More and more, performers of classical music concerts are speaking to their audiences. Andrew Clark isn’t impressed: “The trouble with speaking to the audience is that it limits the imaginative scope of the music. Listening to someone discussing a piece of music before you have a chance to hear it pre-programmes your responses. The music has no chance to communicate freely. You are left with a number of objective ideas about what to think and feel, circumscribing the subjective impressions that music seeks to create in the listener through the medium of sound.”
Tag: 04.15.06
Torontopia – A City Building On Culture
“A generation ago, an astonished Toronto was energized when its multicultural neighbourhoods won favour from international urban thinkers such as Jane Jacobs. Then, for 30 years, the city the rest of Canada loves to hate cruised back into mediocrity. Today, it is regaining a sense of its own singular potential. In once derelict, now glamorous industrial lofts and hotels, indie rockers talk with hip architects and earnest young public-space activists about books like uTOpia: Towards a New Toronto and debate whether the term ‘Torontopia’ has gone too far in “fetishizing” the city’s newfound energy.”
Texan Amateur Searches For Pyramids In Bosnia
A bizarre dig in Bosnia threatens an archaeologically rich area. “The prospect of their own Valley of the Kings has captured the imagination of many Bosnians desperate for a way to boost the shattered economy and raise the national pride of a country racked by conflict. Opponents of the project are, however, horrified at the prospect of irreparable damage to an area they believe is important enough to be a tourist attraction without a pyramid, yet warrants further archaeological research.”
Brit Antiques Market Continues To Slip
Sales of British antiques are falling. “In 2004/05 dealers sold art and antiques worth an estimated total of £647m ($1.16 billion), down from an estimated £658m in 2003/04.”
Tracking Down Munch
Sixty years after Edvard Much died and 40 years since the Munch Museum opened in Oslo, scholars are trying to track down all the artist’s work. And 70 major paintings are unaccounted for. “The paintings which cannot be found are probably in private collections. ‘In some cases we have an idea who owns the works, but they have not replied when we’ve contacted them’.”
Networks Appeal FCC Fines
Four American TV networks are appealing FCC fines for “indecent” programming. “The move represents a protest against the aggressive enforcement of federal indecency rules that broadcasters have complained are vague and inconsistently applied. Millions of dollars in fines have been levied based on those rules.”
What Would Beckett Have Thought Of All This?
Samuel Beckett is getting renewed attention this year on the 100th anniversary of his birth. But the author notoriously didn’t like cult of celebrity that engulfed him. So what would he have thought of all this? “Theatergoers have laughed about how the famously reclusive author would have reacted to the sprawling festival, which by some counts is the sixth major posthumous celebration of his work. He wouldn’t have turned up at a single event, and he couldn’t have borne the hoopla element.”
ABT Star Gets Some Good News
Ethan Stiefel has had a rough year. The company the American Ballet Theatre star was trying to build in California postponed its season for lack of funds. Then the company’s executive director quit. And, on the dancing front, Stiefel had knee problems that forced him to cancel several performances. Stiefel’s now had knee operations, and this week they were deemed successful. He should be back to performing this fall.
Dealers Scour Art Schools
Today’s market for contemporary art is so hot, dealers and collectors are turning to art schools. “Though the conventional image of an artist’s mentor is not generally a venture capitalist, such a presence is not so surprising in an era when collectors from Wall Street are underwriting high prices for contemporary art. The art world is, in the end, a numbers game: as collectors, art fairs and galleries keep growing, while first-rate artworks for sale decrease, dealers and collectors are scouring the country’s top graduate schools looking for the Warhols of the future.”