - for most, either you win an orchestra job or two, or you don't, in which case you spend your life freelancing and teaching to make ends meet. But in Los Angeles, a paradigm shift is underway, in the form of "a small but growing and spirited subculture of young, classically trained female L.A. musicians who have skirted the symphony audition path to play 'alternative' musical genres and enjoy eclectic entertainment-industry work now that the Hollywood studios are no longer boys' clubs... The impressive range of styles they play provides them with a level of excitement and performance satisfaction that more traditional musicians cannot claim — and they wouldn't have it any other way." Los Angeles Times 07/10/05
Posted: 07/09/2005 11:12 am
Arizona Opera Stays In The Black Arizona Opera has balanced its budget for the second straight year, despite a difficult season that required serious cutbacks to keep the company in the black. The group, which performs in both Phoenix and Tucson, had a $5.5 million budget in 2004-05, but was forced to improvise for venues when Phoenix's Symphony Hall closed for renovations. Tucson Citizen (AZ) 07/09/05
Posted: 07/09/2005 10:59 am
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London Shows Canceled Concerts and all of London's West End theatres have been closed after the Thursday bombing as police advised residents not to travel to central London. "The theatre closures are thought to be unprecedented since World War II, apart from the days of state funerals. BBC 07/07/05
Posted: 07/07/2005 6:36 pm
Does Crime Really Give You Cred? Probably Not. Hip-hop culture has often been said to be inextricably bound together with thuggery and crime, and the genre's biggest stars are also frequently the ones with the longest rap sheets. It's all about the mysterious notion of "credibility," a measure of personal and professional success considered vitally important to American rappers. But the conventional wisdom probably misses the point about hip-hop's crime connection, and so, too, do many rappers: "if your rhymes don't ring true to begin with, an arrest will probably just make matters worse... For a rapper, having your name printed in the police blotter is likely merely to reinforce whatever perceptions fans already have." The New York Times 07/07/05
Posted: 07/07/2005 6:45 am
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"Ed McBain", 78 The author of a legendary and long-running series of police novels centered on the fictional 87th Precinct has died. Ed McBain, whose real name was Evan Hunter, wrote his first crime novel in 1956, and never looked back, amassing a huge following over the subsequent half-century of work. "How long the Ed McBain books will hold their huge audience is anyone's guess. Mystery writers go out of style... James Ellroy's intense, dark stories of Los Angeles have nothing in common with the formulaic Ed McBain stories. But there you are in the airport, and your flight has been delayed. You've read the papers and had a drink. Luckily, there on the newsstand shelf are half a dozen Ed McBains. Relax: Detective Carella will take good care of you for the next three hours." The New York Times 07/09/05
Posted: 07/09/2005 12:55 pm
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Really, Really Bad Timing "[UK] bookselling giant Waterstone's yesterday pulled advertising for a new novel about suicide bombers creating mayhem in London. The book, called Incendiary, was published on Thursday, the day all-too real bombs hit London. Pictures promoting the novel show plumes of smoke curling above London's skyline. The wording reads 'a massive terrorist attack ... launches this unique, twisted powerhouse of a novel'. Waterstone's has removed all advertising for the book from today's newspapers - except for the Guardian's Guide, which went to press before the advert could be pulled." The Guardian (UK) 07/09/05
Posted: 07/09/2005 12:33 pm
America's Poet It's been 150 years since Walt Whitman published Leaves of Grass, widely considered to be America's greatest contribution to the world of poetry. Over the years, sales of the opus have stayed strong as Whitman's legend has grown, and scholars and public alike have come to view Leaves as something of a definitive poetic statement on American life. Baltimore Sun 07/09/05
Posted: 07/09/2005 12:08 pm
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9/11: The Movie It had to happen eventually: Paramount Pictures has announced plans to make a big-budget film focusing on the 9/11 terrorist attacks. The director will be Oliver Stone, and the film will star Nicholas Cage. Several smaller films and documentaries have dealt with the attacks and/or their aftermath, but until now, the major Hollywood studios have shied away from what they rightly guess to be a sensitive topic. Washington Post 07/09/05
Posted: 07/09/2005 1:16 pm
Maybe Their Movies Don't Suck Hollywood may be having a rough year, but the French Canadian film industry is raking in the dough. "While box-office receipts across the continent were down more than 8 per cent in the first half of 2005 compared with a year earlier, they fell less than 3 per cent in Canada's French-speaking heartland. There's nothing bewitching about the trend. While this year's crop of Hollywood films is leaving Quebeckers just as indifferent as other North Americans, homegrown movies continue to build their audience, making the province's film industry the envy of its English-Canadian counterpart." The Globe & Mail (Canada) 07/09/05
Posted: 07/09/2005 12:21 pm
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Russia's Legendary Beanpole "From unpromising beginnings as a gawky young dancer, Uliana Lopatkina has become the greatest ballerina in Russia today, and a national legend... Russian ballet had been known for its small, delicate women, but the then Kirov director Oleg Vinogradov was mad about Sylvie Guillem and eagerly started unearthing tall new girls in her image - his 'basketball team', as they were known." A decade on, Lopatkina is changing the face - and the body type - of classical ballet in Russia and beyond, but she remains quite conservative in her choice of roles, as well as in her assessment of what a dancer with her body can (or should) attempt. The Telegraph (UK) 07/09/05
Posted: 07/09/2005 12:42 pm
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