Tag: 08.02.06

An Arts Professional’s Case For Voting Tory

Simon Reade, artistic director of Bristol Old Vic, explains in a “Dear Tony” letter to the prime minister why he’s thinking of voting Tory. “I know we’ve hardly met, but you have really let me down. I work in the most liberal of professions, the theatre. I am an artistic director, a producer/artist/leader of an innovative creative industry. But now, like luminaries of the arts world who in 1979 voted for Margaret Thatcher, I am thinking of voting Tory. And it’s your fault, Tony.”

Elisabeth Schwarzkopf, 90

“Dame Elisabeth was one of the most admired singers of the 20th Century, equally famous for her operatic performances and her concert appearances. Her specialties included the works of Mozart, Schubert and Hugo Wolf, and she was particularly associated with the role of Marschallin in Richard Strauss’s comic opera Der Rosenkavalier.”

Your Brain As A Computer

Scientists are building a microcomputer meant to mimic functions of the human brain. “The Spinnaker — short for ‘spiking neural network architecture’ — system will not only help scientists better understand the complex interactions of brain cells, but it could also lead to fault-tolerant computers that, like the brain, work despite malfunctions in tiny circuits.”

The Young Lawyer And The eBay Fake

At the age of 30, Kenneth Walton had a boring job as an attorney with a big Sacramento law firm, spending his days staring out of the windows of his 28th-floor office and surfing the internet when he should have been preparing briefs for corporate clients. He had the beginner’s salary, with the promise of riches to come, and a successful lawyer girlfriend with a coveted job in a judge’s chambers.” And then he faked a painting and sold it on eBay…

Sell Job – Why Does Classical Music Need It?

“We have been told variously that classical music is an indispensable dinner-party accessory (Classic FM), an IQ boost for the newborn (LSO), a deterrent to vandals (London Underground), an MTV substitute (New York Philharmonic), a mating call for gay men (BMG), a readers’ companion (Penguin Books), a come-on for tourists (Republic of Austria) and a cure for the common cold (lab results awaited). What any of this has to do with sampling and enjoying a 300-year heritage of lyric narrative and emotion gets lost in the fever of the sales pitch.”

For The Kids – Seattle Children’s Bookstore Hangs On

“The travails of independents in today’s market are well-known, but for specialty children’s bookstores, survival is even more precarious. Kids’ books are priced lower than adult fare, yet the overhead is the same. And the young clientele has a pesky way of growing up and moving on.” But Seattle’s oldest children’s book store is doing fine…

D.C.’s Source Theatre To Become Arts Center

“After six months of uncertainty about the Source Theatre Company, the Cultural Development Corporation, a private, nonprofit group, announced yesterday that it is buying the theater’s building at 1835 14th St. NW and will make it an arts center. The moribund, 33-year-old Source Theatre Company will cease to exist, but the building will be called the Source.”

Director Harold Scott, 70

“Harold Scott, an actor, producer and director and the first black artistic director of a major American regional theater, died at his home in Newark on July 16.” The longtime head of the directing program at Rutgers University and a collaborator with actor Avery Brooks, he led the Cincinnati Playhouse in the Park from 1972 to ’74.