Why Has Audio Technology Stalled? "Today, everybody should be able to enjoy music reproduced much better than a 1980 standard audio CD allows. Instead, people seem to be happy with music systems that are distinctly inferior to that, such as DAB radio and compressed music files. People care about picture resolution: they buy cameras with more megapixels, prefer DVD to VHS and are increasingly willing to buy hi-def TV sets. But they don't seem to care about sound resolution - or not enough to spend money on it." The Guardian (UK) 10/26/06
Posted: 10/25/2006 5:17 pm
Are Newspapers Killing Classical Music? "Pick any city, look at its newspaper, and you'll find attention to classical music diminished to the basic minimum. It will focus on the 'big ticket' events — which, in the Bay Area, means the San Francisco Symphony, Opera, and Ballet, plus the most celebrated visiting artists. As is well-known to any person interested in classical music, such coverage just skims the surface. Who's responsible? Newspaper publishers and their editors who have a hand in setting policy and then executing it. What to do about this downgrading of classical coverage?" San Francisco Classical Voice 10/17/06
Posted: 10/25/2006 4:40 pm
Why Language Matters "Language is more than a tool for expressing ourselves. It acts as a mirror to our world, reflecting back to us the way we live. It reflects our attitudes about the way we see things and how we are seen by others: in public life; in politics and commerce; in advertising and marketing; in broadcasting and journalism. Yet the prevailing wisdom about language seems to be that anything goes." The Telegraph (UK) 10/25/06
Posted: 10/25/2006 4:15 pm
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What Happened To Damien Hirst? "Hirst has not had a good idea for 13 years. In 1993 he created Mother and Child Divided, the most poetic of his animal works. After that, he started to flail... Hirst's waning originality gives this accusation of plagiarism more resonance. With each new show, the paucity and repetition of Hirst's art is more blatant."
The Guardian (UK) 10/25/06 Posted: 10/25/2006 5:10 pm
Paris' Big Art Fair Bid "The French government is determined to help Paris regain its status as an art market. They're giving tax breaks and making it easy for French 21st century creations to be exhibited worldwide." Thus Paris' FIAC art fair.
Bloomberg 10/25/06 Posted: 10/25/2006 4:09 pm
Canadian Parliament Fights Proposed Museum Funding Cut The Canadian parliament has been debating museum funding. "Members of Parliament debated the plight of Canadian museums for more than three hours in the House of Commons Monday. On Tuesday, they adopted a motion calling for funding for the Museum Assistance Program to be restored to $12 million annually, reversing the reduction of $2.3 million scheduled for this year."
CBC 10/25/06 Posted: 10/25/2006 3:58 pm
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You Mean Writing A Symphony Is Harder Than Singing A 3-Minute Song? Let's face facts: "classical" works written by ambitious pop stars always suck. Always. Likewise, attempts by pop singers, no matter how talented in their field, to tackle Schumann lieder (Streisand) and classic English lute music (Sting), nearly always end in disaster. But why? It's pretty simple (and depressing), actually. "Many rock musicians can't read music and have what strikes most classical musicians as rather a loose conception of authorship, relying on amanuenses to transform vague ideas into detailed life." The Guardian (UK) 10/26/06
Posted: 10/26/2006 6:03 am
Pickets vs. Pirouettes In Atlanta The musicians who work the pit at Atlanta Ballet will be marking the opening of the 2006-07 season with picket signs. The company disbanded the orchestra in August, preferring recorded music to the cost of maintaining a house band. The musicians have filed an unfair labor practices claim, and plan to protest at the ballet's performances this week. Atlanta Journal-Constitution 10/26/06
Posted: 10/26/2006 5:53 am
Whose 5th Is It Anyway? Beethoven's 5th is arguably the most well-known work of classical music in the world. But it's also probably the work most messed with by conductors. "Some prefer the electricity of [John Eliot] Gardiner, some the grandeur of [Fritz] Reiner and some the nobility of George Szell, still others the compelling manipulation of conductors who interpret the score as if they had composed it themselves, such as Carlos Kleiber." Pittsburgh Post-Gazette 10/26/06
Posted: 10/26/2006 5:49 am
Labor Strife In Dallas "Two weeks before the Dallas Opera is to open its 50th-anniversary season with Verdi's Nabucco, the opera company and its union orchestra don't have a contract." The company is seeking a 5-year deal (long by industry standards) that executives call "flexible" and the musicians call "regressive." Dallas Morning News 10/26/06
Posted: 10/26/2006 5:36 am
K-W Symphony Makes Payroll The Kitchener-Waterloo Symphony saga took a turn for the better yesterday, when the beleagured Ontario orchestra announced that it had raised enough money to make this week's musicians' payroll. The musicians also voted to agree to a 15% pay cut for the current season, and the symphony has less than a million dollars to go to meet its goal of bringing in CAN$2.5m by month's end. The Globe & Mail (Canada) 10/26/06
