America Long On Faith, Short On Knowledge Americans are supposed to be devout, even over-the-top, religious devotees. But we're also buying the supposedly sacrilegious DaVinci Code as fast as the copies can be printed. What gives? "The attitudes that make Americans so 'religious' are the same ones that have made them such a ready market for the Da Vinci flimflam. This country is suffused with religious sentiments and impulses, but Americans are abysmally — even willfully — short on religious knowledge. All the periodic hand-wringing over this country's crisis of faith or creeping secularism notwithstanding, the problem with Americans is not that they don't believe anything; it's that so many think they can believe anything — and that believing one thing doesn't preclude belief in another." Los Angeles Times 05/20/06
Posted: 05/21/2006 9:04 am
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Could An L.A. Biennial Be On The Horizon? Officials in Los Angeles are having preliminary discussions about mounting a major biennial art show in the city. "[County] commissioners held a private 'informational' session earlier this month to consider the possibility of staging an international contemporary art exhibition on the L.A. waterfront at an estimated cost of $5 million." Los Angeles Times 05/21/06
Posted: 05/21/2006 11:14 am
That's Gonna Make For A Slim Profit Margin "Compared with the epic works that have made his name - the shark in formaldehyde, the bisected cow - Damien Hirst's work in progress is a small, delicate object: a life-size human skull. Not just any skull, mind, but one cast in platinum and encased entirely in diamonds - some 8,500 in all. It will be the most expensive work of art ever created, costing between £8m and £10m." The Observer (UK) 05/21/06
Posted: 05/21/2006 10:56 am
Parcel Post Just Isn't Going To Cut It Say you're a high roller in the world of art auctions, and you've just landed a Picasso or a Monet for the tidy sum of several million, plus commission. Now, how exactly are you planning to get the thing home? "You don't hear a lot about the fine-art moving business, because it generally shuns publicity and rarely advertises... Clients in this realm tend to treasure discretion as much as art, which, for anyone with a Rembrandt in the den, makes a lot of sense." Washington Post 05/20/06
Posted: 05/21/2006 9:47 am
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Is Japan The Spiritual Home Of Classical Music? "Where is the nerve centre of classical music in the early 21st century? Answering that question depends on your criteria. If it's to do with possessing a venerable tradition, you might choose Vienna. If it's the location of the best orchestras and opera houses, you might choose Berlin. If it's finding exuberantly creative ways to reinvent the tradition, London or New York seem strong contenders. But if the true measure is a passionate devotion amounting almost to idolatry, Tokyo would win the palm." In fact, Japan has a long history of venerating Western classical traditions, and now, even as much of the world turns to crossover dreck and "easy-listening" classical, Japan remains firm in its commitment to (and love for) serious music. The Telegraph (UK) 05/20/06
Posted: 05/21/2006 11:05 am
Barenboim's Mixed Legacy Daniel Barenboim's departure from the Chicago Symphony is finally at hand. So what has the enigmatic conductor's 15 years at the helm in Chicago meant to the orchestra? "Inheriting musicians and an audience steeped in Solti's preference for precision-tooled phrasing and goosebump-inducing fortissimos that could be felt in the subway tunnels below Orchestra Hall, he drove the orchestra relentlessly toward a more flexible, spontaneous sound... [But] some players, critics and concertgoers complained that he was inconsistent, rarely conducting the same piece of music the same way twice, often wildly distorting the musical fabric in the process. Why, Barenboim wondered in turn, would anyone want to give the same performance night after night?" Chicago Sun-Times 05/21/06
Posted: 05/21/2006 10:24 am
- CSO Set Up Nicely For A Barenboim-Less Future The Chicago Symphony may not have anyone waiting in the wings to replace Daniel Barenboim, but the ensemble is still sitting pretty both artistically and financially as one of America's top orchestras. The CSO will be a glittering prize for whatever conductor eventually seduces it, and with Bernard Haitink in place as a stopgap solution, the CSO can take its time with the wooing. Chicago Sun-Times 05/21/06
Posted: 05/21/2006 10:15 am
Not The Way You Want A Tour To Go The Perth-based West Australian Symphony Orchestra, which just completed a major tour of China, ought to be flying high right now. Instead, the orchestra has declined to renew the contract of its music director (and informed him the week before the WASO headed to China,) and the tour was plagued by logistical problems and half-filled halls. For the WASO, it's clear that there are a lot of things not working the way they should, and many management problems that will have to be addressed once the ensemble returns home. The Australian 05/22/06
