It may be a bum year at the box office, but this year’s crop of summer blockbusters suggests that Hollywood may finally be getting over a hump that has plagued it for decades: racial inequality both in front of the cameras and behind the scenes. “Black filmmakers and actors and those who work with them echoed that sense of progress, pointing especially to evidence that white audiences – spurred by the 20-year-old hip-hop revolution – are going to films that might once have been seen as an African-American preserve.”
Tag: 07.10.05
When Is A Symphony Orchestra Not The Answer?
Can the demise of a symphony orchestra actually be good for the affected city’s classical music scene? It seems counterintuitive, but Lawrence Johnson points out that, since the untimely end of the Florida Philharmonic, smaller chamber ensembles have begun to flourish in geographically disparate South Florida. “It’s not what former Philharmonic musicians want to hear, nor what those who prefer to experience the rich glory and volume of a large symphony orchestra desire. But the fact is that these smaller, less expensive orchestras and chamber ensembles may be more effectively serving the needs of local audiences than the Florida Philharmonic.”
Branching Out In La-La Land
There aren’t a lot of career options for classically trained musicians – for most, either you win an orchestra job or two, or you don’t, in which case you spend your life freelancing and teaching to make ends meet. But in Los Angeles, a paradigm shift is underway, in the form of “a small but growing and spirited subculture of young, classically trained female L.A. musicians who have skirted the symphony audition path to play ‘alternative’ musical genres and enjoy eclectic entertainment-industry work now that the Hollywood studios are no longer boys’ clubs… The impressive range of styles they play provides them with a level of excitement and performance satisfaction that more traditional musicians cannot claim — and they wouldn’t have it any other way.”