The 100 Scariest Things Ever "99. Celebrities who write children's books and celebrities who go to Iraq to write about the war... 84. David Cronenberg's brain... 66. The chick lit avalanche... 21. Tied! Kathy Bates wielding a sledgehammer and Kathy Bates stepping into a Jacuzzi with Jack Nicholson... 7. December 1895, Paris: The Lumière Brothers give the first-ever public screening of a motion picture. A shot of an approaching train sends screaming audience members running for cover." Toronto Star 10/29/05
Posted: 10/30/2005 8:02 am
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Hirst Tops The Power 100, But What Does It All Mean? Is Damien Hirst the most powerful figure in the art world? ArtReview magazine's widely respected list of the Power 100 says he is, but what does such power mean in a highly fragmented age? And more importantly, does the dramatic shift between last year's list and this year's edition mean that the art world now moves so quickly that power can no longer be measured as it once was? Maybe, but for the moment, ArtReview's list still serves as an important harbinger of what's to come in art over the next year. Financial Times (UK) 10/28/05
Posted: 10/30/2005 9:25 am
Art To Engage A Damaged Mind Can exposure to art slow the advance of Alzheimer's Disease, or at least make its effects more bearable? The answer seems to be yes, but no one really understands why. "Art therapy, both appreciating art and making it, has been used for decades as a nonmedical way to help a wide variety of people - abused children, prisoners and cancer and Alzheimer's patients. But much of this work has taken place in nursing homes and hospitals. Now museums like [New York's] Modern and the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, are trying to bring it into their galleries, using their collections as powerful ways to engage minds damaged by dementia." The New York Times 10/30/05
Posted: 10/30/2005 9:14 am
Picasso Vase Headlines Auction "A ceramic vase by Pablo Picasso sold for 33,600 pounds ($59,600) at a London auction of more than 100 Picasso ceramic works, Sotheby's auction house said today. At 75.5 centimetres, the painted and glazen earthenware vase entitled 'Tripode' is one of the artist's largest ceramic pieces, and was the most coveted item [in] yesterday's auction." The Age (Melbourne) 10/28/05
Posted: 10/30/2005 9:11 am
A Museum For All Seasons "The National Building Museum turns a quarter-century old this fall, and tonight lots of folks will be celebrating underneath the stupendous Corinthian columns of the museum's Great Hall. There is, indeed, much to celebrate... It is not an architecture museum. Not engineering, not city planning. Not a museum for stonemasons, sheet metal workers, steel fabricators, real estate developers, social historians, taste makers, apartment dwellers, homeowners and... the list is almost endless. But if the museum is not one of these things, it is all of them." Washington Post 10/29/05
Posted: 10/30/2005 8:26 am
East Meets West, and Art Emerges "Natvar Bhavsar is a world-renowned painter from India whose huge, colourful canvases hang in more than 1,000 private corporate collections and museums, including the Guggenheim and the Museum of Modern Art in New York." But it took a while for the Western world to warm up to the American-educated Bhavsar's work, which lean heavily on traditional Indian techniques blended with American abstract expressionism. These days, however, Bhavsar is one of New York's most respected living artists, and his professional journey serves as a perfect allegory for the city's legendary diversity. Toronto Star 10/29/05
Posted: 10/30/2005 8:19 am
New Van Gogh Self-Portrait? "An art historian said yesterday she believes she has discovered an early self-portrait of the artist Vincent van Gogh under a painting of a Paris scene. Aukje Verggeese said the portrait came to light when she used X-rays to see a monument visible under the painted surface as she was attempting to pinpoint the scene of the landscape." The Globe & Mail (AFP) 10/29/05
Posted: 10/30/2005 7:30 am
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The Future Of Orchestral Programming "Programming decisions are crucial for orchestras, and the preferences of the subscribers they hope to attract can be difficult to gauge. Symphony orchestras may have been invented in the steam age, but there is a technological revolution going on behind the scenes that will change the way they do business." Increasingly, orchestras are integrating new technologies into their ticket sales and marketing departments, and the sales information generated is poised to have a huge impact on what we hear in future orchestral seasons. "It's to do with market segmentation, and shaping concerts programs in a way that will appeal to people with different musical interests and levels of knowledge." The Australian 10/31/05
Posted: 10/30/2005 8:41 am
Taking The Measure of Porgy It's opera's most predictable typecasting: every African-American baritone will eventually be asked to sing the role of Porgy in George Gershwin's Porgy & Bess. The racially explicit casting was Gershwin's firm instruction, but it does tend to point up how infrequently black baritones are asked to sing any role other than Porgy. For Gordon Hawkins, a 46-year-old baritone who has sung the role many times, the struggle is in finding a way to define Porgy as a man, rather than as a vaguely racist caricature. "He aims for nuance, some way to measure the man, not the facade... His Porgy has to have fire and flesh, he says. He's not the beaten-down cripple that some find demeaning." Washington Post 10/29/05
Posted: 10/30/2005 8:38 am
