Tag: 07.10.04

NY Phil Cancels Tour

The New York Philharmonic, battling deficits and deep into contract negotiations with its musicians, has canceled a tour of Europe scheduled for September, saying that the Spanish presenters couldn’t guarantee the necessary fees to keep the tour in the black. This is the third time in the last calendar year that the orchestra has canceled a tour, but Philharmonic officials insist that a fall 2004 tour to Japan and South Korea is not in danger.

A Bloody Awful Comedy

Mozart’s Abduction from the Seraglio is supposed to be a comedy. Comedies, as a rule, do not include “scenes of copulation, fellatio, rape, torture and mutilation.” Comedies do not end with the protagonists littering the stage as corpses. And yet, this is the much-criticized approach being taken to Seraglio by Berlin’s Komische Oper. People are walking out of the production in droves, and newspapers are braying about misuse of public funds. So why even attempt such a bloody and controversial production? Well, every show thus far has sold out. “It could also be that shock treatment is just what’s needed to jolt some outmoded art forms back to life.”

Is Pulling Rank A Social Injustice?

When a power-hungry boss, an overzealous coach, or a powerful politician uses his perceived authority to slap down an underling, most people would label the guy a jerk, a bully, or worse. But Robert Fuller is taking it one step further, accusing such types of “rankism,” a serious social injustice which points up the need for society to begin tearing down traditional structures of rank, or at least to demand better treatment from those in authority. Fuller, a prominent physicist and past president of Oberlin College, is proposing some controversial societal changes to combat rankism, including the abolition of university tenure.

Today’s Architects – Flashy Design Over Structural Soundness?

What’s wrong with architects these days? There have been a number of high-profile design failures – leaking rooks, structural malfunctions…. “These setbacks and controversies have allowed sober-minded skeptics to accuse the profession of abandoning its original purpose — holding up a roof and keeping out the weather — in favor of reckless and phantasmagorical aesthetic effects, best exemplified by the wavy titanium surfaces of Frank Gehry’s Bilbao Guggenheim or the angled walls of Mr. Koolhaas’s new Central Library in Seattle.”

Pearl Now World’s Biggest Piano-Maker

The Pearl River Piano Company based in the southern Chinese metropolis of Guangzhou, is now the world’s largest piano maker. At the company’s spotless factory, 280 pianos a day roll off the production line like cars in an auto plant. “China’s one-child policy has created a culture where parents invest heavily in their children’s education – a boon for piano makers like Pearl River.”

Underwater Symphony

“A symphony conductor donned scuba gear and used a red snorkel for a baton to lead a group of underwater ‘musicians’ wearing tuxedos and sequins Saturday in the Florida Keys National Marine Sanctuary. The scene was part of the yearly Underwater Music Festival that attracted more than 400 divers and snorkelers to Looe Key Reef, about 6 miles south of Big Pine Key.”

Readers = Involved Active Citizens (And Non-Readers?…)

This week’s survey by the National Endowment for the Arts “indicates that people who read for pleasure are many times more likely than those who don’t to visit museums and attend musical performances, almost three times as likely to perform volunteer and charity work, and almost twice as likely to attend sporting events. Readers, in other words, are active, while nonreaders — more than half the population — have settled into apathy. There is a basic social divide between those for whom life is an accrual of fresh experience and knowledge, and those for whom maturity is a process of mental atrophy. The shift toward the latter category is frightening.”