“There’s a residual idea in classical music — actually, in many artistic fields — that we’re supposed to seek perfection: do something as well as it possibly can be done.” But what about the notion “that music is a daily need, and that making music and having it around and getting it out to people is more important than making it perfectly”?
Tag: 03.15.10
Rocco Landesman On Skid Row
“It’s not every arts institution where the person in charge can tell a visiting federal agency head, as [the president of Skid Row’s Inner-City Arts] told Landesman, ‘Our street dwellers are very proud of this place. We never get broken into, knock on wood.'”
Sony Pictures Chief To Cinema Chains: Sell Healthier Food
“Delivering his remarks at the ShoWest convention in Las Vegas, [Michael] Lynton cited skyrocketing childhood obesity rates before noting, ‘adding healthier options to your existing menu is the right thing to do for our industry, for audiences and for our country.'”
In UK: Online Music Revenue Growing Faster Than Decline In CD Sales
“The royalties that UK songwriters, composers and music publishers get from online sales are growing faster than the decline from CDs and DVDs. This is the first time that the annual growth in online revenues has been higher than the fall in revenues from CD or DVD sales.”
Adelaide Festival Breaks All Its Box Office Records
Festival chief executive Kate Gould said the Festival broke all targets, selling 66,000 tickets worth $3.4 million with “unprecedented attendances” of 650,000 people, including free events.
Carnegie Hall’s Orchestra Olympics
“The impulse to pit one orchestra against another is as regrettable as it is irresistible. In the space of thirty-one days, from the end of January to the beginning of March, Carnegie Hall held an unofficial orchestral Olympics, presenting thirteen concerts by symphonic ensembles from six states and three foreign countries.”
Talking Back To Your TV
“Today, the peanut gallery, digitally enabled by social media, is casting real-time shadows onto the screen of popular culture. Television, historically an extremely passive way of consuming media, could become something else, a hybrid form of professionally produced content and crowd-sourced comments.”
Hollywood’s Trade Papers Struggle To Survive
“Variety’s cost-cutting decision to lay off two of its most prominent critics and others last Monday sent shock waves through Hollywood. For generations, Variety’s critics had a clout that far outweighed their number of readers, providing early readings on coming films and Broadway shows to an audience of powerful industry insiders.”
Have America’s Universities Been Frozen In Time?
“Perhaps one could argue that the elite university has become a more democratic place, so that, no matter their backgrounds or views, supremely talented individuals can find a place, if they try. Whether or not this is true, one still has to wonder: How would Walt Whitman have fared as a member of a university English department, elite or otherwise?”
Good Art Is A Matter Of Taste (Or Is It?)
“This mass cultural shift towards the desire for ‘educated taste’ has led to historic levels of cultural insecurity. Who can doubt that many of the people who drag themselves through a Booker winner are doing it out of a sense of “self-improvement” rather than a real hunger for literature? Similarly, a significant portion of the audience sitting through any production of Krapp’s Last Tape are there because it makes them feel a cut above.”