Members of the Louisiana Philharmonic, scattered around America after Katrina, are gathering up in Nashville to perform a benefit concert. "It's about hope for them. The notion that they are all together, making music together, will be an incredible thing. Itdy">
Chicago's Endangered Architectural Treasures "Some of the Chicago area's most important architectural treasures are in danger, and because of various pressures -- including the opposition of local developers, corporations, municipal governments, aldermen and planning commissions -- they may soon be altered beyond all recognition or completely demolished." Chicago Sun-Times 09/15/05
Posted: 09/15/2005 7:27 am
Vegas Gets A Face Life (For The 408,309th Time) Big-name architects Rafael Viñoly, Lord Norman Foster, James KM Cheng, Cesar Pelli, and Kohn Pedersen Fox Associates have been enlisted to "design various parts of a $5 billion, 66-acre development in the heart of Las Vegas. Called Project CityCenter, the complex of hotels, casinos, retail and residential space is to be built by November 2009 on a site between the Monte Carlo and Bellagio hotels on the city's famous strip." The New York Times 09/15/05
Posted: 09/15/2005 6:24 am
Naked And Pregnant In Trafalar Square Trafalgar Square's vacant fourth plinth gets a new sculpture, a statue of a naked preggnant woman. "The 12ft marble sculpture, 'Alison Lapper Pregnant', is already dividing opinion among art critics and disability campaigners. Artist Marc Quinn said he had sculpted his friend Ms Lapper because disabled people were under-represented in art." BBC 09/15/05
Posted: 09/15/2005 5:31 am
Architect Chosen For St. Louis Museum Expansion British architect David Chipperfield has been chosen to design a major expansion of the St. Louis Art Museum. The expansion will increase space by 40 percent. "The St. Louis Art Museum is bursting at its seams. Strategic acquisitions by the Museum and gifts from local benefactors have created a great collection that cannot be properly shown. Major works by such artists as Matisse and Picasso are confined to storage, and entire collections can only be viewed on a rotating basis. Chipperfield was chosen after a 10-month search." St. Louis Post-Dispatch 09/12/05
Posted: 09/15/2005 5:03 am
When Architects Copy "How important should artistic authorship be in the world of architecture? For most of the last 500 years, imitation was the sincerest form of architectural flattery. The pattern was established during the Renaissance, whose architects were trying to re-create the buildings of ancient Rome. The fact that most of these buildings lay in ruins meant that designers had to do a lot of creative reconstruction, but that didn't alter the principle of learning from—and copying—the past. Invention was necessary, but it was not the most important factor." Slate 09/14/05
Posted: 09/14/2005 6:07 pm
The Tate's Mini-Tours The Tate has put together mini-collections within its buildings to offer "themed" tours for visitors. "Visitors can also curate their own tours by visiting Tate’s website and selecting paintings according to any theme they choose." The Times (UK) 09/14/05
Posted: 09/14/2005 5:28 pm
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Louisiana Phil Reforms In Nashville Members of the Louisiana Philharmonic, scattered around America after Katrina, are gathering up in Nashville to perform a benefit concert. "It's about hope for them. The notion that they are all together, making music together, will be an incredible thing. It's about raising some money, but it's also about healing their souls.' Mark O'Connor will be guest soloist for the concert, which is scheduled for national broadcast on National Public Radio." The Tennessean 09/15/05
Posted: 09/15/2005 6:53 am
