Minnesota Orchestra music director Osmo Vänskä isn’t known for a second career as a composer, the way his fellow Finn Esa-Pekka Salonen is. But Vänskä has been dabbling in composition for a few years now, and his latest work, which gets its premiere this weekend, was inspired directly by the tragic collapse of the interstate highway bridge in Minneapolis last summer.
Tag: 05.15.08
Boston Ballet: Positioned For The Next Round
“I feel like the first circle has been completed. We’ve started to change the company, and we’ve completed the circle. Now it’s time for round two.”
A Missouri University’s Successful Strategy Against Illegal Downloads
“In order to download (or upload) files on any peer-to-peer network whatsoever, all on-campus users have to pass an online quiz on copyright infringement. But not just once. Passing the test — with a perfect score — enables peer-to-peer access for six hours on the user’s on-campus registered machines. The next time, the student, staff or faculty member has to go to the intranet Web page and take the randomized test again.”
Judge Puts Music Filesharing Judgement In Doubt
“The judge in Capitol v. Thomas — the first of the RIAA’s lawsuits against individual file-sharers to go to trial, it resulted in a $222,000 judgment against a single mother in Minnesota — threw the verdict into doubt today.”
Why Isn’t More Music By Women Performed?
“Following the introduction of blind auditions in the 1970s, which greatly reduce bias, women now make up about half of the string and woodwind players in American orchestras. Women occupy prominent administrative positions in major musical institutions. Women direct and design productions at important opera houses. Women also make up about 30 percent of composition students in American colleges and conservatories.” So where is their music on concert programs?
Livent Trial – Execs Kept “Meticulous Records”
“Livent’s top finance executive kept meticulous records of all the millions of dollars in improperly recorded expenses at the company because he believed that co-founders Garth Drabinsky and Myron Gottlieb would deny they knew anything about them in the future, a court heard today.”
Seattle Art Critic Caught Plagiarizing
“Work in the Seattle Post-Intelligencer by Nate Lippens, a freelance critic, is being examined after one of his art reviews was discovered to have striking similarities to criticism published two years earlier in Art in America magazine.”
Does Instant Messaging Promote Better Teen Language?
A study says that “although IM shared some of the patterns used in speech, its vocabulary and grammar tended to be relatively conservative. For example, teenagers are more likely to use the phrase “He was like, ‘What’s up?’ than ‘He said, ‘What’s up?’ when speaking – but the opposite is true when they are instant-messaging. This supports the idea that IM represents a hybrid form of communication.”
Chicago Children’s Museum Proposal – A Land Grab?
“The museum proposal, scheduled to be voted on Thursday by the Chicago Plan Commission, now resembles a private office building wearing a toupee. The toupee to which I refer is a planted roof meant to suggest that the buried museum would fit seamlessly into Grant Park.”
Little Theatres Fight For Their Homes
“Small theatres have always struggled to acquire and maintain space, but the problem has gotten worse during the real estate boom in large urban areas (the current home-mortgage crisis notwithstanding).”