Tag: 05.22.03

Bad Writing – Not Racism – Is The Real Jazz Scandal

Is jazz critic Stanley Crouch right about racism and jazz critics? The issure recently got him fired from JazzTimes. “The real scandal in jazz criticism isn’t race – it’s bad writing. Jazz, which arose at the same time as that other revolutionary twentieth-century art, film, has failed to generate a comparable body of criticism. Most jazz magazines are only slightly more readable than airline glossies, and serve roughly the same purpose. Whatever one thinks of Crouch’s views, he is one of the few jazz critics worthy of the name. And this, sadly, is another reason why he no longer belongs in the pages of JazzTimes.”

Secrets To Good Children’s Theatre?

Here are some rules: “The first rule would be to decide what story you?re telling and then get on with it; adults may enjoy the odd interesting digression, children simply lose interest and start eating crisps. The second would be to avoid irony and political point scoring at all costs; children can sense the strident negative energy a mile off and are bored by it. The third rule is to avoid deliberate artiness in design and to make things look like what they are supposed to be. And the fourth is to keep it simple and remember that less is more; children come to the theatre to be told a story, not to admire someone?s fancy set design or hard-won clowning skills.”

FCC Traveling On Media Company Dimes

“Over the past eight years, Federal Communications Commission officials have taken 2,500 business trips to global tourist spots, most of which were paid for by the media and telecommunications companies the agency oversees, according to a study to be released today. The report, released by the Center for Public Integrity in Washington, comes as the FCC is poised to relax or eliminate key media ownership rules, a step that has been criticized by some as putting too much power in the hands of a few media giants.”

The Great American Art Scam

“In the clubby art world where priceless works are entrusted to dealers and brokers on a promise and a handshake, Michael Cohen, a highly regarded art broker, borrowed millions from prestigious art dealers such as Sotheby’s and was handed a Picasso from another prominent dealer. But according to a complaint filed in US District Court in Manhattan, Cohen fled two years ago, swindling the dealers of millions of dollars and taking a valuable piece of art, as well.”

Florida Phil: We Tried Everything

The chairman of the board of the now-bankrupt Florida Philharmonic says he’s proud of the efforts his board made to save the orchestra. He said “the high-profile plea for donors to come forward to save the Philharmonic netted only $770,000, far short of the $4.5 million necessary to see the orchestra through the 2003-04 season. That amount was barely a fraction of the original $20 million requested as a sign of the community’s willingness to support the orchestra. ‘We didn’t even get close to that figure, which made a bankruptcy filing inevitable’.”

Tate Modern’s New Man

Vincente Todoli is the new director of the Tate Modern. He’s a “Catalan by birth and the latest in a growing line of international curators heading Britain’s museums. Aged 45, fast talking, fast moving, fast thinking, he shoots from the heart and smiles winningly. Stamina seeps from every pore. His strong accent, a year in New York as a Fulbright scholar notwithstanding, introduces an element of enigma to what he is saying (we spend several moments disentangling the sibilants of ‘thresholds’).”

The Gay Side Of Opera

“Gay and lesbian subtexts frequently hover beneath the surface of opera. The singer’s sex may not be the same as the sex of the character he or she is playing, while cross-dressing within plots can lead to erotic mayhem. That there should be a disparity in the way gay and straight composers have had to approach erotic subjects is ultimately a sad reflection on the normative proscriptions that have dogged social history and continue to do so. Yet opera also asserts a communality of experience that both contains and bypasses gender and sexual orientation.”

Fake Van Gogh Proves Wildly Popular

The self-portrait of van Gogh hanging in Oslo’s National Gallery is now considered a fake. But the news hasn’t proved to be a liability. “The painting of a troubled face on a blue-green background is the only portrait of van Gogh after he cut off his left ear. Visits have nearly tripled at the National since the van Gogh came home, and it had the same effect in Italy where it was on loan when the controversy over the painting’s origin erupted.”

Can’tLive Without His Anna Nicole

Seattle artist Jeff Hengst put two paintings outside his studio – an oversized Arnold Schwarzeneger and an oversized Anna Nicole Smith. He woke up this week to find that Nicole had been taken overnight. “Arnold’s useless to me without Nicole,” he said. He called the police immediately. Although he wasn’t expecting them to rush over and dust for prints, he was somewhat taken aback when they declined to come. They took his story over the phone and sent him a form to fill out.”