The Good Kind Of Clutter Music snobs have always been famously opposed to the ever-increasing daily load of aural clutter in the modern world, preferring silence to background music, and talking in lofty tones of how all this focus on "multitasking" is really just an excuse not to listen deeply. But at least one expert says that our growing ability to focus while shutting out any number of layers of clutter is a sign that all the disruptions are good for our brains. Wired 08/01/06
Posted: 08/01/2006 5:58 am
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Russia's Hermitage Museum Robbed "Thieves have stolen more than 200 items - with an estimated value of $5m - from Russia's prestigious Hermitage art museum in St Petersburg." Most of the stolen goods are thought to be jewelry and other enameled objects, and the theft was discovered after museum officials performed a routine check of their inventory over the weekend. BBC 08/01/06
Posted: 08/01/2006 6:02 am
Laguna Beach Revives The 'Living Painting' "Is the tableau vivant passé? Not for the 155,000 fans who flock to this beachside town each summer for the pageant. For them, the two-month extravaganza — a $4.1 million production that includes sets and lighting for nearly 40 art pieces on eight staging areas with live narration and orchestra — weaves a magic that is a welcome palliative to the freneticism of modern-day entertainment... The pageant sells out all of its 61 shows and generates about $1.8 million for local arts programs, exhibitions and scholarships." The New York Times 08/01/06
Posted: 08/01/2006 5:41 am
Mapplethorpe Redux Robert Mapplethorpe is best remembered for photos that were calculated to shock: who can forget the famous bullwhip photo? But there was so much more to Mapplethorpe's work, and a new exhibit in the UK aims to highlight the softer side of the controversial photographer. "He helped create a look as well as commenting on it. Or perhaps it wasn't so much a look as an atmosphere: cool, dark, edgy, dangerously sexy, horrifically hip, hard and brittle." The Guardian (UK) 08/01/06
Posted: 08/01/2006 5:22 am
Another Eye-Catcher In London's Future? The London Eye (it's that giant Ferris Wheel on the bank of the Thames) is one of the city's most identifiable landmarks, and over the years, it has stood the test of time as a brilliantly designed urban feature. Now, the husband-and-wife architectural team who designed the Eye are planning a "sleek new observation tower" and several other high-profile projects. The Telegraph (UK) 08/01/06
Posted: 07/31/2006 8:14 pm
Getty Gets Transparent "In a move sure to please all who crave details from lifestyles of the rich and tax-exempt, the J. Paul Getty Trust has followed through on its pledge in June to add a boatload of public disclosures to its website... Many of the figures were already part of the trust's mandated annual tax filings. But these disclosures, more detailed than those offered by any other Los Angeles arts organization, mean an inquiring Web surfer, having found and learned the details of Rubens and Brueghel's 17th century friendship from the Getty's "exhibitions" pages, can then click on "about us" and "governance" and dive into deep numbers or such fanciful reading as the 53-year-old fine print on the trust indenture by which oil billionaire J. Paul Getty created the institution." Los Angeles Times 07/31/06
Posted: 07/31/2006 7:48 pm
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Houston's New Young Concertmaster Following a two-year search, the Houston Symphony has appointed violinist Angela Fuller as its new concertmaster. Fuller, who has been a member of the Minnesota Orchestra since 1999, will join an extremely select group of women leading major American orchestras. At 29, she will also be one of the youngest concertmasters among major orchestras. Houston Chronicle 08/01/06
Posted: 08/01/2006 6:35 am
Your iPod Could Soon Sound Like A Concert Hall The technology required to reproduce music through a set of speakers has come a long way in the past 80 years, and in recent years it has shrunk down to the point that you can get very decent sound out of a music player the size of a credit card. However, there's one aspect of audible sound that has never been able to adapt to the needs of the portable generation of music players: bass sound. The subwoofer has always been a big unwieldy thing, and it has always been essential to truly high-quality sound reproduction. But a new breakthrough promises to change all that, offering true bass resonance in a tiny tube. Wired 08/01/06
Posted: 08/01/2006 5:54 am
Meet The New Boss, Same As The Old Boss Seeking stability after several seasons of fiscal uncertainty and internal dissension, the Louisville Orchestra has turned to a familiar face for leadership, naming Jorge Mester as music director. Mester, who also holds conducting positions in Florida and California, previously served as Louisville's music director from 1967 to 1979, and his re-appointment comes as a big surprise, since the orchestra reportedly had a number of up-and-coming young conductors on its shortlist. Louisville Courier-Journal 08/01/06
Posted: 07/31/2006 7:53 pm
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T.O.'s Ambitious New Festival Toronto is starting a new arts festival, and modesty isn't on the agenda. The fest, to be launched in 2007, will be called Luminato, and "organizers hope [it] will boost the city's profile worldwide and one day rival international arts events in Edinburgh, Venice and Sydney... The 10-day festival will feature mostly free events, including two street festivals. And it will showcase world premieres of works of art, including a spoof of Handel's Messiah called Not the Messiah, written by Eric Idle and John Du Prez, of the Tony-award winning Spamalot musical. The new oratorio will be based on Monty Python's Life of Brian, and the Toronto Symphony Orchestra will perform the piece." The Globe & Mail (Canada) 08/01/06
