“An Istanbul court on Friday ordered a retrial for a world-renowned pianist, Fazil Say, sentenced earlier this month to 10 months in prison for blasphemy over social media posts.”
Tag: 03.26.13
France Announces Major Program To Aid Struggling Booksellers
The culture minister “announced that a fund of €5m would be created for loans to booksellers with cashflow problems and that the budget of ADELC, the association that subsidises booksellers, would rise from €4m to €7m to help outlets when they change hands.”
Saving Alt-Weeklies (If Not Alt-Weekly Papers)
“The alternative weekly of yesterday is toast. Or, at least it should be if the alt-weekly business is going to survive. As print media collectively emerges from an existential crisis that has forever altered the business model, alt-weeklies are coming out on the other side as more than just newspapers.” And which ones are doing it best? Not the big ones.
Steinway Pianos Sells Its Venerable Manhattan Showroom
“Steinway Hall, the 88-year-old building down the block and across the street from Carnegie Hall where generations of famous and not-so-famous pianists have tried out pianos, is being sold, the piano company and the buyer said on Tuesday.”
One For All And All For One And Every Man For Himself
“I’ve lost track of the language of our art. … It’s been trumped by meaning-deplete, market-aping clichés of our professional shoptalk–branding, innovation, entrepreneurial–and by the hollow repetitions of grant-speak that have sucked the specificity out of such essentials as, ‘community,’ ‘vision,’ ‘values.'”
Orchestra and Opera Team Up In Philly To ‘Do Something Really Spectacular’
But don’t expect the two large, distinct organizations to merge: “That’s not where this is going. I can say emphatically there is no intent for the Philadelphia Orchestra to be the pit band for Opera Philadelphia.”
New Director For Detroit Museum of Contemporary Art
The “upstart venue” hires a fundraiser and manager because “We want to be really solid, and we want to be here forever.”
SPCO Supporters Consider Starting New Orchestra
“The group, called Save Our SPCO, has formed an exploratory committee to examine the feasibility of establishing ‘a new organization to host a world-class chamber orchestra in St. Paul,’ in the event that players and existing management are unable to resolve their labor-contract dispute.”
Damage But Not Disaster From Fire At London’s Cuming Museum
“Nobody was injured in a fire that began [Monday] at the Cuming Museum in Southwark, but the blaze has destroyed the museum’s roof and two of its displays. It is believed collections in storage may have also suffered water damage.”
Why Did Oliver Stone Go Into Film? Humid Weather
“I couldn’t write in Vietnam, the rain was too thick, there was no paper, everything got wet. I bought a little Pentax, and I started taking amazing pictures and I really loved the visceral aspect of the thing … And I think that combination of visceral and still cerebral in some way was a beautiful marriage for me. After the war I went back to film school.”