Critical Conversation: The Modern Music Critic Is there a fundamental difference in the ways music critics see their roles? Are European classical music critics different from American critics? Are there different expectations of London critics than New York critics? Between critics in the “second cities” of America and those of Europe? Consequently, is the level of public discussion about music different in North America than in Europe? This week, ArtsJournal hosts a discussion among 17 classical music critics from the UK, US, Canada and Australia. Who's got the role of modern music critic figured out? ArtsJournal 07/17/05
Posted: 07/17/2005 8:07 pm
Where Have You Gone, Arthur Miller? Julia Keller looks around at an increasingly frightening world full of violence and political grandstanding, and misses the old familiar outrage of playwright Arthur Miller. "We need a writer whose ferocity won't be diminished by concerns for balance or propriety, who won't get sidetracked by niceties. We need someone who will write with unapologetic rage. Yet moral certainty is in bad odor these days. Many see it as the cause of most of the world's problems, from terrorism to less lethal forms of intolerance -- and it's true that a powerful cadre of holier-than-thou politicians is a special menace in America just now. Moral certainty indeed makes for bad public policy. But it makes for great art." Chicago Tribune 07/17/05
Posted: 07/17/2005 11:07 am
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Is Prized Tuscan Marble Worth The Price Of A Mountain? A mining company's plans to destroy a Tuscan mountain crest to get at its prized marble has caused a furor. "The plan has pitted environmentalists against trade unions and local authorities, who argue the stone from Monte Altissimo in the Apuan Alps is needed to protect jobs. But the controversy also sets contemporary artists and designers against art historians who treasure the mountain, which served as one of Michelangelo's most celebrated, if frustrating, quarries." The Guardian (UK) 07/16/05
Posted: 07/17/2005 7:22 pm
From Low Shelf To Top Drawer "A 650-year-old Chinese vase that survived for generations on a low shelf, at constant risk of being dashed to the floor by the tails of boisterous dogs, sold for nearly £3m at auction yesterday. The unique 50cm double-gourd vase, bought for £10 in 1900, was snapped up by an overseas buyer, for a new record price for an antique sold at a British provincial auction house." The Guardian (UK) 07/16/05
Posted: 07/17/2005 11:38 am
Selling Out It has now become the norm for museums to sell their art, rent their space for blockbuster exhibitions, and otherwise exercise judgment more indicative of a for-profit corporation than a non-profit keeper of culture and art, says Michael Kimmelman. "A steady corrosion of faith in the integrity of institutions will be the long-term price for short-term wheeling and dealing. With faith goes the delicate ecosystem of charitable contributions and tax-free privileges. Why, the public will ask, do institutions like these reap the benefits of nonprofit status if they service private interests who shape the content of what's on view and/or reap cash rewards?" The New York Times 07/17/05
Posted: 07/17/2005 10:47 am
Nothing Better Than A Whole Bunch Of Naked Brits Spencer Tunick has taken his passion for photographing mobs of naked people across the pond, and mounted his first large-scale UK event in the Tyneside district. "Volunteers from around the world - including Australia, Belgium and Peru - signed up, among them a vicar. They had to dodge chips and kebab remnants dropped by the previous night's revellers as they made their way around a cordoned-off section of the Newcastle and Gateshead quaysides." BBC 07/17/05
Posted: 07/17/2005 10:33 am
Gambling On Art "The French countryside could not be farther away, in distance or sentiment, from the long stretch of neon lights that line the Las Vegas Strip. But as the impressionists launched a revolution in the art world more than a century ago, a small art gallery inside the Bellagio resort has been quietly doing the same, albeit to a lesser degree, over the past six years... This month, the gallery launched its ninth exhibition, titled The Impressionist Landscape from Corot to Van Gogh. On the heels of a wildly successful Claude Monet show, gallery officials are confident they are accomplishing their mission of bringing art to the masses — even if it is in a casino." Toronto Star 07/16/05
Posted: 07/17/2005 9:00 am
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Gangsta Rap-As-Cockroach Gangsta rap is back and the violence has escalated along with record sales. "Gangsta rap is like a cockroach infestation: Shining a light on it can cause some scurrying, but curbing it is a Sisyphean task. Targeting the corporate powers-that-be boldly ignores the practical here-and-now of the situation: Like it or not, children do listen to 50 Cent's verbal gunplay and gossip about his real-life gunplay. While adults are busy battling companies, youths are soaking up the good, the bad and the ugly of hip-hop culture." Los Angeles Times 07/17/05
