“The Houston Symphony announced Friday [Juny 31] that it will shutter administrative offices next week, furlough musicians and reduce conductor’s salaries next season to save nearly $900,000. The cuts will not change the concert schedule for next year, said Matthew VanBesien, the symphony’s executive director and CEO.”
Tag: 08.01.09
Jury Orders Student To Pay $675,000 For Downloading Music
“Jurors ordered Tenenbaum to pay $22,500 for each incident of copyright infringement, effectively finding that his actions were willful. Under federal law, the recording companies were entitled to $750 to $30,000 per infringement. But the law allows as much as $150,000 per track if the jury finds the infringements were willful. The maximum jurors could have awarded in Tenenbaum’s case was $4.5 million.”
LA County Museum’s Closing Of Film Program Is “Dismaying”
“The news that the L.A. County Museum of Art’s director, Michael Govan, has decided to close down the museum’s expertly managed film program is so dismaying — and don’t believe for a moment that this hiatus is designed to refresh and strengthen film at LACMA. As Times’ movie critic Kenneth Turan observed in his angry, excellent article Thursday, that sounds like a slick rationale from a culturecrat in a smart suit.”
Heavy Betting On Booker Win
“A mysterious rush of bets on the Man Booker Prize for Fiction has seen the novelist Hilary Mantel installed as early favourite after 95 per cent of all wagers on the contest were placed on her.”
Merce Cunningham And The Meaning Of Greatness
“The tone of Cunningham’s obituaries is significantly different from that of Cage’s. When he died in 1992, less than a month before his 80th birthday, Cage was widely credited for being among the most original music thinkers of all time and among the most influential and charismatic musicians of his day. But no one dared call him the greatest composer of his time.”
In Remotest Japan – World’s Largest Outdoor Art Festival
“It is the world’s biggest open-air art festival and the fourth Triennial opened last weekend with more than 350 artworks by artists from 38 countries. Sculptures, paintings and installations pepper the landscape and are set amid rice fields, forests, in abandoned schools and vacant wooden houses.”