The Australia Council is undergoing a makeover. So what do the reforms amount to? It calls for turning artform “managers” into artform “directors” who will “work towards increasing efficiencies in grant management through more effective systems and grant management processes and through centralising administrative task” (sic). And on it goes, bullet-point by bullet-point. No wonder that a separate idiot sheet, providing council members with prepared answers, rightly predicted they might face the curly question: “So what’s the plan actually for?”
Tag: 02.18.05
Of Intervals And Intermissions
Randy Kennedy takes a tour of New York theatre intermissions. “The tour, fairly random and thoroughly unscientific, took me from the elegant and easeful (two intermissions, one 40 minutes long, during “Turandot” at the Metropolitan Opera) to the middling (bad red wine and strange fashions in a pretty lounge at the Music Box Theater on West 45th Street) to the merely puzzling (a prominent sign announcing the official Champagne of the Classic Stage Company near Union Square, but no Champagne anywhere in sight). In between, several general rules of intermissions were deduced.”
Which Way Radio?
“The radio business may be undergoing its biggest shakeup ever. So many new digital technologies are beckoning to its traditional listeners that it’s hard to know what radio is anymore. It’s no longer limited to the airwaves, thanks to cable TV’s music offerings, the Internet, and one day, perhaps, cellphones. It’s not strictly live because online “podcasters” and others let you download music to play at your convenience. About the only thing that really separates radio listening from, say, uploading music to an iPod is that on radio, someone else plays deejay.”
Bigger Type Syndrome
Book sales are down? Maybe books are too small? Or at least the type (think of the oldsters)? “The answer is obvious: publishers are to make books bigger, thereby making space for larger print on the page and solving the malaise affecting literature. Penguin launches its Premium range in the US in the northern summer. ‘We think it will be a more comfortable reading experience, but still at an affordable price’.”
What’s Wrong With The Classical Concert?
“All the evidence is that millions of people listen to classical music, on Classic FM or downloaded from the internet. Quite a few listen to CDs too. But classical concerts are clearly a turn-off, especially for the young. This is worrying when so many other forms of live entertainment – comedy, theatre, pop – are doing so well. In just a few generations, the spectacle of a classical concert seems to have lost all its appeal. There are many reasons for this.”
Can Jazz FM Be Jazz?
Is there hope for the UK’s Jazz FM? “Given the rude health of the jazz scene, many of us thought that one day someone would take a cool look at Jazz FM and transform the station into the real thing. Instead, it was announced last Monday that the London radio station (owned by the Guardian Media Group) is to be ‘rebranded’ later this year as Smooth FM. What a blow.”
Caetani Named Music Director Of ENO
Oleg Caetani, 47, has been named music director of the English National Opera. He conducts three months a year in Melbourne, and has only conducted ENO once. “A source close to the selection process said the appointment of Caetani over his nearest rival, the American conductor Andrew Litton, came down to a choice between something safe and homely against someone who in performance really excited people – you can’t run an arts organisation with something safe and homely.”