Posted: 08/01/2006 6:39 am
Have The Arts Become An Afterthought At Ground Zero? In the immediate wake of the 9/11 attacks, New York officials talked of rebuilding Ground Zero as not only a business center, but a thriving downtown neighborhood filled with cultural offerings. In the years since then, nearly all the arts groups that planned to move to the site have been shunted aside due to politics and developer infighting, and now, with the dissolution of the Lower Manhattan Development Corporation, the city's arts supporters fear that cultural plans for the site will be scrapped altogether. The New York Times 08/01/06
Posted: 08/01/2006 5:48 am
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Fighting The Good Fight Looking back, it's shocking how long it took for Asians to be accepted in Hollywood as anything other than stereotypes and stock characters. But since 1965, the actor known in L.A. simply as Mako worked tirelessly to showcase Asian actors and build a dynamic Asian theatre tradition. "Though the invention of Asian American theater was a collective act, Mako was its center, its heart, its founding father, the glue that held all else together." Mako died in mid-July, leaving behind a vast legacy. Los Angeles Times 07/29/06
Posted: 07/31/2006 7:42 pm
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Good Start For D.C. Fringe Washington, D.C. mounted its first ever Fringe Festival this summer, and Peter Marks says that the district is a better place for its presence. "[The Fringe] broke down artistic barriers, making an institution-driven town more hospitable to entrepreneurial spirits in theater and dance, to independent types eager for a local platform to show what they could do." Washington Post 08/01/06
Posted: 08/01/2006 6:51 am
God Forbid They Ever Declare A Sweeps Month Nielsen, the company behind TV ratings, has come to the stage, pioneering a new strategy to allow theatre companies to assess the impact of their presentations on the paying public. "Using Hollywood-style data mining techniques and the Internet to contact hundreds of thousands of theatergoers, Live Theatrical Events is changing the way shows are marketing themselves, on and off Broadway." The New York Times 08/01/06
Posted: 08/01/2006 5:45 am
Guthrie Picks Interim Manager Minneapolis's Guthrie Theater has named David Galligan interim managing director, beginning in mid-August. Galligan, who recently stepped down from the CEO post at the Ordway Center (St. Paul's main performing arts venue,) will not be a candidate for a permanent job at the Guthrie, but agreed to help steer the company through the transition to its new home on the Mississippi River. The Star Tribune (Minneapolis/St. Paul) 08/01/06
Posted: 07/31/2006 7:37 pm
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Perseus To Buy Consortium "Perseus Books Group, one of the largest independent publishers of general-interest books, is expected to announce today that it has acquired Consortium, a St. Paul-based provider of sales, marketing, distribution and bill collecting services to 100 small independent publishers across the country." The acquisition is expected to improve Perseus's ability to market itself and widely distribute its product. The New York Times 08/01/06
Posted: 08/01/2006 5:43 am
Joyce's Long-Forgotten Play Gets A Viewing James Joyce only wrote a single play in his lifetime, and it was a critical disaster. Inspired by the work of Ibsen, Joyce created Exiles, "a work freighted with jealousy and the ogre of betrayal... His efforts to have it produced were Herculean and sometimes ludicrous... The tension surrounding the first night had something of the mystique of a séance, [and] the play was immediately withdrawn." Exiles is currently being revived in London. The Guardian (UK) 08/01/06
Posted: 08/01/2006 5:31 am
Kerouac Manuscript To Be Published "It's literary legend: how Jack Kerouac wrote his breakthrough novel On the Road in a three-week frenzy of creativity in spring 1951, typing the story without paragraphs or page breaks onto a 36-metre scroll of nearly-translucent paper. In fact, he revised the book many times before it was published six years later, and while the scroll came to symbolise the spontaneity of the Beat Generation, the early, unedited version never reached the public. Now, to coincide with the 50th anniversary of the novel's publication, the original, scroll-written version of On the Road will be published next year in book form for the first time." Sydney Morning Herald 07/29/06
Posted: 07/31/2006 8:28 pm
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Money Isn't Everything, But It's Awfully Nice When You Have Some As it prepares to move into its new home in Miami's Carnival Center, Miami City Ballet has landed the largest corporate gift in its history, courtesy of New York-based U.S. Trust. The exact amount of the donation was not disclosed, but the announcement sends a signal that the company is more or less fully recovered from the financial troubles it was experiencing a few years ago. South Florida Sun-Sentinel 08/01/06
Posted: 07/31/2006 8:00 pm
NYC Ballet Unveils New Programming Strategy "In what it calls an effort to reach new audiences, the New York City Ballet has revamped the way it presents performances, creating 10 fixed programs with themes and catchy titles that will rotate over the course of its winter season... The new model does not mean a narrower repertory, however. The company will present 38 separate ballets, roughly the same number as in previous seasons." The New York Times 08/01/06
Posted: 07/31/2006 7:58 pm
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