Previously: Someone To Tell You What To Like As we have more access to more music, movies, books, etc, it becomes more difficult to sort your way through it all. Thus the rise of internet curators who recommend culture... Denver Post 08/29/06
Writing New Vivaldi David Cope has written a computer program that can analyze composers' music and compose new music that sounds like them. "Some classical music geeks enjoy listening for a composer's signature tendencies and picking out the flaws in Emmy's fakes. Others see the algorithms as an insult to the composer and the music. Once, at a conference in Germany where Cope presented some virtual Bach, a professor seated beside him bellowed his disapproval, declared music dead, and jabbed an accusatory finger in Cope's face." Wired 09/04/06
Posted: 09/04/2006 5:30 pm
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Vegas Mayor Wants A Mob Museum "Mayor Oscar Goodman, the flamboyant, gin-sipping, sports-gambling, showgirl-squiring executive of Sin City, is caught in a contradiction. For years he had told the world, 'There is no mob.' That was when he was a defense lawyer who represented mobsters and even had a cameo playing himself in Martin Scorsese's 'Casino.' Goodman said there were no mobsters--just alleged mobsters. Now, as mayor, he wants to take a National Historic Landmark, the old federal courthouse where he tried his first case, and turn it into a mob museum--and there's no alleged about it." Chicago Tribune 09/05/06
Posted: 09/05/2006 5:25 am
A New Way To Look At Frank Lloyd Wright Frank Lloyd Wright is "in many respects the Abraham Lincoln of architectural history, a figure who has inspired enough books to fill a small library. With "The Fellowship," Friedland, a professor of religious studies at UC Santa Barbara, and Zellman, a Los Angeles architect, enter this crowded field with an unusually detailed account of the architect's unorthodox design process." Los Angeles Times 09/04/06
Posted: 09/04/2006 5:49 pm
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Gregorian Chant In, Guitar Mass Out? If Pope Benedict XVI's recently articulated personal preferences hold sway, traditional music like Gregorian chant will become more prevalent in the Roman Catholic Mass. "The pope's comments raise certain questions: What is sacred music supposed to sound like? And what's wrong with new music in church? It's a debate that has raged since 1963, when Vatican II reforms brought contemporary music to Catholic churches. Just as the Latin Mass almost immediately disappeared amid attempts to modernize, chants gave way to guitars and snappy folk tunes." Los Angeles Times 09/05/06
Posted: 09/05/2006 4:46 am
BMG Music Publishing Sale Almost A Done Deal? "The Warner Music Group, Viacom and the Universal Music Group are the final bidders for the BMG Music Publishing unit, according to people briefed yesterday on the negotiations. ... Bertelsmann, the German media company, is selling BMG Music Publishing to help finance a $5.8 billion buyback of a minority stake in the company. The music group’s roster includes contemporary artists like Maroon 5, Christina Aguilera and Nelly as well as catalogs of longtime musicians like B. B. King and Joan Jett, according to its Web site." The New York Times 09/05/06
Posted: 09/05/2006 3:53 am
MySpace Gets Into The Music Business MySpace is gtting into the music business, offering music from "three million unsigned bands". "MySpace is the latest company to try to take on Apple Computer Inc.'s iTunes Music Store, but unlike many other start-up rivals, it already boasts 106 million users, as well as the backing of parent company News Corp." The New York Times 09/04/06
Posted: 09/04/2006 11:32 pm
A Real Terrible Orchestra That Means To Be Bad " 'We are not professionals. We share our problems with our audience,' said conductor Richard Neville-Towle, before a wobbly rendition of the Gavotte from Bach's Fifth French Suite. It's the kind of concert where a critic might be prevailed upon to make remarks during the concert, rather than saving them for the paper, where the principal bass could explain the role of her instrument and which could end, after a sing-along South Pacific, with Tchaikovsky's 1812 complete with canon effects from the audience (bursting bags)." Glasgow Herald 09/04/06
Posted: 09/04/2006 11:23 pm