Ticket Sales Brisk For New Denver Opera House Denver's spectacular new opera house will host its first actual opera this coming week, and Opera Colorado, the venue's principal tenant, is pulling out all the stops with a major production of Bizet's Carmen starring none other than mezzo-soprano Denyce Graves. "In a daring departure from its usual practice, Opera Colorado is presenting eight performances of Carmen - twice as many as normal. And it already appears the gamble has paid off. A little more than a week before Thursday's opening, the company had already sold 70 percent of its available tickets, and Rex Fuller, director of marketing, expects at least some of the performances will sell out." Denver Post 10/29/05
Posted: 10/30/2005 7:47 am
Bittersweet Symphony As the New York Philharmonic opened their stage and their hearts to the displaced musicians of the Louisiana Philharmonic this weekend, Alice Tully Hall became a study in contrasts, with musicians who seemingly have it made in this business sitting side by side with musicians who have seen their world turned upside down. To call the benefit concert, which raised more than $300,000 for the New Orleans ensemble, a triumph would seem to understate the magnitude of the LPO's plight. But still, for one night in Manhattan, the LPO players could close their eyes and revel in the moment. "It's bittersweet," said one LPO violinist. "I've lost everything, but I get to play in the New York Philharmonic tonight." Violinist.com 10/29/05
Posted: 10/30/2005 7:35 am
St. Louis Musician Endowment Nears Its Goal As the St. Louis Symphony attempts to dig out of the financial hole it fell into a few years back, one of the key measuring sticks is the salary earned by its musicians, and how it stacks up to other major American ensembles. In summer 2004, the SLSO began a special endowment drive designed specifically to make salary increases feasible within the existing budget - the goal for the drive is $20 million. This week, the orchestra announced that $17 million has been raised for the project, and the overall orchestra endowment now stands at $112 million. St. Louis Post-Dispatch 10/29/05
Posted: 10/30/2005 7:08 am
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Denver Orchestra On The Rise Even As Ballet Sinks Denver's performing arts scene is a study in contrasts these days. On the one hand, the Colorado Symphony has been reinvigorated by the arrival of its new music director, Jeffrey Kahane, and recently reported a $71,000 surplus for the 2004-05 season. "In stark contrast, the Colorado Ballet has suffered one setback after another, culminating with a mid-September revelation that it suffered a deficit of $341,000 in 2004-05 and accumulated debt totaling $700,000... So the unfailing cycle plays out yet again in a story of two vital Denver arts organizations on different paths." Denver Post 10/30/05
Posted: 10/30/2005 8:46 am
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A Canadian Legend Says Goodbye "William Hutt, 85, made his farewell appearance at the Stratford Festival [Friday] night, playing Prospero in The Tempest with such passion and commitment that it's almost as if he wanted to leave a final mark that would never be forgotten on the stage he had trod for so many years. This wasn't the tentative farewell of an old trouper heading off reluctantly to pasture or the feeble adieu of a once potent warrior. No, Hutt served notice to us all that he was leaving because, like every man, he had the right to choose his moment. His had finally arrived and he wanted it to be a memorable one." Toronto Star 10/29/05
Posted: 10/30/2005 8:08 am
The Prodigal Soprano "When interviewing most singers, you first inquire about their roles, their interpretations, their inspiring teachers. Maybe, if you're nervy enough, you query them about their love life. When talking with soprano Andrea Gruber, however, you first ask to see the tattoos... Gruber's candor extends a lot further than a modest display of flesh or an admitted fondness for hip-hop." She speaks openly of her struggles with drugs and her humiliating ouster from the Metropolitan Opera, and cites '60s rocker Janis Joplin as one of her vocal influences. And she talks about what it took for her to leave her troubled past behind and rebuild all the bridges she had burned early in her career. San Francisco Chronicle 10/29/05
Posted: 10/30/2005 7:57 am
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Wilma's Terrible Timing As South Florida begins to dig out from the damage caused by Hurricane Wilma, the region's theatres are struggling to cope with the revenue loss that will inevitably be the result of continued power outages and civic chaos. "Most arts groups are hopeful that early-November shows will go on as scheduled, and once a facility's power is restored, that should be the case." But the weekend that the hurricane hit was opening weekend for a number of local productions, and "by the time the reviews ran (though people who didn't get a newspaper, have Internet access or were otherwise consumed with post-hurricane life undoubtedly didn't read them), the theaters were like the vast majority of South Florida's population: in the dark." Miami Herald 10/30/05
Posted: 10/30/2005 8:55 am
Broadway From The Inside Out Talk to any Broadway veteran for a few minutes, and you'll be sure to get an earful of the strange and wonderful behind-the-scenes world that most theatre-goers never get a chance to experience. So it's almost surprising that an "inside Broadway" walking tour has only just sprung up in Manhattan. "Throughout the tour, one's attention is brought to things even the most eagle-eyed pedestrian can miss. These include the comedy/tragedy gargoyles adorning the Lunt-Fontanne; the diminutive shoeprints of actress Helen Hayes in the sidewalk in front of the theater that bears her name; and the elaborate mural depicting various theater greats adjoining the Marriott Marquis Hotel." New York Post 10/29/05
