The musicians’ union gets a ton of credit for vastly improving the lot of players who used to toil for low pay under dictatorial conductors. But in the early days, the union was almost universally segregated by race, with blacks forced to join separate locals from their white colleagues, even in supposedly enlightened Northern cities.
Tag: 02.13.07
Writer Orhan Pamuk Goes Into American Exile
“The Nobel laureate is believed to be at risk of assassination in Turkey following the murder of Turkish-Armenian editor Hrant Dink last month. Threats appeared to have been made against Pamuk by the man who confessed to orchestrating the murder.”
Quotable (And What Isn’t)
“What is not, potentially, a quotation? The dullest instructional prose, with the right light thrown on it, can acquire the gleam of suggestiveness or insight. ‘Objects in the rear-view mirror may appear closer than they are’: that one has been appropriated many times. Whenever I take a plane, I am struck by “Secure your own mask before assisting others” as advice with wide application. And I have often found myself imagining ways of fitting tab A into slot B.”
NY Phil Expands Online Base (Ringtones, Too)
“Entire live concerts, or just a few minutes, can now be downloaded through iTunes. Five online ringtones also are available — including Mozart’s last symphonies — and more will be added.” “We were at the top of the iTunes chart — along with Madonna,” the Philharmonic’s executive director, Zarin Mehta, boasted at a news conference at Avery Fisher Hall.
Artist Held Captive By Technology
All this cool technology seems so… freeing. But after a while, you start to notice that artists are captive to the designs of the interfaces. Take movie trailers: “So just what is it that makes today’s movie trailers so absurdly inflationary? Are we living in the Golden Age of Stupid Impact? And, if so, might software have something to do with it?”
Vaclav Havel, Playwright
“Gone are the heady days when Havel led the Velvet Revolution that toppled Czechoslovakia’s Communist regime, paving the way for the Czech Republic to join NATO and the European Union. After years in office, Havel stepped down as president in 2003 and is again a solitary writer.”
Ballet School Bans Too-Thin Students, Principal Says
“Ballerinas – whose art requires them to be ultra-slender – may not immediately strike one as the ideal template for solving the problems of underweight models. But Jane Hackett, the principal of the English National Ballet school, yesterday joined the ‘size zero’ debate, publicly stating that the school bans students who are too thin and called on the fashion industry to follow suit.”
Indian Novelists Find Their Place At Home
Like many Indian writers before her, Kiran Desai left her country for the West. But with Indian literary culture thriving, some writers have returned, deeming the atmosphere essential to their work. “No one in India has pinpointed the next homegrown prize-winning writer, but Desai’s (non-resident Indian) win seems to confirm, rather than undermine, the place of novelists writing in India now.”
War Nudges Nashville’s Politics Leftward
The Dixie Chicks, suddenly, aren’t the only country musicians whose politics are known to be somewhere to the left of the Republican base. “It’s telling when country luminary Merle Haggard has an entry on Rolling Stone magazine’s list of top protest songs. Country musicians and their fans tend to hail from conservative states with high enlistment rates. Then again, the toll of the war on the sons and daughters of these states has been acute.”
In Architecture, The Public Leads With Its Heart
It’s useful to keep in mind the disconnect between professionals’ and the public’s opinions, as illuminated in the American Institute of Architects’ “America’s Favorite Architecture” survey, John King writes. “The general public isn’t looking for cultural sustenance, or a three-dimensional manifesto on the inequities of capitalism. The starting point is more basic: How does it feel?”