Posted: 07/17/2005 7:37 pm
Classically Speaking, Why Are We So Stuck In The Past? "Overall, there are more quality composers working today than in any given year of the 18th or 19th centuries. Those eras overflowed with rote. Half the reason Beethoven remains so revered is because of how ho-hum many of his contemporaries were. But we don't see it that way. We still mostly like the oldies. Why then, did classical music, especially in this country, take such a different course from the other arts, with audiences generally disconnected from contemporary creations?" Pittsburgh Post-Gazette 07/17/05
Posted: 07/17/2005 7:10 pm
Looking For A Summer Solution Ticket sales for the Chicago Symphony's summer season at Ravinia have been down for the better part of a decade now, and while the numbers certainly don't indicate a crisis, they might point to a general malaise. "The apparent defection of a segment of Ravinia's core audience over the last 15 years strikes at the artistic heart of America's oldest music festival even as it tests the goodwill and durability that have marked the Chicago Symphony's long relationship with Ravinia. Business partners during the summer who lead largely independent lives during the rest of the year, Ravinia and the CSO now find themselves in circumstances that call for something they haven't much done before, cooperative problem-solving." Chicago Tribune 07/17/05
Posted: 07/17/2005 11:19 am
The Musicians You Never See Pop quiz: what member of a symphony orchestra typically knows the most about every piece of music on every program, and knows it before most of the orchestra is even aware of what they'll be playing? Answer: the librarian. "Each year the symphony music librarians prepare approximately 80 different programs for the orchestra to perform -- about 600 compositions totaling 35,000 parts for as many as 250 artists in a given performance. Those parts are rarely only a single page and often run to dozens of pages -- all of which must be checked... The sheer volume of work in the library can be daunting." Pittsburgh Tribune-Review 07/17/05
Posted: 07/17/2005 10:05 am
Alsop To Baltimore Marin Alsop, the most prominent female conductor in the world, finally has a major American orchestra to call her own. According to sources, the board of the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra will vote next week to approve Alsop as its next music director, replacing Yuri Temirkanov. Alsop has long been rumored to be in line for a major American directorship, and is already one of Britain's better-known conductors. Washington Post 07/16/05
Posted: 07/17/2005 8:08 am
- But Not Everyone's Happy... News of Marin Alsop's appointment is not sitting well with the musicians of the Baltimore Symphony, who took the unusual step of issuing a public statement decrying the board's decision to end its music director search. All seven musicians serving on the search committee favored continuing the search, and at least one prominent board member is publicly siding with them, but the orchestra's president says that the musicians will have the chance to share their views before the board votes to confirm Alsop. Nonetheless, the musicians have apparently been barred from speaking to board members in advance of the Tuesday confirmation meeting. Baltimore Sun 07/16/05
Posted: 07/17/2005 8:00 am
- Process Story AJ Blogger Drew McManus says that the Baltimore search process appears to have been designed to exclude, or at least trivialize, the views of the orchestra's musicians and, regardless of the merits of Marin Alsop as a conductor, a botched process is a sign of an organization in trouble. Furthermore, hiring a music director so early in the process is highly unusual for a major orchestra, largely because it is difficult to correct a hiring mistake without considerable public fallout. Adaptistration (AJ Blogs) 07/16/05
Posted: 07/17/2005 7:58 am
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Is The 21st Century The Return Of Amateur Culture? Professor Lawrence Lessig says he thinks so: "If you think of the 20th Century as this period of professionalising creativity - you've got the film and recording industries which become the professional creators, separating and stifling in many ways the popular culture. I do not think you are going to see the elimination of the professional creators but you are going to see it complemented by a much wider range of amateur culture in the original sense of the word amateur - in that people do it purely for the love of creating." BBC 07/18/05
Posted: 07/18/2005 6:44 pm