Will Computers Replace Musicians? "A skilled computer operator can now create a commercial soundtrack that the casual listener would accept as real - without the cost of hiring an orchestra, renting a studio and paying union scale for sessions. Good news for budget-conscious filmmakers. Bad news for musicians who rely on income from TV and film recording sessions." Rocky Mountain News 09/04/06
Posted: 09/04/2006 10:39 pm
Philadelphia Orchestra Proms Concert Canceled Because Of Fire "The Philadelphia Orchestra's sold-out program featuring Beethoven's Symphony No. 9 - which had been anticipated as one of the peaks of the BBC Proms season at Royal Albert Hall - was canceled hours before it was to start yesterday afternoon because of a minor fire in the hall's canteen. Nobody was hurt, and the orchestra's instruments are reported to be safe." Philadelphia Inquirer 09/04/06
Posted: 09/04/2006 10:36 pm
A Season Of New Concert Halls "Five are opening in North America this fall, at a total cost of nearly $1 billion. They include the Schermerhorn Symphony Center in Nashville, the new home of the Nashville Symphony, which opens next Saturday; the Four Seasons Center for the Performing Arts in Toronto, the new house of the Canadian Opera Company, which had special inaugural concerts in June and opens its first season with a Wagner “Ring” cycle later this month; and the Carnival Center for the Performing Arts in Miami, which comprises both a house for opera and ballet and a concert hall and opens officially on Oct. 5." The New York Times 09/03/06
Posted: 09/04/2006 10:15 pm
Compleat Mozart For Pennies On The Disk A new set of 170 CDs contains the complete music of Mozart. It costs about 70 cents per disk. "The complete recorded works of composers are nothing new, but this issue is rare for its low cost and popularity, at least in Europe. And there is something compelling about its compactness: your fingers can walk through Mozart’s entire output in a few minutes." The New York Times 09/04/06
Posted: 09/04/2006 5:52 pm
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New Organization To Give $50,000 Grants To Individual Artists "A new charity, United States Artists, will announce today an ambitious plan to provide support to working artists, starting with a grant program that will be one of the most generous in existence. Fifty artists working in a wide variety of disciplines and at various career stages will receive $50,000 each, no strings attached. The first recipients will be announced on Dec. 4." The New York Times 09/05/06
Posted: 09/05/2006 3:32 am
Where's Our War Art? "War has generated some of the strangest, as well as some of the greatest and oldest, images in art. Neolithic cave paintings show swarming battles of stick figures armed with bows and arrows. Assyrian palaces were decorated with epic scenes of siege warfare. And so it goes, through the conquests represented on Trajan's Column in Rome to the Battle of Hastings on the Bayeux Tapestry to ... well, as it happens, not quite through to today. We have been at war for most of this century, but this global and unprecedented conflict has not yet inspired much art." The Guardian (UK) 09/03/06
Posted: 09/04/2006 11:16 pm
Investigation: How Getty Exec Was Purged The Getty board secretly copied deposed president Barry Munitz's computer files in its investigations last December. "Confidential Getty documents reviewed by The Times and interviews with former senior officials provide a road map of the firm's internal investigation, which led to Munitz's ouster and ongoing negotiations with foreign governments over the return of contested artwork." Los Angeles Times 09/02/06
Posted: 09/04/2006 5:56 pm
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Palme d'Or Competitor Banned From Filmmaking "Chinese authorities have banned the film director Lou Ye from making films for five years because he failed to seek permission from them before his latest work, set against the backdrop of the Tiananmen uprising, was screened at the Cannes film festival. Mr Lou's film 'Summer Palace' is to be confiscated and income from it seized, the Xinhua news agency reported." The Guardian (UK) 09/05/06
Posted: 09/05/2006 6:38 am
Saxophonist Dewey Redman, 75 "Dewey Redman, an expansive and poetic tenor saxophonist and bandleader who had been at the aesthetic frontiers of jazz since the 1960’s, died on Saturday in Brooklyn. He was 75 and lived in Brooklyn." The New York Times 09/04/06
Posted: 09/05/2006 3:50 am