Posted: 05/21/2006 10:06 am
Orchestra Furious With Hall Closure Plan One of Northern Ireland's largest orchestras may have to begin its next season without the use of its concert hall, and orchestra officials are furious that they weren't consulted before the closure of Ulster's Waterfront Hall was announced. The Ulster Orchestra "had made provisional booking for four concerts during this period, including the important opening concert of the 2007-2008 season and... 'had been led to believe' that the Waterfront would be closed during the quiet season from June-August, and not later on." Belfast Telegraph 05/20/06
Posted: 05/21/2006 8:32 am
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Immigration Debate Roils Cultural Waters "Whatever the economic and regulatory reasons to revise immigration laws, you know there has to be a fair amount of xenophobia lurking about. At the very least, parts of the establishment are threatened by ethnic minorities' being not so minor these days... Theoretically, great art would be created no matter what. But would our ears have the proper conditioning to perceive it were we not surrounded by immigrants, legal and otherwise, in our everyday lives?" Philadelphia Inquirer 05/21/06
Posted: 05/21/2006 10:36 am
The Juilliard Effect: Impressive, But It Won't Get You A Job This week, New York's Juilliard School will send another several hundred young musicians, dancers, and actors out into the real world, armed with talent, a diploma, and some of the best training available anywhere on Earth. But pedigree doesn't count for much in the hyper-competitive world of performing arts these days, and the reality is that, even for the cream of the crop, the road from Juilliard to a job can be a long, difficult one. Newsday (AP) 05/21/06
Posted: 05/21/2006 10:03 am
Columbine: The Game The notoriously violent world of video games doesn't have many taboos anymore, or much of a sense of decorum about who and/or what gets blown away by the "hero." But even so, an online game based directly on the Columbine High School shootings has been sparking outrage across the country. "Armed with a Tec-9 semiautomatic, the player can move from the cafeteria, down the hallways, up the stairs, then to the library. The player decides whether to kill. In the end, players learn there's really no way to win." Washington Post 05/20/06
Posted: 05/21/2006 9:51 am
Cleveland Set To Try Again For "Arts Tax" Two years after a ballot initiative which would have raised millions for the arts through a property-tax increase went down to defeat, Cleveland-area cultural leaders are preparing to try again. "[Cuyahoga] County's three commissioners have expressed varying degrees of support for a proposed 30-cent-per-pack hike in the cigarette tax. The additional tax would create a pool of about $20 million annually. The money would be used to provide matching funds to Cuyahoga County-based, not-for-profit arts and cultural organizations for operating expenses." The plan would still need to gain voter approval in November. The Plain Dealer (Cleveland) 05/20/06
Posted: 05/21/2006 9:27 am
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Seeger's Staying Power 87-year-old folk singer Pete Seeger is not what you would call a musical superstar these days, when popular music is defined by a karaoke TV show and round after round of sultry teenage pop stars, but Seeger is enjoying something of a surge in popularity following the release of a Bruce Springsteen album made up entirely of Seeger songs. And if the album's popularity says anything about music, it might be an echo of Seeger's longheld belief that good music never goes out of style. Toronto Star 05/20/06
Posted: 05/21/2006 9:40 am
Chasing Harper Writing a biography of a living subject is always a challenge, but when the subject is Harper Lee, the famously reclusive author of To Kill A Mockingbird, the challenging becomes nearly impossible. A new volume examines the history of Harper Lee, the author and reluctant celebrity, but capturing the human being is something that may never be done. Toronto Star 05/20/06
Posted: 05/21/2006 9:32 am
Looking Beneath The Despair And Finding Hopelessness It's a big year for Beckett fans, and critic Ian Brown was looking forward to celebrating the author's centenary by rereading all the master's plays, and then writing about the experience. The problem, of course, is that reading Beckett is frequently as difficult and mind-numbing as the writing process apparently was for Beckett himself. By the time he reached literary maturity, "Beckett [was] content to simply slam your head repeatedly into the thick planks of linguistic hopelessness, proving again and again how meaningless meaning can be." The Globe & Mail (Canada) 05/20/06
Posted: 05/21/2006 8:59 am
