The Oscars hadn’t even ended on Sunday night when the cries of “BO-ring!” began to be heard ringing from every armchair in North America. And yes, Hollywood has been a pretty yawn-inducing place of late, says Tina Brown. But what do we expect of the film industry when our culture has become so paranoid, so easily offended, and so willing to pounce on anyone deemed controversial, or worse, un-American? Add in the self-appointed fashionistas who make every star’s life hell at every new awards show, and it’s no wonder that Hollywood seems ready to retreat into ultra-safe territory.
Tag: 03.04.04
The Top Mouse Takes A Hit
“In a remarkable vote of defiance against a once unassailable executive, shareholders owning an estimated 43 percent of the Walt Disney Company declined on Wednesday to support the re-election of Michael D. Eisner, the chairman and chief executive, to the board. The mounting shareholder dissent prodded the board to strip Mr. Eisner of the chairman’s title Wednesday night and give it to George J. Mitchell, Disney’s presiding director and a former senator. Disney board members hope the split of the chairman and chief executive titles will pacify investors disgruntled about an underperforming stock price and Mr. Eisner’s autocratic management style.”
Women’s Philharmonic Folds
The San Francisco-based Women’s Philharmonic, which had promoted the role of women in the classical music industry for nearly a quarter-century, officially closed its doors on Sunday, nearly three years after having to suspend its regular concerts due to a lack of funding. Some of the WP’s programs will be folded into the American Symphony Orchestra League, and much of the work in which the organization had been involved will continue in other forums, but the demise of such an important organization is still sad to see, says Joshua Kosman.
Take The Concert Home With You
Imagine you’re at a club, or in a concert hall, completely engrossed in a performance. As a music consumer, you are at your most susceptible in situations like these, but promoters and musicians have rarely been able to take advantage of your concertgoing euphoria, because they have no way of selling you a piece of the live music experience to take home. But a bar in New Jersey is becoming one of several testing grounds for a new digital kiosk which allows audience members to plug in and download a digital recording of the show they just saw, almost immediately after it ends. It’s “the next step in instant audio gratification,” and the possibilities for its use seem to be limitless.
Writers’ Trust Awards Announced
The Writers’ Trust of Canada has handed out its annual awards, with the coveted lifetime achievement prize going to British Columbia-based author Audrey Thomas. The prize, valued at CAN$20,000, is one of the most lucrative in the country. Other winners included Kevin Patterson, for his short-story collection Country of Cold, and Brian Fawcett for his non-fiction work Virtual Clearcut: Or, the Way Things Are in My Hometown.
There’s No Point Trying To Please Everyone
“The Canada Council yesterday announced the recipients of this year’s Governor-General’s Awards in Visual and Media Arts: visual artists Iain Baxter, Eric Cameron, Garry Neill Kennedy and Ian Wallace; sound and performance artists John Oswald and Istvan Kantor; and museum director and First Nations cultural activist Tom Hill. Now the discussion will begin. Is it a good list? Is it a fair list? The G-Gs seems to be the one place where you can never make everybody happy.”
Ravinia Looks Inward For Its Centenary
Illinois’s Ravinia Festival is celebrating its 100th birthday this summer, and organizers have created a season designed to call everyone’s attention to that fact. “The nation’s oldest music festival will surround the resident Chicago Symphony Orchestra with programs and activities — 100 nights in all — that look back to Ravinia’s origins in 1904 as a ‘high-class amusement park,’ its early reign as the summer opera capital of the world, and its subsequent history as a major international center of music, dance and theater.”
The Naxos Future
The founder of Naxos records says that classical music isn’t dying at all. In fact, Klaus Heymann thinks that the only part of the industry that will fall by the wayside in the future is the part made up of musicians, managers, and union bosses who can’t see past the end of their own noses enough to notice that the old formulas for such essentials as recording no longer work. Heymann envisions a future in which the concert experience is more informal, the musicians of a major symphony orchestra are contractually bound to work in area schools and play at local weddings, and recordings are made cheaply and quickly.
Finding The Silver Lining
Cleveland’s proposed “arts tax” went down to defeat at the polls this week, but arts advocates in the area say that they were encouraged by the level of support the idea received, and are looking into other innovative ways of increasing the level of public support for the city’s cultural scene. “One strategy under consideration is asking Ohio lawmakers to permit counties to increase user fees such as the real-estate conveyance tax on land sales. Another is to persuade lawmakers to allow counties… whose major municipality has a population under 500,000 people to establish countywide arts districts and levy property-tax increases to support them.”
CSO Musicians Won’t Beg Barenboim
Following a meeting between the musicians of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra and the CSO’s executive director and board chairman, the musicians have voted not to hold a referendum on whether to ask outgoing music director Daniel Barenboim to reconsider his resignation. The referendum, which would have amounted to a vote of confidence in Barenboim, and an indirect vote of no confidence in board members who were reportedly dissatisfied with him, was pushed by a handful of musicians loyal to Barenboim, but there were fears that it could have driven a wedge between different factions of the CSO organization.