Metamorphosis, an Edmonton-based chamber orchestra, has had a good first season after being born from the ashes of the relationship between the Edmonton Symphony musicians and their management. Grzegorz Nowak, the conductor who was deposed from the symphony’s music directorship only to announce that he would stay in town and start his own orchestra, has backed off his original brash plans of competing directly with his old employer, and crafted a much-needed niche ensemble. In fact, starting next season, the smaller group, which will be renamed the Canadian Chamber Orchestra, will be playing its concerts at the same hall occupied by the Edmonton Symphony.
Tag: 04.30.03
Cage Legacy: Pioneering Music Theory Finds A Home In Video Games
“The computer game industry is a bit like the early days of opera: Composers are exploring untested ways of combining music, story, and visual spectacle. Fifty years ago, avant-gardists like Earle Brown and John Cage were leaving the ordering of musical events up to the players. Now this once-arcane technique is being used by game composers for far more commercial purposes. Composers call it ‘branching music’ — musical themes or tags linked to specific game events, designed so that any tag can lead un- jarringly to or from any other tag, creating a continuous flow, whatever the player’s choices.”
Colorado Cancels Grants Deadline
Anticipating darstic cuts in its funding, the Colorado Council on the Arts cancelled this year’s filing date for funding (It was supposed to be April 30). “This agency has been all but eliminated. It is no longer business as usual. We will be eliminating most of our programs as a result of these cuts. Nobody can expect us to do a $2.5 million job with only $200,000.” In January, the council awarded 97 grants totaling $689,000 to various programs statewide. Last year, it gave out about $1.3 million in 154 grants.
Museums – Jumbo Egos, Jumbo Falls
Hilton Kramer is cranky about over-ambitious expansion plans of museums chasing glory (and money). “How are we to characterize the narrative of turbulence and disarray that has lately overtaken some of our local institutions? I suggest that we think of it as the Museum Expansion Follies, for it’s in the service of this muddled narrative that a lot of money is spent (and lost) these days without much regard for negative consequences. And not only money…”
Koons Goes Big
“Artist Jeff Koons plans to erect a 360-foot tall sculpture in Hamburg – two cranes with outsize inner tubes dangling down – that he hopes will rival the effect of the Eiffel Tower.”
Porn Gains On Music For File-Swappers
Will Apple’s cool new music file-trading service put file-swapper services such as Gnutella or Morpheus out of business? Not hardly. Why? Because an ever-increasing percentage of files being swapped online isn’t music at all – it’s porn. “There is absolutely no way Apple is going to make a dent in file sharing. Smut was the most sought-after content on the Gnutella file-trading system, according to a February survey, with 42 percent of all users hunting for blue pictures and movies.”
Classical Music – Failure To Graduate
British Prime Minister Tony Blair’s recent admission that he doesn’t really appreciate classical music is telling, writes Norman Lebrecht. “The problem is one of late adolescence. Most of us rebel at puberty against parental values, only to adopt most of them willy-nilly when we raise children. It used to be one of the more copper-bottomed truths of the music industry that kids who bought rock and pop in their teens and twenties switched to classics around their mid-thirties. The Blair generation is the first to buck that trend, clinging to decrepit rock idols like Jagger, Dylan and Eric Clapton, and embarrassing their offspring by listening to the White Stripes instead of making a mature transition to more intricate music.”
The Thieves’ Childlike Note
Who stole three paintings from a Manchester gallery last weekend and left them in the rain? “Police released a picture yesterday of the crude, water-stained note written in dark blue ink, in an effort to find the thieves who stole £4m of artwork by Picasso, Gauguin and Van Gogh from the Whitworth Art Gallery. They also revealed that the thieves had intimate knowledge of the gallery. “
NY Times Writer May Have Copied
The allegations are fairly common these days, but when it’s the New York Times being fingered, everyone is understandably cautious about flinging around ugly words like ‘plagiarism.’ Still, there does seem to be a problem with a story the Times published recently about a Texas woman whose son is missing in action in Iraq. Many of the details of the Times story are identical or strikingly similar to details which appeared in a San Antonio paper days earlier. The Times says it is investigating internally, and stresses that it does not tolerate plagiarism in any form.
Florida Orchestra: Good Prospects, But Ugly Numbers
The Florida Orchestra has a new incoming music director, a new associate conductor, and a revitalized artistic vision. But it also has the same fiscal stresses being faced by nearly every other professional orchestra in North America. On a budget of $8 million, the Tampa-based Florida Orchestra (not to be confused with the Florida Philharmonic, which is based in Fort Lauderdale and has been warning of impending bankruptcy,) is expected to run a $1 million deficit this season. No one is pushing the panic button just yet, but like so many other non-profits, the orchestra’s leaders fear that their organization will not survive much longer without a serious resurgence in the national economy.