Posted: 10/26/2006 5:30 am
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Slouching Towards Irrelevance England's Arts Council is undergoing some serious turnover and painful restructuring, and Norman Lebrecht is worried that the turmoil is just one more sign that the UK government has no idea what it's doing when it comes to culture. "Seen in the kindliest light of a rainy morning, the departure of most senior managers from any organisation would suggest that it had either been misrun or that it was intent on self-abolition... The past decade of paper shuffling has left the ACE with little to show for itself apart from a flurry of non-arts initiatives and a largely phoney devolution." La Scena Musicale 10/25/06
Posted: 10/26/2006 7:12 am
Funding Up, But So Is Confusion San Antonio is devoting more money to the arts than at any time in recent years, but "the people in charge of the money are complaining about a confusing process that might not be fair to everyone... Board members questioned the fairness of a scoring method that was supposed to weigh the merits of each group. They also asked whether it was appropriate to give large grants to organizations that hadn't received funding in the past, while at the same time less money was being given to groups with proven track records." San Antonio Express-News 10/26/06
Posted: 10/26/2006 5:43 am
The Trap Of Education Reform So American higher education needs reform? "What have we learned from our experience in K-12 education reform that would help us in evaluating the Spellings Commission report? That history warns against putting too much emphasis on the economic context of higher education. It also shows that quick, 'top-down' fixes for reforming education at any level are unlikely to work." InsideHigherEd 10/24/06
Posted: 10/25/2006 5:03 pm
The Dismantling Of Arts Council England "The mass exit from Arts Council England seems almost indecently hasty. Gone, in one lemming leap, are the heads of theatre, dance, literature and visual arts - four of the five art forms funded by the council - along with executive director Kim Evans, development director Pauline Tambling and the officials in charge of touring, combined arts and public affairs." La Scena Musicale 10/25/06
Posted: 10/25/2006 4:58 pm
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Putting A Human Face On Abuse Of Power "Centennial celebrations for the political theorist Hannah Arendt (1906–1975) are springing up from Lucerne to Lima and Sydney to Seoul. Forthcoming gatherings in Germany, Paris,and New York will successively retrace the geographical arc of this prodigious Jewish émigré scholar’s flight across Europe to America. Arendt probed the roots of totalitarianism, examined reasons for revolution, and showed how evil could wear an ordinary face." New York Sun 10/04/06
Posted: 10/26/2006 5:11 am
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HarperCollins Gets French Sensation "After a languid intercontinental auction that stretched for more than a week, the American rights to Jonathan Littell’s novel Les Bienveillantes, which became a publishing sensation in France, have been sold to HarperCollins." The New York Times 10/26/06
Posted: 10/26/2006 6:45 am
A Decline In Newspapers' Books Coverage "Books pages are going away because of profit margins. Corporate interests in profitability and the socially-based interests of the average journalist are diametrically opposed. So when asked to cut staff and cut newshole, it's no surprise that newspapers turn to books and arts coverage first." Orlando Sentinel 10/25/06
Posted: 10/25/2006 6:23 pm
Analyst: Newspaper Revenues To Be Flat For 30 Years A Merrill Lynch analyst says it could take 30 years for newspapers to get 50 percent of their revenue from online advertising. "Even if the rapid [online] growth continues for the next few years, we don't see online representing over 50% of newspaper ad revenues for at least a couple of decades, suggesting that industry profit could stay flat for the foreseeable future." Yahoo! (E&P) 10/25/06
Posted: 10/25/2006 4:31 pm
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You Can't Fight The Studio Everyone in Hollywood hates the cold, corporate, impersonal studio system, and many imagine that if only one could get past the egos, the greed, and the dreaded process, there must be a better way to get a film distributed. But those who try an alternative route are often in for a hard lesson in just why things are the way they are. The New York Times 10/26/06
Posted: 10/26/2006 6:47 am
TV's Woes Traced To Online Advertisers are pulling their money out of traditional media and buying online. "The money going online is not new money. What is going on in display and search advertising on the internet is money is coming out of traditional media, there is no question, and therefore a big chunk of that is coming out of TV, national press and cinema." The Guardian (UK) 10/26/06
Posted: 10/25/2006 5:24 pm
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