“The orchestra was formed in 1938 when radio orchestras were popular and is the last of its kind in North America. The decision to disband it was a matter of economics, Jennifer McGuire, executive director of CBC English Radio, said in an interview last week.”
Tag: 04.01.08
Wanted: Blockbusters That Are Fun
” ‘Educational’ is a wan, dry word to describe what exhibitions — and art — should do. Art should entertain as well as amaze, enthrall, move, and possibly terrify us. And, yes, educate us too. But there is a depressing — rather Gordon Brownian — implication in Nicholas Penny’s stance that we should only go to the National Gallery because it’s good for us.”
A Major Art Prize Without Focus
Currently in its third edition and with a prize of £40,000, Artes Mundi is Britain’s biggest international art prize. Artes Mundi aims to “celebrate artists who in their work discuss the human condition and add to our understanding of humanity,” writes the prize’s co-founder Tessa Jackson. This could mean almost anything…
Excavation To Find The Purpose Of Stonehenge
“The first excavation for more than a generation at Stonehenge began yesterday, looking for evidence that the most famous prehistoric monument in the world was the Lourdes of the bronze age, where the sick and troubled sought healing from the supernatural power of bluestones brought from west Wales.”
Guardian Theatre Critic’s Theatre History Wins Book Award
Michael Billington’s State of the Nation, an analysis of British theatre since 1945, has today been named theatre book of the year by the Society for Theatre Research.
Maya Angelou At 80
“Still close to her youthful height of 6 feet, the author-poet-dancer-singer-activist is ready to celebrate her 80th birthday on Friday, feeling, she says, like she’s 60, wearing a dark blouse and slacks, sipping apple juice, singing hymns, reciting Latin, whispering, laughing, crying, missing lost friends or planning to make new ones.”
Why Isn’t There More Science Fiction Theatre?
“As well as being regarded with a certain warmth, there’s also a sense of mistrust around the genre. Writers fear that it’s somehow a bit uncool – a bit 70s – and so we get interminable plays about Urgent Contemporary Issues rather than coolly speculative projections. It’s a shame. After all, some of the 20th century’s greatest literature was set in the future – consider 1984, Brave New World and A Clockwork Orange.”
Big International Deal To Show Opera, Ballet In Movie Theatres
Opera and ballet are set to become fixtures on cinema screens across the U.K., Ireland, France, Spain, Portugal, Italy, Germany, Austria, Switzerland, Benelux and the Nordic territories following a wide-ranging digital distribution deal.
Chicago’s Harris Theatre Gets Emergency Repairs
“Roughly $1 million in emergency repairs are under way to remedy a problem that patrons of the theater, which shares backstage and office space with the Pritzker Pavilion, have probably never noticed.”
Why Doesn’t Pritzker Prize Go To Teams Of Architects?
“The Pritzker Prize promotes the fiction that buildings spring from the imagination of an individual architect–the master builder. This wasn’t true in the Middle Ages, when there were real master builders, and it isn’t true today.”