Daniel Libeskind has been refining his design for the Royal Ontario Museum, and Lisa Rochon likes what she sees of the changes. “Only last month, the Berlin-based Studio Libeskind presented to its client the museum’s northern façade rendered like a warrior’s mask with eyes slashed into its steel face armour. It looked like an angry work of autonomous architecture. Now, however, the ROM is being unmasked to reveal a beguiling human face.”
Tag: 04.09.03
Is America Cutting Itself Out Of World Music?
World music artists are cancelling U.S. tours left and right, in part because of the difficulty of obtaining visas in the post-9/11 world, but also out of fear of how they will be received in a newly isolationist and paranoid America. The fact that many world music artists have been active in anti-war movements at home is adding to the pressure to cancel, and musicians are increasingly aware of “rumblings from arts presenters… who [feel] that a newfound xenophobia might be on the rise.”
Public TV Exec Leaps to BBC
“In a major disappointment to management at [Boston public broadcasting powerhouse] WGBH-TV, John Willis – the station’s vice president of national programming – announced yesterday that he is stepping down in June for a senior position at the BBC. Willis, a celebrated British filmmaker and former television executive in Britain, is leaving WGBH after just a year on the job.” WGBH produces many of the programs which air nationally on the PBS network, including This Old House and Evening at Pops, but the station has struggled in recent years to compete with a growing universe of specialty cable channels.
FCC Debates Media Dereg
Top figures at the Federal Communications Commission are sparring over the right way to approach further deregulation of the American media industry. Both sides agree that further loosening of the rules regarding media ownership is desirable, but there is disagreement over the extent of the deregulation, and the formulas which would be used to calculate ownership limits in a given market. Still, the debate is largely over small sub-issues, and nowhere in the upper echelons of the FCC is anyone giving any credence to the notion (generally accepted by press and public) that media deregulation has been disastrous from the point of view of the consumer.
Music, The International Peacemaker
In Rome, hundreds of student protesters calling for an end to the war in Iraq tried to disrupt a university performance by the famed La Scala Opera Orchestra, under the direction of Riccardo Muti. Rather than cancel the concert or forcibly remove the protesters, Muti addressed them directly, saying “The musicians you see seated here have been touring the world since 1996 in the name of peace.” The protesters apparently conceded the point, sitting quietly for the first part of the performance before leaving the premises.
Global CD Slump Gathers Steam
Consumers worldwide are buying less music, according to industry representatives, with CDs particularly hard hit. “Sales dropped by 7% around the world last year after a 5% dip in 2001, according to the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry (IFPI).” Naturally, the industry says that the number one reason for the slump is the proliferation of illegal downloading sites and the inability of the industry to stay ahead of the pirates. In particular, the U.S. “suffered a 10% drop in album sales in 2002, mainly because fans were getting the music from the internet instead, the IFPI said.” Of course, it’s worth noting that the severe economic slump in the U.S. may also be contributing to the problem.
SARS Fears Cancel Tour
The BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra, one of the UK’s most prestigious ensembles, has cancelled a long-planned tour of China scheduled for next month, due to health concerns surrounding the global outbreak of Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome. SARS is believed to have originated in China, and there is still much uncertainty surrounding the size of the outbreak there, due to information which was withheld by Chinese medical authorities. The BBC-SSO’s tour “would have been one of the most extensive Chinese tours undertaken by a western orchestra.”
Movie Flight To Canada Hurts Cities Like Chicago
“While it has been much publicized that the loss of the commercial film business to Canada and other countries, known as ‘runaway production,’ has hurt movie production in Los Angeles and New York, a recent study by the United States Commerce Department found that it had been devastating to the much-smaller film markets in Chicago and other cities between the coasts. Since 1985, 57 feature films with Chicago backdrops have been shot in Canada. The director of the Chicago film office estimates his city has lost $1.9 billion and 17,000 jobs from the local economy.
Milo Cruz’s Excellent Week
Playwright Nilo Cruz has had a good week. “Over the weekend, at the Humana Festival of New American Plays in Louisville, Ky., Mr. Cruz, a 42-year-old Cuban-born New Yorker, was awarded $15,000 by the Harold and Mimi Steinberg Charitable Trust for his play ‘Anna in the Tropics,’ which had been anointed by the American Theater Critics Association as the best play of last year not to have been produced in New York City. Then on Monday Cruz won this year’s Drama Pulitzer – in a “rather large surprise in the theater world.”
Why Pulitzer Doesn’t Mean Much In Music
The Pulitzers are prestigious. But not in the music category, says John Adams, this year’s winner. “I am astonished to receive the Pulitzer Prize. Among musicians that I know, the Pulitzer has over the years lost much of the prestige it still carries in other fields like literature and journalism. Anyone perusing the list of past winners cannot help noticing that many if not most of the country’s greatest musical minds are conspicuously missing,”