Seventeen-year-old vilinist Nicola Benedetti has a hit. Her self-titled new album has landed at No. 2 on the classical charts after only a week on sale. “It is the highest ever position in the classical chart for a debut violinist in the first week of sales. In the popular charts, the album has achieved a position in the top 75 – also a record-breaking first week of sales for a classical violinist.”
Tag: 05.16.05
Searching For Media – The Next Big Thing?
Sure, there’s plenty of music and video online. But how do you filter it all so you can find what you’re looking for? “This desire for a better multimedia mousetrap has led Internet firms large and small to respond with search engines that can filter results by media type like music or video, similar to how they can for images or news today. Such functionality represents the next battlefield of the Internet search wars, and a potential opportunity for those challenging Google’s crown.”
Insta-Answer Changes The Class
Tecahers are finding that devices that instantly register student answers to questions in class, change the dynamics of a class. “The devices, which the students call “clickers,” are being used on hundreds of college campuses and are even finding their way into grade schools. They alter classroom dynamics, engaging students in large, impersonal lecture halls with the power of mass feedback. Clickers ease fears of giving a wrong answer in front of peers, or of expressing unpopular opinions.”
Rolf To Paint Queen
Queen Elizabeth has agreed to have her portrait painted by TV painter/entertainer Rolf Harris. “She will have a formal sitting with the Australian entertainer for a Rolf on Art special for BBC One. Harris said he was “thrilled to bits”. When the BBC put the idea to Buckingham Palace, they were told the Queen would be delighted to take part.”
Scottish Parliament Warns National Gallery About Spending
A Scottish parliamentary committee has warned the National Gallery after it was disclosed that the museum had used money allocated for buying art to cover running expenses. “The committee launched hearings this spring after it emerged that in 2002-3 and 2003-4, first £400,000 and then another £1.15 million was diverted from the galleries’ acquisitions fund for buying new art to running costs. Without it, the galleries would have run up a combined deficit of over £1 million.”
Hermitage Plans Major Expansion
The Hermitage is planning a huge expansion that will create the largest galleries for 19th Century art in the world. “In recent years, the world’s greatest museums have been expanding and reinventing themselves in response to mass tourism and a heightened interest in the visual arts. We have seen the creation of the Grand Louvre, the Tate Modern conversion of Bankside power station and a vast new building for MOMA in New York. Now it is the turn of the Hermitage.”
The Greatest Painting In Britain (Uh-huh)
What is Britons’ favorite painting? The National Gallery aims to find out in a poll. “Following on from the BBC’s attempts to celebrate the greatest Briton as well as discover our most beloved book, the gallery is launching a public poll to highlight The Greatest Painting in Britain. And just as with Great Britons and The Big Read, this exercise will end up telling us far more about who we think we are than the quality of our aesthetic sensibility.”
How Marketing Killed Classical Music In America
“Half a century ago, and before, individuals of vision – conductors, composers, entrepreneurs, even critics – heroically shaped the course of America’s musical high culture. In more recent times, the fate of classical music in the US has been governed by the market place. The indulged and uninquisitive American electorate is paralleled by classical music audiences that ask for little and give little back. A tangible acuity of knowing attention still found in Berlin or Budapest is no longer much encountered in New York.”
Where Goes The Novel
Post-modernism is over. But where does the novel as a form go from here? “A novelist has to find artistic means to slow down time (Proust), to get inside a single consciousness (David Foster Wallace), and to express thought without language breaking down completely (Joyce). So the novelist still has a wide open field here. But there are so many obstacles to creating this work of art that it’s (oh, hell) mind–boggling (sorry). The novelist must make an astonishing number of judgments before a single word is written, and any of these judgments can threaten to undermine the project.”
Report: More Books, Fewer Buyers
Too many books are being published, even as sales are declining. “The number of books sold dropped by nearly 44 million between 2003 and 2004, even as the annual number of books published approaches 175,000. The Book Industry Study Group, a nonprofit research organization, reported estimated sales of 2.295 billion books in 2004, compared to an estimated 2.339 billion the previous year. Higher prices enabled net revenues to increase 2.8 percent, to $28.6 billion, but also drove many readers, especially students, to buy used books.”