Posted: 10/30/2005 7:53 am
Coming Soon: Webster's Ninth Collegiate Musical Spectacular! Now that Strunk & White's Elements of Style has been reborn as a song cycle, and Broadway appears to have finally run out of all original ideas (see Movin' Out), Dominic Papatola says that it may just be time for the theatre world to embrace the great English language reference books as inspiration. "The three-volume Columbia Gazetteer of the World sits on my bookshelf at home, and, I'm telling you, you can't beat it for sheer drama. It's a pity Harold Pinter's dead; we'll never know what he could've done with it... And if Richard Wagner could make a 15-hour opera out of the story of some doofus dwarf and a ring, I see no reason the epic tale of the Encyclopaedia Britannica couldn't be made into an heroic-scale grand opera." St. Paul Pioneer Press 10/30/05
Posted: 10/30/2005 7:00 am
- Previously: You Just Know E.B. White Would Have Loved This "Strunk and White's legendary Elements of Style was first published in 1959, and in the intervening decades, this little book on language and its proper usage has been force-fed to countless high school English students, who have read it zealously, dog-eared key pages, showered it in graphite love or else completely disregarded and forgotten it, usually at their own risk... [A]ppreciation for this slim volume takes a turn toward the whimsical and even surreal this week, as the Penguin Press publishes the first illustrated edition, featuring artwork by Maira Kalman, and the young composer Nico Muhly offers a finely wrought Elements of Style song cycle, to be given its premiere tonight [at] the New York Public Library." The New York Times 10/19/05
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Batman Defeated By A Maus? It may not be on the radar of most of the publishing industry, but a war for the hearts and minds of comic book readers is raging, pitting purveyors of traditional superhero-themed serials against the increasingly highbrow authors of book-length graphic novels. Increasingly, the highbrows are winning, and many comic sellers say that the old guard has only itself to blame. "[Superhero comics are] not being written for the traditional 13-year-old boy any more, but for a 40-year-old who wants to read what he read when he was 13... It's still all guys in tights pounding each other." Toronto Star 10/29/05
Posted: 10/30/2005 8:13 am
Shakespeare For The Casual Fan Speculation about Shakespeare - who he was, what he did, even whether he really existed - has become a profitable literary subgenre, with new books constantly being released to propound ever more unbelievable theories of the Bard, and others written expressly to dismiss such pie-in-the-sky ideas. It's actually become difficult for a casual reader to find a straight-ahead, informative, and engaging biography of the playwright, in the same way that it is hard to find a book featuring an objective dissection of American foreign policy under George W. Bush. But "amid all this specialized debate, there is also a steady flow of less agitated books intended for the general reader, including three particularly insightful and well-written ones in the last year or so." The New York Times 10/29/05
Posted: 10/30/2005 7:20 am
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The Next Great Film Festival? For 25 years, the Hawaii Film Festival has been plugging along, flying more or less completely under the Hollywood radar. So Roger Ebert was surprised this year to attend the fest and discover something that looks quite a bit like an event on the rise. "I remember Sundance and Toronto in their earliest days, when everybody at the festival could fit into one hotel banquet room. Look at them now. Then I look at the enormous crowds at Hawaii, its 200 films, its creative programming, and I think, yes, the dream that Jeannette Paulson had when she started the festival 25 years ago is becoming a reality." Chicago Sun-Times 10/29/05
Posted: 10/30/2005 7:43 am
Russia's Shame Becomes Box Office Gold "The biggest post-Soviet film blockbuster packing the country's multiplexes is a bloody tear-jerker about a topic many Russians would rather forget - the 10-year war that resulted in the Soviet Union's messy withdrawal from Afghanistan in 1989. For many here the film also is apparently read not only as a metaphor for Russia's Chechen quagmire, but even for the very collapse of the Soviet Union. The movie, Company 9, has grossed $23.47 million since its Sept. 29 opening and is close to doubling the total receipts here of the latest installments of the popular Lord of the Rings and Star Wars films." The New York Times 10/29/05
Posted: 10/30/2005 7:31 am
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If It Ain't Broke... "At the press conference last season announcing her popular appointment as artistic director, Karen Kain was pointedly asked whether the National Ballet of Canada would be going ahead with plans to produce a new version of The Sleeping Beauty. Nimbly avoiding a definitive answer, the erstwhile ballerina reaffirmed her desire to preserve the company's classical heritage. To some of her listeners, this was a polite way of saying no to her predecessor James Kudelka's announced intention to re-make yet another of the full-length ballet classics in his own choreographic image... And as much as one might admire the creativity of James Kudelka, the closer we can come to experiencing such a work in its classic state, the better we are likely to understand its classic meaning." Toronto Star 10/29/05
Posted: 10/30/2005 8:10 am
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