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Nothing Lost In Translation An off-Broadway play about two HIV-positive women - one in Los Angeles, one in Africa - has become an unexpected hit in Zimbabwe. AIDS is still a taboo subject throughout much of Africa, despite the devastation the disease has wreaked on the continent, and the characters in the play are plenty explicit about the events that got them infected, so no one was sure how the production would be received in Harare. But the playwrights and their work have been embraced by the Zimbabwean theatre community. The New York Times 05/20/06
Posted: 05/21/2006 9:21 am
As The Globe Turns... When American actor Sam Wanamaker first conceived of the idea of rebuilding Shakespeare's famous Globe Theatre on the banks of the Thames, many scholars, actors, and theatre folk sneered. But nearly a decade into the new Globe's existence, it has carved out an important niche for itself. And this spring, a symbolic milestone was reached, as one of the initial naysayers took over as the theatre's new artistic director. The New York Times 05/20/06
Posted: 05/21/2006 9:14 am
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Amazon To Sell New Copies Of Out-Of-Print Books "Amazon.com Inc. has started a program with publishers that allows out-of-print titles and lower-volume books to be printed and shipped on demand when consumers place orders... Amazon.com is helping publishers cut costs by eliminating the need for inventory. The Internet retailer acquired BookSurge in April 2005 to enter the print-on-demand book business. BookSurge has more than 10,000 titles, many of them out of print." Los Angeles Times 05/20/06
Posted: 05/21/2006 9:11 am
DaVinci's Real Scandal? The Book Stinks. If the Catholic Church really wanted to expose the controversy behind The DaVinci Code, says Dominic Papatola, they could leave all the religious babble behind, and just point out what a truly awful read it is. "The book seems to be written at about a sixth-grade readability level. The plot advances in a series of enough improbable 'a-ha!' moments to burn through a couple of grosses of light bulbs. And the galloping, thinly strung conspiracy theory makes your typical Kennedy assassination theorist look scholarly by comparison... But as a practicing Catholic, I find the idea of corrupt churchmen and Holy Grails far less troubling than the insinuation that any person with any cartilage whatsoever in their spiritual spine would find The Da Vinci Code the least bit threatening to their faith." St. Paul Pioneer Press 05/21/06
Posted: 05/21/2006 8:26 am
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Because Teletubbies Didn't Skew Young Enough? Niche programming is one thing, but do newborns really need their own TV channel? Probably not, but they're getting one, and those behind it are taking steps to insulate themselves against the inevitable backlash. "In almost every way, BabyFirstTV is an ideal match for its prospective demographic — at its best it is spirited, lively and full of simple wonder, and at its worst it is utterly innocuous." The New York Times 05/21/06
Posted: 05/21/2006 11:19 am
There Are Other Movies, You Know. And They're Good. Yes, yes, all of Cannes is abuzz over the whole DaVinci Code thing. But of course, DaVinci will hardly be the only film to make a splash at the fest this season, and to judge from some of the independent films being launched at Cannes, it could be a very interesting year at the multiplex. Whether it's the latest opus from Spanish legend Pedro Almodovar, or a film-based attack on the fast food industry that has the Mickey D's crowd so worried that they're already preparing a counterassault, the indies are still the kings of quality at Cannes, says Simon Houpt. The Globe & Mail (Canada) 05/20/06
Posted: 05/21/2006 8:46 am
If You Can't Beat 'Em, Go Around 'Em From the day that iTunes burst upon the scene, it's been extremely difficult for any other online music service to compete, considering iTunes' easy compatibility with the iPod, and Apple's aggressive push to make it the industry standard for downloadable audio. But there are millions of digital music listeners using platforms other than the iPod, and Urge, the online music service launched this week and backed by MTV and Microsoft, is aiming to circumvent the iPodders and Mac users entirely, and embrace... well, everyone else. Boston Globe 05/20/06
Posted: 05/21/2006 8:39 am
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ABT Prepares For Turnover American Ballet Theatre is facing a slew of impending retirements, with several of the company's biggest stars approaching the magic age of 40, at which most dancers have to at least contemplating ending their careers. How ABT absorbs the inevitable departures, and how it goes about rebuilding its ranks, will be the most important elements of the company's long-term future as one of America's most prestigious ballet troupes. The New York Times 05/21/06
Posted: 05/21/2006 11:24 am
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