“Although there’s never been a great time to be a female comedian, fewer women are breaking through to stand-up’s top ranks. Most every comic deals with aspects of the job such as constant travel, working nights in boozy joints, nonexistent job security, wildly variable pay and isolation from friends and family. But for female comics, there’s also the facet of being in a culture — and a business — that’s uneasy with the idea of a woman generating laughter.”
Tag: 04.16.07
Auction House’s Gallery Acquisition Could Roil Markets
“Christie’s acquisition of the gallery Haunch of Venison could portend a significant restructuring of the art market, changing the terms of the artist-dealer relationship and blurring the lines between what galleries and auction houses offer. Eventually, the financial might of the auction houses could lead to the consolidation of the art business under a few owners, as happened in the book-publishing world.”
Why Do We Live In Houses?
“Four out of five new housing units built in the United States are single-family houses. This statistic has less to do with the nature of the home-building industry, or the suburban location of new housing, than with buyers’ preferences, that is, What People Want.” But why do people want it?
This Year’s Pulitzer Winners
“Cormac McCarthy’s ‘The Road,” set in a post-apocalyptic U.S., won the Pulitzer Prize for fiction today, while David Lindsay-Abaire’s ‘Rabbit Hole” was a surprise winner for drama. Ornette Coleman, 77, won the music Pulitzer for ‘Sound Grammar,’ a live recording of eight original songs performed in Ludwigshafen, Germany, in 2005.”
Canadian Artists Want Support
Prominent Canadian artists go to Parliament to argue for increased support. “The event, spearheaded by the Writers’ Union of Canada, was designed to encourage the government to pay greater attention to the arts and restore cultural funding, with a particular focus on promoting Canadian artists abroad.”
Ottawa Chamber Fest Parts From Director
The enormous Ottawa International Chamber Music Festival has been unable to resolve differences with its founder and artistic director, and will continue without him.
Is Tech Boosting Live Music?
The live music scene in the UK is booming. “Many believe new technology – in the shape of MySpace and music forums – has boosted the scene. Computers, e-mail, texts and mobile phones mean people have much more access to information than they did five or six years ago.”
How Cute Wordplays Dropped Out Of Advertising
“The cutesy wordplay or visual tricks that dominated 70s and 80s advertising have been under attack since the 1990s. While TV sketch comedy seemed to exist almost entirely on catchphrases, commercials like Honda’s Power of Dreams achieved plaudits and boosted sales without relying on jingles or quips. Complex narratives and a filmic approach – ad techniques that were the preserve of fashion brands – have been inching on to the screen, displaying an almost arthouse sensibility.”
New York’s Modern Music Boom
New music has never been hotter than it is right now in New York’s underground club scene, says Alex Ross, and a generation of musicians and composers for whom blurring the lines between concert and club music are largely responsible. “Sometimes the blurring of boundaries leads to overamplified mush. Just as often, though, it generates a new kind of interstitial music–one that makes a virtue of falling between the cracks.”