Poet Gyorgy Faludy, 95 "The Hungarian poet Gyorgy Faludy, a major figure of the resistance against Nazism and Communism, died Friday at his home in Budapest, the national news agency, MTI, reported Saturday. He was 95. The poet, known to many in the West as George Faludy, was part of Hungary’s 1956 anti-Communist uprising and was to have been a major speaker at a conference to celebrate its 50th anniversary this month." The New York Times (Reuters) 09/04/06
Posted: 09/05/2006 3:42 am
The Robert Evans Story "Having overcome financial misfortunes, a cocaine addiction and a series of debilitating strokes, Mr. Evans, 76, has also survived something as manageable as corporate regime change. His durability surely says something about the power of myth in the movie world. A boy wonder who ran Paramount in the early 70’s, he embarked on a personal odyssey that brought him back to the studio as a producer 15 years ago." The New York Times 09/04/06
Posted: 09/04/2006 10:32 pm
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Out Of Development Hell, Onto The Stage "New stage musicals in search of a ... showcase-marketplace model have their own clearinghouse: the New York Musical Theatre Festival, a three-week bazaar of 34 new musicals that sprawls through midtown Manhattan next Sunday through Oct. 1. Though only in its third year, the festival has become so entrenched that top theater actors, designers and directors routinely waive fees for the chance to invest in the future of their field. Audiences have apparently been hungry for the chance to sample new work for a mere $20 per show: The festival boasted more than 95 percent capacity both previous years." Newsday 09/03/06
Posted: 09/05/2006 6:24 am
SmackDown: "Hamlet" Vs. "King Lear" "Why are 'Hamlet' and 'King Lear' so great? And which is the greatest?" Sid Smith asks. "Though it's ultimately a fatuous exercise -- like choosing between the Pieta and the statue of David -- my money's on 'Lear.' 'Hamlet' is eloquent Sudoku. 'Lear' is primal scream." Chicago Tribune 09/03/06
Posted: 09/05/2006 5:37 am
Michael Billington's Bizarre Night At The Theatre "Is it better for an audience to show its disapproval at the end of a show or are they entitled to make abusive remarks while it's in progress? After a nasty experience at Edinburgh's King's Theatre on Tuesday night during a performance of Three Sisters, I've decided that terminal boos are better than a drizzle of derision." The Guardian (UK) 09/05/06
Posted: 09/04/2006 11:28 pm
Can Theatre Make A Social Difference? "As theater’s foothold in American culture has steadily shrunk over the last 50 years or so, the chance that a play could have any significant influence on social or political discourse has also waned. To be influential a playwright’s voice has to be heard, and it’s become harder to hear the lonely cry of the outraged playwright as the media landscape has been monopolized by more profitable and more easily mass-marketed forms of entertainment." The New York Times 09/04/06
Posted: 09/04/2006 11:27 pm
DC's Source Runs Dry The end has finally come for Washington DC's Souce Theatre. "The company has been in a long coma. Its last full season was five years ago, and a battle royal has been playing out for the past six months over the sale of its building on 14th Street NW. As the dust gradually settles on that process, the once-bustling Source is finally being laid to rest." Washington Post 09/03/06
Posted: 09/04/2006 10:21 pm
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One Antidote To Escalating Textbook Prices: Ads "Selling ad space keeps newspapers, magazines, websites and television either cheap or free for users. But so far, the model hasn't caught on with college textbooks. Now, a small Minnesota start-up is trying to shake up the status quo in the $6-billion college textbook industry. Freeload Press Inc. will offer more than 100 titles this fall — mostly for business courses — completely free. After filling out a five-minute survey, students can download the text of the book, which can be stored on a hard drive and printed." Los Angeles Times (AP) 09/05/06
Posted: 09/05/2006 4:27 am
Biographer Admits To Bio Hoax Bevis Hillier has confessed to sending a fake letter to a fellow boigrapher and duping him. "Hillier, who spent 25 years researching and writing his own magisterial three-volume biography of Betjeman, finally decided to act when Wilson managed to bring out his book not much more than a year after his publishers had announced it. 'When a newspaper started billing Wilson’s book as ‘the big one’, it was just too much,' said Hillier, 66." The Sunday Times (UK) 09/03/06