Kennedy Center Holds Hand Out To Struggling Orchestras The Kennedy Center is expanding an initiative to provide management help to more than two dozen struggling small and mid-size orchestras. "Sustaining the American Orchestra," the new initiative, is an effort to design strategies that will change the way many orchestras do business. Initially the center will work with 23 orchestras, ranging from the Indianapolis Symphony, which has a $23 million budget, and the St. Louis Symphony, a $21 million budget, to the Reno Philharmonic and Berkeley Symphony Orchestra, both with $1 million budgets. The Kennedy Center is using a model it developed three years ago to help minority-run dance, theater and music companies. Washington Post 09/15/05
Posted: 09/15/2005 6:37 am
Louisiana Transplants - Living It Up In Lafayette "No one knows what will come of the dispersal of New Orleans's artistic life, or whether the thousands of musical transients will become transplants. Like so much else in the aftermath of the hurricane, the question is unresolved. But here in Lafayette, where Cajun French can still be heard in the street, the signs are bilingual and old French Canada is the musical touchstone, musicians - locals and evacuees - are expecting a flowering of creativity." The Telegraph (UK) 09/15/05
Posted: 09/14/2005 7:17 pm
Canadian Chain Boycotts Bob Dylan The record chain HMV Canada has removed all of Bob Dylan's recordings from its stores after the singer made a deal to sell his new album exclusively at Starbucks. "A spokesman for HMV Canada told the Hollywood Reporter they were no longer stocking or displaying Dylan's albums. The chain has previously boycotted CDs by Alanis Morissette and The Rolling Stones to complain at exclusive deals. When HMV Canada removed The Rolling Stones from its shelves in 2003, president Humphrey Kadaner said: 'Any artists that choose to exclude HMV as a retailer for selling the product, this will be our response'." BBC 09/14/05
Posted: 09/14/2005 5:36 pm
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A Chicago Full Of Wonders What are the "Seven Wonders" of Chicago? The Chicago Tribune asks readers and got "some 4,000-plus nominations for the 14 finalists, and more than 38,000 ballots cast for the final seven. Knock that total down by a few hundred for some ballot stuffing (obvious when the wording is exactly the same time after time). Stuffers included many voting for Steppenwolf Theatre, the Bochasanwasi Shri Akshar Purushottam Swaminarayan Sanstha (BAPS) temple in Bartlett and Fame, the city's oldest sailboat, but that's so Chicago." Chicago Tribune 09/15/05
Posted: 09/15/2005 7:25 am
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From Delivering Ketchup To Singing Opera Exotic Puerto Rican soprano Scheherazade Pesante is making her London debut. "Now in her mid-thirties, Pesante approached opera back to front. Last year, she sang Carmen for the semi-professional AAC opera. She is about to start her fourth year of vocal studies at the Guildhall School of Music (conveniently situated next door to her flat), and harbours a yearning to sing Violetta in La Traviata. Before this, however, she spent a couple of riotous decades in cabaret and fringe theatre in New York, interspersed with bouts as a female wrestler, an artist's model and a part-time truck driver delivering Heinz ketchup." The Telegraph (UK) 09/14/05
Posted: 09/14/2005 7:13 pm
Keillor Shuts Down Blogger T-Shirts Attorneys for Garrison Keillor have shut down sales of T-shirts being sold by a Minnesota blogger that say "A Prairie Ho Companion," claiming the shirts infringe on Keillor's trademark. Keillor's attorney said the cease and desist order is meant to protect the name of Keillor's 'A Prairie Home Companion' public radio show and upcoming movie by the same name. He's got a copyright interest in the name and he just wants to protect it — nothing personal" St. Paul Pioneer-Press 09/14/05
Posted: 09/14/2005 5:43 pm
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Protests Over Play that Hasn't Opened Yet "A new play by Howard Brenton, author of the notorious work The Romans in Britain, has prompted 200 letters of complaint even before it is unveiled at the National Theatre later this month." The Guardian (UK) 09/14/05
Posted: 09/14/2005 6:29 pm
Click here for more Theatre stories...