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Culture Of Dissent (But Not Kadare) It's fashionable for writers from former Soviet block countries to portray themselves as dissidents. But is Ismail Kadare, the Albanian who recently won the international Man Booker Prize such a dissident? "Kadare is no Solzhenitsyn and never has been. If the head of the Union of Writers and the delegate to the People's Assembly who studied in Moscow was the dissident, who in God's name supported communism? His secretary? The janitor? His dissident credentials are rubbish, as are those of many Eastern European writers and poets who published and thrived during communism, mixing their literary career with commanding political posts." MobyLives 07/19/05
Posted: 07/18/2005 6:38 pm
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The $27-Million Musical Is Underway It's six months until the massive new Lord of the Rings musical opens in Toronto, and casting and set-building are well under way. "At $27-million, LOTR is the most ambitious and expensive musical production in theatre history..." The Globe & Mail (Canada) 07/16/05
Posted: 07/17/2005 7:43 pm
No Doubt, The Play's A Hit One of the biggest surprises on Broadway this season was the box office success of "Doubt." "In the surprisingly brief space of four months, "Doubt," by playwright and "Moonstruck" screenwriter John Patrick Shanley, is in the black, a condition that most Broadway productions never achieve. In mid-June, its producers announced the play had made back the $2 million spent to get it to Broadway. Now their talk is about how best to widen "Doubt's" reach. Plans are already in the works for a national tour -- another rarity for a non-musical. A London run, naturally, is being discussed, and there's early buzz about a movie." Washington Post 07/17/05
Posted: 07/17/2005 7:29 pm
Success Is Relative "When it comes to the health of theater in Colorado, it all depends on whether you see the mask as half-comedy or half-tragedy. On the smiley side, Colorado theaters drew 1.7 million patrons and generated $54 million in ticket revenue in 2004... But then there's the tragic frown: Nearly half of those who attended the theater anywhere in Colorado went to a show at the Denver Center for the Performing Arts. That's great news for the largest performing-arts center between Chicago and Los Angeles. It is not such good news for the nearly 100 other theater companies in Colorado fighting over the other half." Denver Post 07/17/05
Posted: 07/17/2005 11:23 am
Where Theatre Still Has Teeth In the wake of the London bombings, the British arts press has been focusing on a West End play that would be controversial under any circumstances, a docudrama called "Talking To Terrorists." The fact that such a production even exists speaks volumes about London's attitude towards political theatre, and makes for a striking contrast with an increasingly prickly American public. Chicago Tribune 07/17/05
Posted: 07/17/2005 11:11 am
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Potter Smashes Book Sales Records In First 24 Hours The new Harry Potter book sold an astonishing 6.9 million copies in its first 24 hours, smashing the record held by the previous Potter release. "Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince" averaged better than 250,000 sales per hour, more than the vast majority of books sell in a lifetime. Yahoo! (AP) 07/17/05
Posted: 07/17/2005 8:04 pm
Harry Potter & the Midnight Madness So, as it turns out, all the hype and overwrought speculation that preceded the unveiling of the latest book in the Harry Potter series turned off kids around the world, who collectively yawned at the carefully orchestrated release. [...pause for effect...] Hah. We kid. The durn thing's already sold several million copies, and that's only the beginning. Bookstores were crammed full, and the midnight release parties were as swinging as ever. Basically, it's Harry's world, and we're just living in it. The New York Times 07/16/05
Posted: 07/17/2005 8:31 am
- Is Harry A Threat To Christianity? The debate over the morality of Harry Potter continues unabated in religious circles. Last week, the Pope made headlines when a letter he wrote as Cardinal Ratzinger was released, including a passage in which he called the books a series of "subtle seductions [that] erode Christianity in the soul before it can even grow properly." Still, other Christian authorities insist that the books are morally upstanding, and reinforce religious tenets in much the way that the works of C.S. Lewis and J.R.R. Tolkien did. "The magic jump-starts your interest, but what the books are really about is values." Pittsburgh Post-Gazette 07/16/05
Posted: 07/17/2005 8:30 am
