“A former Livent accountant insists that theatre impresario Garth Drabinsky ordered him and newly hired finance executive to make sure outside auditors checking the company’s books for a U.S. buyer didn’t find any evidence of fraud.”
Tag: 06.03.08
Dubai Sets Itself As A Music Center (For A Price)
“The music boom fits in with the Dubai ruler’s ambitious plans to make the city attractive for the rich and famous, and to fuel mass tourism. Glitzy top-level sports, like March’s Dubai Tennis Championship, are another factor. Artists who perform in Dubai expect to earn ‘twice as much’ as they do in the United States or Europe.”
Muti In Chicago: “Judge Me By The Music”
“Before an election, a politician will make a lot of promises — ‘I will do this, I will do that, I will reduce taxes.’ A musician is judged not by the words or the promises, but by the facts of the music that he makes.”
A Call To Reform Dancers’ Pay On London’s West End
“If you stay in a show, you get a percentage rise every year, that’s what they do. They give you so much for staying a second year or third year. But as dancers get older and older, every time they go to a new show, they start off at square one again. It is quite hard for them. There does not seem to be any provision for experienced dancers as they get older.”
The Book Collection That Ate Me
“I recognize that we now have many ways to convey, store, and reproduce the sorts of matter that formerly were monopolized by books. I like to think that I’m no bookworm, egghead, four-eyed paleface library rat. I often engage in activities that have no reference to the printed words. I realize that books are not the entire world, even if they sometimes seem to contain it. But I need the stupid things.”
Second City Founder Paul Sills, 80
Paul Sills, one of the founders of the improvisational comedy group “The Second City,” which has turned out some of America’s best-known comedians, died Monday. Second City helped launch the careers of John Belushi, Bill Murray, Gilda Radner, Stephen Colbert and Mike Myers.
When The Recording Company Is Your Agent Too (Oh, Oh!)
So Universal wants to be both the recording company and the artist manager. But “it is worrisome for presenters and management to be the same. Managers always think they’re the artist. They think they own the artist, which they don’t. They work for the artist. The artist has free choice. The artist can leave. The commercial interests want the stadium appearances, the glamour. They don’t want the artist to do what the artist does.”
The Decline Of Radio?
“Just when radio cries out for creative revival, it is instead slipping into a disgruntled decline. Today, hardly anyone turns on the radio expecting to be lured into intimate obsessions with voices that return each night, baring their souls and insisting on a relationship with the listener.”
Remembering Anne d”Harnoncourt
“In Philadelphia, she made a very big difference. Twinning partnership skills with the aristocratic Robert Montgomery Scott, the pair took a slouching institution with aged facilities and questionable relevance and parlayed it into one of the most vital comprehensive art museums in the country.”