Meet The New Paris Review Nearly everything about the rickety old Paris Review has been brushed off and upgraded to a shiny new standard as part of a summer-long restructuring led by Philip Gourevitch that makes the new Review seem practically … corporate. The new issue is larger than the old one, slim and elegant and more magazine-like, printed on buttery paper. Rather than featuring graphic artwork, the cover displays a sepia-toned photograph of a solemn little child in galoshes—the adorably plump Salman Rushdie as a boy in Bombay, looking serious beyond his years and cute enough to eat." New York Observer 09/15/05
Post's about raising some money, but it's also about healing their souls.' Mark O'Connor will be guest soloist for the concert, which is scheduled for national broadcast on National Public Radio." The Tennessean 09/15/05
Posted: 09/15/2005 6:53 am
Kennedy Center Holds Hand Out To Struggling Orchestras The Kennedy Center is expanding an initiative to provide management help to more than two dozen struggling small and mid-size orchestras. "Sustaining the American Orchestra," the new initiative, is an effort to design strategies that will change the way many orchestras do business. Initially the center will work with 23 orchestras, ranging from the Indianapolis Symphony, which has a $23 million budget, and the St. Louis Symphony, a $21 million budget, to the Reno Philharmonic and Berkeley Symphony Orchestra, both with $1 million budgets. The Kennedy Center is using a model it developed three years ago to help minority-run dance, theater and music companies. Washington Post 09/15/05
Posted: 09/15/2005 6:37 am
Louisiana Transplants - Living It Up In Lafayette "No one knows what will come of the dispersal of New Orleans's artistic life, or whether the thousands of musical transients will become transplants. Like so much else in the aftermath of the hurricane, the question is unresolved. But here in Lafayette, where Cajun French can still be heard in the street, the signs are bilingual and old French Canada is the musical touchstone, musicians - locals and evacuees - are expecting a flowering of creativity." The Telegraph (UK) 09/15/05
Posted: 09/14/2005 7:17 pm
Canadian Chain Boycotts Bob Dylan The record chain HMV Canada has removed all of Bob Dylan's recordings from its stores after the singer made a deal to sell his new album exclusively at Starbucks. "A spokesman for HMV Canada told the Hollywood Reporter they were no longer stocking or displaying Dylan's albums. The chain has previously boycotted CDs by Alanis Morissette and The Rolling Stones to complain at exclusive deals. When HMV Canada removed The Rolling Stones from its shelves in 2003, president Humphrey Kadaner said: 'Any artists that choose to exclude HMV as a retailer for selling the product, this will be our response'." BBC 09/14/05
Posted: 09/14/2005 5:36 pm
Click here for more Music stories...
A Chicago Full Of Wonders What are the "Seven Wonders" of Chicago? The Chicago Tribune asks readers and got "some 4,000-plus nominations for the 14 finalists, and more than 38,000 ballots cast for the final seven. Knock that total down by a few hundred for some ballot stuffing (obvious when the wording is exactly the same time after time). Stuffers included many voting for Steppenwolf Theatre, the Bochasanwasi Shri Akshar Purushottam Swaminarayan Sanstha (BAPS) temple in Bartlett and Fame, the city's oldest sailboat, but that's so Chicago." Chicago Tribune 09/15/05
Posted: 09/15/2005 7:25 am
Click here for more Arts Issues stories...
From Delivering Ketchup To Singing Opera Exotic Puerto Rican soprano Scheherazade Pesante is making her London debut. "Now in her mid-thirties, Pesante approached opera back to front. Last year, she sang Carmen for the semi-professional AAC opera. She is about to start her fourth year of vocal studies at the Guildhall School of Music (conveniently situated next door to her flat), and harbours a yearning to sing Violetta in La Traviata. Before this, however, she spent a couple of riotous decades in cabaret and fringe theatre in New York, interspersed with bouts as a female wrestler, an artist's model and a part-time truck driver delivering Heinz ketchup." The Telegraph (UK) 09/14/05
Posted: 09/14/2005 7:13 pm
Keillor Shuts Down Blogger T-Shirts Attorneys for Garrison Keillor have shut down sales of T-shirts being sold by a Minnesota blogger that say "A Prairie Ho Companion," claiming the shirts infringe on Keillor's trademark. Keillor's attorney said the cease and desist order is meant to protect the name of Keillor's 'A Prairie Home Companion' public radio show and upcoming movie by the same name. He's got a copyright interest in the name and he just wants to protect it — nothing personal" St. Paul Pioneer-Press 09/14/05
Posted: 09/14/2005 5:43 pm
Click here for more People stories...
Protests Over Play that Hasn't Opened Yet "A new play by Howard Brenton, author of the notorious work The Romans in Britain, has prompted 200 letters of complaint even before it is unveiled at the National Theatre later this month." The Guardian (UK) 09/14/05
Posted: 09/14/2005 6:29 pm
Click here for more Theatre stories...