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Why PBS Takes So Much Abuse After all the bluster and argument, is PBS still worth the money the government puts into it? After all, many have argued that niche cable channels do most of what PBS does without the need for public subsidy. Robert Lloyd disagrees, but points out that the very nature of PBS's existence makes it an easy target: "Though often described by its critics as elitist — a combined Google search of the terms 'PBS' and 'elitist' gets 33,500 hits — quite the opposite is true: PBS is a generalist network. It tries, often to its peril, to provide something for everybody. (Which means there is something for everyone not to like.)" Los Angeles Times 07/17/05
Posted: 07/17/2005 11:41 am
Will DVD Sales Go The Way Of The Box Office? Even as box office receipts continue to fall, Hollywood has been able to take some solace in the continuing strong sales of DVDs. But now, there are indications that even the DVD boom may be starting to fade... The Globe & Mail (Canada) 07/17/05
Posted: 07/17/2005 11:31 am
Manufactured Radio - Hold The Local Sound By now, nearly every major market in the U.S. has a radio station sporting the newfangled "Jack" format, in which blocks of hit music selected for its familiarity to an "average" national audience is interspersed with prerecorded voice tracks. "When a new Jack or Bob or Mike station enters a market, there tends to be a spike in ratings. But according to a new study... Jack and Bob face two problematic trends. At many such stations the audience size has diminished as the novelty of the format wears off, and the time each person spends listening to the station - an important statistic for advertisers - is fairly low, suggesting that people tune in for the fun of the songs but tune out in a short time for what other stations offer: on-air personalities and local news, perhaps." The New York Times 07/17/05
Posted: 07/17/2005 10:57 am
The Watchers & The Watched The streets of Los Angeles have become a battleground for paparazzi and the Hollywood stars they hunt. "Emboldened by the sudden willingness of law-enforcement officials to take their complaints seriously, celebrities and their lawyers have painted a picture of paparazzi as criminals, stalkers and provocateurs-at-the-wheel, using their vehicles as weapons if necessary to catch a celebrity looking ugly, angry or upset. To the paparazzi, however, this portrayal is utter nonsense, at best the result of stars seeing something happening in their rear-view mirrors but failing to understand it." Moreover, the real battle may be not between stars and photogs, but between the paparazzi themselves. The New York Times 07/17/05
Posted: 07/17/2005 10:41 am
Better Movies Through Poker Making a film can sometimes seem easy compared to the monumental task of financing it. Lining up investors, pitching your project to seemingly everyone, scraping together enough cash for the cameras - it's all just a bit overwhelming. Wouldn't it be easier if you could just win your financing at a poker table? Toronto Star 07/16/05
Posted: 07/17/2005 9:07 am
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Kirov Reaches For Rebel American Why is the classically pure Kirov Ballet turning to a maverick like William Forsythe? "The Kirov has already added works to its repertory by the St Petersburg-born George Balanchine, who died in 1983, but Forsythe's work, with its conscious deconstruction of the ballet conventions held so sacred at the Kirov, is a much wilder departure. It was the Kirov who courted Forsythe, rather than the other way round, and it took some persuasion. Forsythe has said that traditionally trained dancers, unused to his work, can be "horrible to watch" in his pieces." The Guardian (UK) 07/16/05
Posted: 07/17/2005 7:20 pm
Learning From The Best Training is everything in the dance world, and the chance for young hopefuls to hook up with seasoned pros is both rare and intensely valuable. So as you might imagine, the Summer Intensive program at the San Francisco Conservatory of Dance is the high point of the year for its enthusiastic (and exhausted) participants. "For four weeks, 55 advanced dancers ages 14 to 23 chosen by audition from the Bay Area and beyond forked over (or their folks did) $1,800 tuition to study with some of the best in the business -- the business of artistry." San Francisco Chronicle 07/16/05
Posted: 07/17/2005 8:49 am
Dancing With Your Tongue Can dancing the flamenco help students learn a second language? One dance troupe thinks so, and is instructing New York teachers in the fundamentals of the dance for just that purpose. "If the connection between flamenco and English as a second language seems less than obvious, it may help to think about how people communicate when they do not speak the same tongue. They use gestures and facial expressions. As students learn, they memorize the rules of the new language, including intonations and transitions. Eventually, they let go and improvise. The same elements - nonverbal clues; shifts in rhythm, speed and phrasing; and the interplay of rules and inventions - are fundamental to flamenco." The New York Times 07/16/05
Posted: 07/17/2005 8:27 am
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