So Disney’s decided to ban smoking in all its future films? Good idea, says Mark Caro, but honestly, why stop there? What about a ban on hotshot action stars firing their guns while pointlessly holding them sideways? Or a ban on any pratfall involving a pool? Or a ban on, say, Lindsay Lohan?
Tag: 07.29.07
Defending Spano
When Atlanta critic Pierre Ruhe wrote last week that Atlanta Symphony music director Robert Spano seemed to have dropped off the list of up-and-coming conductors likely to land a very high-profile directorship, it stirred up plenty of opinions among his readers. Some called the piece “character assassination,” while others wondered why a conductor dedicating himself fully to a great orchestra in Atlanta instead of chasing an overrated gig in New York would not be celebrated for his dedication.
Who Will Run The Met?
Phillippe de Montebello has been the director of New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art for 30 years now, and he is a giant among giants in the art world. But he is also 71, and not in the best health, and the question of who might succeed him at the Met looms large in the New York scene.
Finding The Real L.A.
The city of Los Angeles is undertaking a daunting task: “to make sense of — and give context to — a region that has often felt diffuse, imprecise and haphazardly imagined.” In other words, to uncover the “real” L.A., and “identify, catalog and ultimately protect not just its physical ‘built history’ but to provide a sharper portrait of Los Angeles and how it came to be.”
NEMO Cancelled
“The NEMO music festival — an annual conference that brings artists and industry types to Boston for three days of panel discussions, musical showcases, and a trade show — is taking the year off.” Organizers say that online communication has overtaken the live conference format, and no decision has been made on whether NEMO will be revived in 2008.
Playing With Dolls
“What drove Morton Bartlett to create exquisitely realistic sculptures, dress them, and take pictures of them in evocatively staged scenes is a mystery. Since his death in 1992, though, the Boston-based photographer’s figures have been hailed as works of art.”
Keeping Twin Legacies Alive & Vibrant
“It’s a happy accident that two of the most self-absorbed legends in the history of jazz — the bassist Charles Mingus and the alto saxophonist Art Pepper — married women who wound up equally absorbed in the preservation of their legacies. The men have been dead now for a quarter-century, yet their widows, Sue Graham Mingus and Laurie Pepper, keep unveiling major discoveries.”
The Stunning Success Of El Sistema
Venezuela’s El Sistema, which teaches classical music to underprivileged kids, has a new poster boy in LA Philharmonic music director designate Gustavo Dudamel. But El Sistema’s list of successes goes far deeper than Dudamel. “The road taken by Dudamel… is one along which some 270,000 young Venezuelans are now registered to aspire, playing music across a land seeded with 220 youth orchestras from the Andes to the Caribbean.”
Composers & Computers
The craft of music composition has changed drastically in the last 100 years, and one of the most dramatic changes has been the rise of the computer as a compositional aid. “Personal computers were originally used primarily for musical notation, but as the technology has evolved, their ability to play back music has become more of a concern to the elder composers.”
85 Juergens Paintings Discovered In Chicago
Officials sorting through the belongings of an elderly woman from Chicago have discovered a treasure trove of “watercolors, sketches, and oils on canvas and wood, all by American impressionist Alfred Juergens — an unprecedented and unexpected collection with a value that would start, conservatively, in the hundreds of thousands of dollars.”