Meet The New Paris Review Nearly everything about the rickety old Paris Review has been brushed off and upgraded to a shiny new standard as part of a summer-long restructuring led by Philip Gourevitch that makes the new Review seem practically … corporate. The new issue is larger than the old one, slim and elegant and more magazine-like, printed on buttery paper. Rather than featuring graphic artwork, the cover displays a sepia-toned photograph of a solemn little child in galoshes—the adorably plump Salman Rushdie as a boy in Bombay, looking serious beyond his years and cute enough to eat." New York Observer 09/15/05
Posted: 09/15/2005 7:44 am
A Famous DC Literary Bookstore Vies To Be Non-Profit Washington DC's literary bookstore Chapters is 20 years old. But to make it to 21, the store is attempting a radical reinvention. "Without help -- in the form of a fundraising drive that will allow it to be bought out by a nonprofit foundation -- the bookstore may have trouble making it to 21. The strategy is similar to that employed by the Avalon Theatre Project, which succeeded two years ago in reopening Washington's oldest surviving movie house by converting it to nonprofit status." Washington Post 09/15/05
Posted: 09/15/2005 6:33 am
Couldn't We Use An Ode To Cricket? England has won the cricket championship. But where is the cricket literature? "I cannot think of any fictional depiction of cricket - and, even as I write this sentence, I expect to be contradicted - that goes any way towards capturing the heroism, the beauty, the sheer glory that cricket is capable of conjuring in a series like the one we have just witnessed. English cricket writing is too busy observing the social niceties and oddities of the game at a local level - where it is heavenly but not always inspiring - to raise its eyes to higher things. In this it is entirely different from American literature's treatment of baseball." The Telegraph (UK) 09/14/05
Posted: 09/14/2005 7:03 pm
Bloomsbury Trolls For US Aquisition English publisher Bloomsbury wants to buy its way into the US market, and its fortune built on Harry Potter should make it happen. "The publisher will have an estimated cash pile of £50m by the end of the year as it reaps the benefit of Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, the sixth book in the teenage wizard saga. A US children's publisher with a weighty back catalogue is a priority target but the group admitted yesterday that many potential acquisitions were demanding too high a price." The Guardian (UK) 09/14/05
Posted: 09/14/2005 6:38 pm
A Case For Zadie Stephen Metcalf appeals to the Booker jury on behalf of Zadie Smith's "On Beauty." "It is written by an exquisite writer, who has mistaken her admirable pooh-poohing of a lot of foolish publicity for a free pass to get by as an overcelebrated mediocrity. Therefore, Dear Committee, I plead with you to assist in removing the cameras and quote-mongers from Zadie Smith's life and help prevent her from blowing up into an even larger global literary darling, prone to even more gratuitous Hamlet-like maunderings, and let the woman... develop into her appointed greatness." Slate 09/13/05
Posted: 09/14/2005 5:33 pm
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New Orleans Radio In Exile New Orleans public radio station WWOZ isn't broadcasting over airwaves these days, but the station, now calling itself ''WWOZ in exile," is still online through the generosity of New Jersey community station WFMU, which is hosting the webcast. 'We're playing archival material right now. You may get to hear shows from DJs who haven't been on the air in decades'." As well, "since shortly after the hurricane and the levee break that flooded the city, the community station has focused on becoming a true community resource." Boston Globe 09/15/05
Posted: 09/15/2005 7:30 am
The Most Expensive Idol The TV show "American Idol" is charging a record amount for ads on any American television show. "For the new fall season, the cost of a 30-second spot during the Wednesday installment of the program has surpassed the $700,000 mark. For the second year in a row, the Tuesday and Wednesday editions of American Idol are the most expensive shows on network TV." Backstage 09/15/05
Posted: 09/15/2005 5:40 am
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Rambert's New Home The Rambert Dance Company intends to build a new £16.5 million headquarters on London's South Bank. "The new centre - which the company hope will be finished in 2008 - will house state-of-the-art studios, along with community and education spaces. The contemporary dance company is currently located in cramped premises in Chiswick, west London." BBC 09/15/05
Posted: 09/15/2005 5:29 am
What Becomes The New PNB? Seattle's Pacific Northwest Ballet was thoroughly molded in the shape of its longtime directors Kent Stowell and Francia Russell. Now they've retired and NYCity Ballet alum Peter Boal is taking over, how will the company change? Seattle Weekly 09/14/05
Posted: 09/14/2005 6:14 pm
- Peter Boal's Seattle Strategy "I want lots of new choreography. I'm not going to do it myself because I want it to be good choreography. I want to see us perform more in Seattle. Not en masse, but in small groups; not at McCaw Hall, but elsewhere in town, maybe in collaboration with other institutions. I want everybody to see the company, invite everybody to come to the ballet; I want them to know it can be relevant to their lives. I want to reach out to the entire dance community. Four times this year, before particular rep programs, we're going to be inviting dance students to come to watch a class at Phelps Center: We're calling it '$5 Fridays.'" Seattle Weekly 09/14/05
Posted: 09/14/2005 6:11 pm
Click here for more Dance stories...
