When the Louisville Orchestra struck a last-minute contract deal with its musicians last month, everyone involved cheered publicly, and congratulated each other on their success. But Andrew Adler sees little to get excited about. “We’ve heard all of this so many times before, whenever castastrophe for this orchestra has been barely averted. A contract is signed, three or four years of labor-management-board harmony is promised, a new day is at hand, etc., etc.” Labor peace aside, the Louisville Orchestra’s endowment remains far below what it needs to be, there don’t seem to be any real big-money donors for classical music in the city, and artistically, the ensemble has chosen an infuriating “play it safe” strategy which sacrifices anything but the most innocuous music.
Tag: 07.06.03
A Canon Of Geniuses (Aren’t We All?)
“The very idea of a canon of geniuses may be falling by the wayside; it makes more sense to talk about the flickering brilliance of a group, a place, or a people. In the future, it seems, everyone will be a genius for fifteen minutes. The past decade has seen the rise of pop-music studies, which is dedicated to the idea that Ellington, Hank Williams, and the Velvet Underground were created equal and deserve the same sort of scholarly scrutiny that used to be bestowed only on Bach and sons. Pop-music courses draw crowds of students on college campuses, and academic presses are putting out portentous titles…”
The Gender Of Writing
Is it possible to tell whether a writer is male or female? “Scholars have developed a computer algorithm that can examine an anonymous text and determine, with accuracy rates of better than 80 percent, whether the author is male or female. For centuries, linguists and cultural pundits have argued heatedly about whether men and women communicate differently. But the group is the first to create an actual prediction machine. A rather controversial one, too…”
LI Philharmonic Lets Exec Go – Blame His Inexperience
Last year when the Long Island Philharmonic went looking for a new top executive, they came back with Christopher von Zwehl. Of course he had no background in music; apparently the orchestra’s board was impressed that von Zwehl had raised money for “a proposed freight ferry from Kennedy Airport to New Jersey” and had been instrumental in “bringing the battleship USS New Jersey to that state.” Last week the orchestra let von Zwehl go, admitting he wasn’t up for the job. The problem? “Lack of knowledge about music and the classical music business was a hindrance.”
The Link Between Language, Dementia And Creativity
“Where in the brain does artistic creativity reside? Can the “damaged” mind give rise to true art?” There appears to be a link between some kinds of dementia and creativity. “One of the tragic aspects of it is the beginning of creativity heralds the onset of disease. And as the disease progresses, we go through a period where someone perfects the artistic skill, so it steadily improves as the disease is progressing, and then the disease eventually overwhelms the process and eventually the creativity is gone.”
Miami Building Its Center Of Art
Miami’s new performing arts center is rising under construction cranes. “For many, the $255 million PAC – which includes a 2,200-seat symphony hall and a 2,480-seat ballet opera house – represents the arrival of Miami’s burgeoning cultural scene. The PAC has drawn comparisons to New York City’s Lincoln Center and Washington, D.C.’s Kennedy Center. But beneath the surface, Miami’s arts community remains a work in progress that will take at least another generation to complete.”
Is The Performing Arts Center A Dinosaur?
Is the performing arts center an idea whose time has passed? “Those performing arts complexes were conceived in the ’50s, when the country was puffing out its civic chest and no one quite knew what burgeoning suburbs would mean for the cities they surrounded. By the time the first of the complexes was ready for audiences — Lincoln Center in 1962 — there were 68 others under construction, or planned, around the United States. Many were seen as tickets to legitimacy, playing the role that sports stadiums and museums would assume in later years. Now, decades later, the leaders of these monuments to the arts find themselves searching for new uses of aging halls and for more diverse new generations of patrons, all while spending hundreds of millions of dollars to make their fortress-like campuses more open. The performing arts center is being rethought, if not reinvented.”
Not In To The New Twyla
John Parry is disappointed in the new Twyla Tharp. “Post-millenial Twyla Tharp is a reinvention I’m struggling to come to terms with. Her new chamber group, formed in 2000, is different from previous companies, and her latest work seems influenced by her successful Broadway show Movin’ Out. No, she’s not selling out but she is selling her dancers short on content, if not on aerobic workouts.”
A Web Of Movie Success (Or Failure)
The internet is becoming a big force in the success or failure of a movie. “The net has a very big effect on the success of a movie. If you took a journey through all of those sites and read about Hulk for six months, by the time it comes along you’re either excited or not excited. I wasn’t – and that’s due to all the reviews I’ve read and the reviews that have been sent to me.”
Is America Ready For Radio Comedy Again?
It’s been 30 years since sketch-comedy has been popular on the radio. Now there’s a plan to try to revive it. “In an age dominated by channel-surfing and accelerated lifestyles, a disparate group of national and Chicago-based writers, performers and programmers are hoping America is ready to sit down and listen, really listen, to something that is, for all intents and purposes, retro radio with a 21st Century sensibility.”