The big names on Broadway this season aren’t Stephen Sondheim and Neil Simon, but Baz Luhrmann and Billy Joel and Russell Simmons. Musicals and dramas are out; poperas, dance-icals, and poetrash are in. This is neither nothing new nor the end of Western civilization.” It is “a grand convergence of pop art and high art. After all, even in the best of Broadway times, when was the last time the Great White Way played host to poetry, opera, and ballet simultaneously? For that matter, when was the last time the Great White Way was so welcoming to other skin and hair colors? Such concerns, though, are more archeological than critical.”
Tag: 01.19.03
Colorado Springs Orchestra Refuses Conductor’s Resignation
When the Colorado Springs Symphony filed for bankruptcy last week, Lawrence Leighton-Smith, the group’s music director, quit, as he had said he would. But the orchestra says it won’t accept his resignation, and that he is obligated to stay on by terms of his contract. Meanwhile, the orchestra has refused to distribute parts to its players for next weekend’s concerts while musicians have refused to sign a cost-cutting agreement. Kind of difficult to have a concert without music scores.
Movie Music – Keeping Score
“While it’s true that many a perfectly serviceable film score goes largely unnoticed, the best take their movies and their audiences to new heights, underscoring – but never overemphasizing, and certainly not obfuscating – the emotion of the film. Music is a poor substitute for cinematic artistry, but it works great as a sort of Hi-Liter.”
Music Companies Need To Reinvent
So far, recording companies’ main strategy to fight digital copying is to sue file trading companies and try to develop copy protection. But this is the wrong track. “In the past they have sold a physical product, like a CD. In the shift to an electronic, globalised world, why spend money putting digital information on a CD when almost everybody has access to these digital bits through broadband networks? The goal should not be to sell one million CDs but have one billion people download and pay one cent every time they listen.
What they would be better off doing is enticing the customer to become a loyal evangelist of their product rather than p—ing them off by cutting off their free product.”
Phillips Collection Begins Addition
Washington DC’s Phillips Collection is about to begin a $25 million, 30,000-square-foot expansion that will increase the cramped museum’s space by nearly 50 percent. It will also create quarters for a new Center for Studies in Modern Art.”
They’re Big – Are They Practical?
There are similarities between all the proposals for replacing the World Trade Center. “Surprisingly, the appetite for gigantism that inspired the original WTC – impractical, inefficient, and ultimately hubristic – still runs strong. Of course this partly reflects a popular sentiment that yearns for restoration. ‘Rebuild the towers exactly as they were to show the terrorists they haven’t won,’ was a frequent person-on-the-street response in the months after the attack.”
Art In Vacant Places
San Jose realtors trying to fill vacant storefronts in downtown were tired of looking at empty windows. So they came up with the idea of getting artists to show their work there. “People walk by and some of them like something and some of them hate it, but at least they’re talking about art.”
The Myths Of Dying Orchestras
Yeah, there are gloomy stories about symphony orchestras these days. But “as we enter this new age of musical anxiety, let’s not lose sight of the many signs of health in the orchestra world – the surprisingly widespread commitment to developing new repertoire, the sense of ownership listeners feel, the renewed awareness of the value of arts education. We’ve been down this road many times before: expansion, contraction, repeat. So let’s equip ourselves for the coming neurotic convulsions by shooting down some oft-recited but mistaken beliefs.”
Preserving A Voice In The International Machine
“The extent to which musicians from a particular ethnicity involve themselves with Western producers and Western tastes has sometimes led to hysterical fear, fear in the musical realm akin to that of the anti-globalization forces in the political and economic realms. The fear is of the obliteration of the world’s indigenous peoples, languages, economic and political independence, culture and, yes, music. All that will remain will be a faceless, gray, corporate anonymity, McDonald’s meets Orwell in the land of synth-pop. Except, at least in music, it hasn’t worked that way at all.”
A Brilliant New Plan For An Arts Library
“Here’s a good cause for the New Year: a design by Enríque Norten/TEN Arquitectos for the proposed Brooklyn Library for the Visual and Performing Arts. Sleek, curvaceous, colorful and alive, this is New York’s first full-fledged masterwork for the information age. More than any other recent New York project, Norten’s design captures the spirit of the contemporary city.”