The Edinburgh Festival Fringe is coming up, but it’s Irish theater companies, not their Scottish colleagues, who are in a position to showcase their work. “What should set alarm bells ringing is not only that Scotland is failing to make the most of an international festival on its doorstep, but it’s also lagging behind in the promotion of Scots artists abroad.”
Tag: 07.15.06
Group: Canadian Museums Are Endangered
“Canada is in danger of losing several of its museums because of a funding freeze that has lasted 34 years, says the Canadian Museums Association.” The situation has been brought about, the association says, by a funding freeze that has lasted 34 years…
Man Hears/Records Songs Of The Dead
A Canadian fiddler claims he hears music written by dead people. “Holed up in his trailer in Inverness, Cape Breton, the 81-year-old master fiddler pens 10 to 15 tunes a day, often hunched over his kitchen table. By his own count — and he keeps a daily tally on small sheets of paper — he has produced 33,300 compositions, but he still balks at publishing them, saying he hasn’t yet reached his personal goal of 35,000. Yet MacDougall insists he’s not creating art; he’s simply recording history. ‘It’s from the people who lived here before … they could make [songs], but they couldn’t write them’.”
Building Homes For Musicians In New Orleans
Volunteers are building a housing village in New Orleans for musicians. “The housing program is run by Habitat for Humanity. Saxophone player Branford Marsalis and singer Harry Connick Jr., honorary chairmen of the charity’s Gulf Coast rebuilding program, dreamed up the idea to encourage musicians to move into one area. The group bought a vacant lot formerly owned by the city school board and is using its army of volunteers — about 3,000 of them so far — to build 75 homes. It plans another 225 houses elsewhere in the neighborhood.”