Posted: 09/04/2006 11:19 pm
Previously: The Mystery Literary Hoax A prominent British biographer is duped into using a faked letter in a new biography. Yes, there's embarrassment to have been taken in by a clever hoax. But who perpetrated it? The New York Times 08/31/06
Beating Up On The Punctuation Police "One of Britain's leading language experts has attacked Lynne Truss's bestseller Eats, Shoots and Leaves for its 'misconceived' and 'deeply unnerving' zero tolerance approach to punctuation." The Observer (UK) 09/03/06
Posted: 09/04/2006 10:19 pm
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TV As Social Partner ... For Toddlers? "Active engagement with television has been an antidote to criticism that the tube creates zombies. 'Blue’s Clues,' which celebrated its 10th anniversary last month, has been credited with helping young children learn from the screen. Academic research has shown that viewers ages 3 to 5 score better on tests of problem solving than those who haven’t watched the show. But what happens with children younger than 3? Should babies and toddlers be exposed to television at all? ... While debates rage among parents, pediatricians and critics of baby videos (think 'Baby Einstein'), developmental psychologists are trying to apply some science to the question." The New York Times 09/05/06
Posted: 09/05/2006 4:11 am
Broadcasters Decry "Obscenity" Laws Chilling Effect American broadcasters say the anti-"obscenity" laws now on the books have a chilling effect. Case in point - a documentary on 9/11 that contains swearing. "So far, about a dozen CBS affiliates have indicated they won't show the documentary, another dozen say they will delay it until later at night and two dozen others are considering what to do... The announcement came as the Tupelo, Miss.-based American Family Association readied its 3 million members to flood the FCC and CBS with complaints after the documentary airs." Yahoo! (AP) 09/04/06
Posted: 09/04/2006 11:11 pm
A Pretty Decent Summer For Hollywood "The latest figures, from the first weekend in May through Labour Day, indicated that revenues from North American ticket sales jumped by 6.3 per cent compared to the same period in 2005. During that period, the films raked in about $3.85 billion US in sales, while attendance climbed by about 3.1 per cent." CBC 09/04/06
Posted: 09/04/2006 10:17 pm
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Dancers' Feet: A Horror Story "Go to any ballet house and, however serene the dancers' faces, those elegant pink silk shoes hide a battery of injuries: black nails, purpling flesh, growths galore. Peter Norman, one of the UK's leading podiatrists, has seen it all in the 16 years he has been treating the the Royal Ballet. 'I know of dancers who have gone on pointe with broken bones and stress fractures,' says Norman. 'The pressure on them to get parts, to guard their places in the companies, means they push themselves too far.' Most dance companies now employ physiotherapists, even masseurs, on staff, but dancers' feet remain areas of private hell." The Guardian (UK) 09/05/06
Posted: 09/05/2006 6:47 am
A Dance Pioneer Still Moving Barbara Weisberger, 80, was Balanchine's first pupil. She's also the founder of Pennsylvania Ballet. "There are famous stories about Balanchine and his ballerina muses of course, but Ms. Weisberger, with her unusually broad perspective and tenacity, represents something more crucial in a historical sense. As a director she was Balanchine’s protégée, and she has devoted much of her professional life to teaching and promoting regional dance." The New York Times 09/04/06
Posted: 09/04/2006 10:29 pm
Cheery News: Dance Magazines' New Publisher A new publishing entity will publish a combination of dance and cheerleading magazines. "The marriage isn’t as odd as it seems. On the corporate level this would seem to be a complementary merger. All the magazines will continue to appear under their new umbrella, and everyone has been assured of editorial independence, reports Wendy Perron, the editor of Dance Magazine." The New York Times 09/04/06
Posted: 09/04/2006 10:26 pm
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