Legendary classical music critic Shirley Fleming, who wrote for the New York Post and the New York Times, has died at her home in Georgia, aged 75. In addition to her newspaper work, Fleming spent 25 years as editor of Musical America magazine.
Tag: 03.12.05
Warner Music To Go Public
“As the music industry confronts declining sales, the Warner Music Group said yesterday that it had filed to sell up to $750 million of stock in an initial public offering. The company, which is the smallest of the world’s four major record conglomerates by market share, said it expected to sell its stock on either the New York Stock Exchange or the Nasdaq. It did not detail the number of shares it planned to offer or their expected price range.”
The Big Broadway Spam Scam
Theatregoers who signed up for e-mail newsletters for two popular Broadway musicals may be getting more than they bargained for, after it was discovered that a software glitch allowed the e-mail addresses of those signing up to be accessed by any savvy visitor to the shows’ websites. The security hole is one that has frequently been exploited by hackers to gain lists of e-mail addresses for spaming purposes. And in case you were wondering: yes, Monty Python’s “Spamalot” was one of the musicals affected.
America The Manic Depressive
Has America’s obsession with wealth and material possession become a mania that distracts us from recognizing the truly important things in life? A new scholarly book argues that, “in the age of globalization, Americans are addictively driven by the brain’s pleasure centers to live turbocharged lives in pursuit of status and possessions at the expense of the only things that can truly make us happy: relationships with other people.” If the author is right, the country has crested the manic wave created by the 1990s stock market boom, and is headed for a very big emotional fall.
Exhibit? What Exhibit?
A new exhibition celebrating the legacy of photographer Larry Clark is opening in New York, and the organizers are treading very cautiously. Clark’s body of work consists in large part of “stark, intimate photographs and movies of teenagers having sex, shooting drugs and waving guns,” and there has always been debate over whether it can accurately be described as art. The exhibitors made a deliberate decision not to apply for any government money to back the exhibit, and the entire show seems to be intentionally flying well under the radar.