Each year 1 million string instruments are stolen, and only 2 percent are ever recovered. Now there’s a plan to track them. ISIS (Instrument Security Identification Systems) embeds atiny electronic tag into instruments. The company “will send out an alert if a musical instrument has been reported stolen. Part of this business will involve implanting RFID tags in stringed instruments – from violins to cellos and from cheap student instruments to million-dollar antiques that are still being played. The implanted RFID tags will make the tricky business of identifying instruments foolproof.”
Tag: 06.26.03
The First Great Fight Over Modern Art
In one of the great libel trials of the 19th Century, James Whistler sued the great art critic John Ruskin, author of Modern Painters and The Stones of Venice, over a review that dismissed him as a fraud. “There had been rows about modern art before. But none that are so uncannily familiar, none that speak our critical language in all its odd mixture of the extreme and the banal. It is easy for us to laugh, with the condescension of posterity, at the sexual hysteria of French journalists distressed by Manet’s Olympia (1863). But Ruskin’s denunciation of Whistler is the template for a thousand denunciations to come: it is the definitive rejection of modern art as fraud, and every subsequent diatribe against beds, bricks or the lights going on and off reproduces it.”
NEA – A Slight Increase?
While US state arts agencies are being pared back or eliminated, the National Endowment for the Arts is lining up for a slight increase. The House Interior Appropriations Subcommittee is proposing to increase the National Endowment for the Arts budget to $117.5 million for fiscal year 2004 – up $1 million from the current year.
Music From Outside
“So what exactly is Outsider Music? You might as well ask, “What is Outsider Art?” In a field occupied by a dozen or so jostling factions, the overall spectrum remains bewilderingly inclusive. Like its more closely monitored visual counterpart, O.M. practitioners range from the infantile to the institutionally committed — almost anything qualifies. ‘Outsider music includes all manner of incompetent but sincere recordings, music by the mentally challenged, industry rejects, eccentrics, singing celebrities, lovable oddballs, grandiose statements, etc’.”
Embargo Theatre
Hillary Clinton and JK Rowling are suing publications for breaking embargoes on their books. But should a publisher be able to sue a newspaper for reporting what’s in a book? “Clinton and Rowling may honestly believe the press violated their copyrights by quoting from and discussing the contents of their books prior to the official pub date. But neither author has much of a legal case, and I’m sure their lawyers would confess over drinks that the noise and litigation is mostly theater.”
Sadler’s Wells: Reinvent Programming?
“For the past few years, Sadler’s Wells has been going about its task respectably, acting as a receiving house for international contemporary dance on tour, and hosting the odd bit of touring opera or musical theatre.” Sadler’s new chief Jean-Luc Choplin “is not content with this niche. “The history of the second half of the 20th century has been of attempts to create access to high arts for all. It’s been done by cheap tickets, education projects, access initiatives. But all these have worked only to an extent. I want to create a genuinely popular theatre. Ticket pricing and access is important – but you have to change the programming.”
John Adams, Star
John Adams is the classical music’s star composer. “While working within classical conventions, Adams has done more than anyone to smudge the lines between rock, jazz and classical. His music used to be called crossover or minimalist – intended more as insult than as technical analysis. Now such epithets are outmoded, thanks in part to his own willingness to write music with direct appeal, not generally a habit among avant-garde composers in the late 1970s when he started. Tunes then were on a par with antimacassars or lace doilies: redundant and declasse, you simply didn’t. Adams reminded us: you could and did. Critics who sucked in their cheeks at the blatant melodies of his best-known work, the 1987 opera Nixon in China, now sheepishly concede that it is a modern masterpiece.”
Why Whine When You Can Innovate?
The Colorado Music Festival is not sitting around waiting for the financial woes that are plaguing so many classical music organizations to hit them, too. Rather, the Boulder-based organization is joining forces with other arts groups to offer their audience new reasons to keep streaming through the turnstiles. A collaboration with the Colorado Shakespeare Festival will find actors roaming the grounds on select nights. A local group specializing in music education is on board to assist with a new children’s program. And for every concert it plays, the CMF will utilize a new orchestral ‘scorecard’ which invites the audience to follow along with key themes as the orchestra plays them.
The Musical Bounty Hunter
Let’s say you’re an old jazzer who just happened to notice that a record you released in 1961 was just reissued on CD, and you haven’t seen a dime, or even heard from the record company. Or maybe you’re the artist behind that great ’80s dance track that never catapulted you to stardom, but which keeps showing up on those compilations they sell on TV. Who do you call? Meet Jon Hichborn, the Royalty Hunter. “In an industry that treats discarded talent like spoiled milk, Hichborn is an anomaly. He works to get artists royalties they are owed. He doesn’t care if you’re a one-hit wonder or dead bluesman. Just as long as you feel you’ve been cheated.”
You Talkin’ To Me? No, Seriously, Are You?
With the recording industry threatening to begin suing the biggest file-swappers, millions of users of file trading services like Kazaa and Morpheus are wondering just how many downloads qualifies as lawsuit-worthy. And that, of course, is exactly what the RIAA wants. “The intent is to scare everyone from prototypical pirates who share hundreds of ripped CDs through T-1 lines to teens who trade a handful of pop tunes. Still, the heaviest sharers are a distinct bunch relatively easy to pick out in a crowd.”