“The institutes will be designed for journalists who cover the arts for print and broadcast outlets located outside the country’s largest media markets, where professional development opportunities are limited. Institutes for dance critics will be hosted by the American Dance Festival at Duke University; for classical music and opera critics at Columbia University; and theater critics at the University of Southern California.”
Tag: 06.01.04
Theatre Critics meet
This week 100 members of the American Theatre Critics Association converge on San Francisco for their annual meeting. This year’s conference features new plays…
Kael & Sontag: Portrait Of Two Critics
David Kipen is a fan of a new book about two very different critics. “Craig Seligman’s new book about Pauline Kael and Susan Sontag is the sassiest, classiest work of popular criticism since Nick Hornby’s “Songbook.” Kael might have praised it as “fizzy,” Sontag could call it “serious” and neither would be wrong. But “Sontag & Kael: Opposites Attract Me” transcends these catchwords to present a funny, smart diptych of two bookish girls from California who took Manhattan and knocked it sideways.”
Forsythe: Next Up After Frankfurt Ballett
There was an uproar last year when German officials announced they were closing Ballett Frankfurt to save money. The company’s well-regarded director William Forsythe isn’t sitting around though. “Forsythe plans to form a new, smaller ensemble soon, and Ballett Frankfurt will cease to exist in August.”
In Search Of Shakespeare’s Music
Where is the music that originally accompanied Shakespeare’s plays? “Many scholars believe that the music that originally accompanied Shakespeare’s plays has been lost. But perhaps it was so much a part of the popular culture of Shakespeare’s time that we simply haven’t been able to sort it out from all the surviving examples in library archives. Enter Canadian musicologist Ross W. Duffin, who has not only collated and reorganized all previous known studies on this subject but used computer-matching techniques to supply appropriate period music for songs that have come down to us with Shakespearean lyrics but no known melodies.”
Canadian Art Market Sets New Records
“The bullish Canadian art market showed no signs of slowing down as Sotheby’s Canada sold more than 160 lots worth almost $6-million at its spring auction in Toronto, setting records for least four Canadian painters in the process.”
Barenboim Says He’ll Be Done In Chicago
Daniel Barenboim says he won’t appear with the Chicago Symphony again as guest conductor after his contract runs out in 2005-2006. He has said he “disliked guest conducting, preferring to work with orchestras on a longer-term basis.”
Scotland’s Brilliant New Parliament Building
Scotland’s new Parliament building is about to open. Finally. After its budget came in 800 percent over projections. “Why has it been so very costly? The intricate design by the late Enric Miralles, of Barcelona, commissioned in 1998 and realised by the joint Catalan-Scottish practice EMBT/RMJM, is one of richness and great complexity. It has a style very much of its own, neither in nor out of fashion.”
Critics: Royal Festival Hall Renovations A Disaster
“Planned alterations to the Royal Festival Hall on London’s South Bank are “disastrous” and an “act of architectural vandalism”, according to the Twentieth Century Society, which protects Britain’s legacy of modernist architecture.”
Pulitzer Music Changes Debated
Changes in the criteria for the Pulitzer Prize for music to broaden it are provoking controversy. Defenders say: “The board has been concerned for many years that the full range of exellence in American music was not somehow getting through the process in such a way that it could be properly and appropriately considered. The changes in the wording are intended to make sure that the full range of excellence can be considered. The prize should not be reserved essentially for music that comes out of the European classical tradition.”