“People are not generally negative about their own lives. In fact, we systematically exaggerate the control we have as individuals.” So why the pessimism about the larger world?
Tag: 01.03.08
Century-Old Music School Gets Shiny New Home
The latest entrant in Minneapolis’s cultural architecture boom is the new riverfront headquarters of the MacPhail Center for Music. “Its $25 million new home… is a steel-clad, state-of-the-art facility that’s wired for recording throughout, with an elegant 225-seat wood-paneled concert hall [and] 56 practice rooms specially tuned for the acoustic needs of instruments ranging from piccolos to snare drums.”
US CD Sales Down 9.5 Percent In 2007
“A total of 500.5 million albums sold as CDs, cassettes, LPs and other formats were purchased last year, down 15 percent from 2006’s unit total.”
Study: We Hear That Smile In Your Voice
“Smiling affects how we speak, to the point that listeners can actually identify the type of smile based on sound alone, according to a new study that also determined some people have “smilier” voices overall than others.”
The Making Of A Steinway
“The film traces the path of a 9-foot concert grand over the course of a year, from a mill in Alaska where the wood is processed all the way to its eventual parking spot among its siblings in the basement of Steinway Hall on West 57th Street, in Manhattan.”
Art – The Joke’s On You
“Art is supposed to come out of some discernible effort on the part of the artist, and the apparent effortlessness of a good joke inevitably undermines that expectation. If art is a joke then it’s not art, or so the thinking goes.”
Broadway Posts Record Box Office In 2007
Broadway box office “totaled more than $938 million in 2007, up 3.5 percent from 2006 despite a 19-day stagehands strike in November that shut down most shows in the New York industry. Attendance rose 2.7 percent to a record 12.29 million.”
Sotheby’s, Christie’s Pull Even In Auction Sales
“Sotheby’s sold $5.33 billion of art at auctions, and arranged more than $668 million of private deals outside the public salerooms. That was a 46 percent increase from $3.66 billion a year earlier. Christie’s estimated its art sales at about $6 billion last year.”
Do Barbie And Classical Music Mix?
“Admittedly, Barbie at the Symphony is unlikely to have been conceived purely as an altruistic exercise in musical education. But it does address a serious issue. Symphony orchestras are in trouble.”
Why Do English Orchestras Pass Over Brit Conductors?
“The systematic selection of non-Brits to direct our symphony orchestras has been endemic for years and, as we start 2008, the prospects for a young British conductor have never been so bleak.”