Composers have always experimented with new ways of producing music. So today’s forays into interactivity come from a long tradition. “Yet these interactive inventions may someday put composers out of business, at least those who cling to the quaint idea that composing means one person in private putting notes and sounds together for later public performance.” – New York Times
Tag: 08.06.00
BUT I WANT TO PAY
A reporter decides to go legal and try to purchase downloadable music through the internet. “Even if Napster and Scour were shut down tomorrow, nobody in their right mind would spend this much time and frustration trying to buy digital music online. Lawsuits and copyright issues aside, the music industry isn’t anywhere near creating a system that customers will embrace; heck, it’s hard enough trying to get them to take your money.” – Boston Globe
REPORTS OF MY DEATH…
If Deutsche Grammophon and EMI Classics and Sony Classical were then to bite the dust, the sun would continue to rise each morning even i,f it meant that no one could buy yet another Beethoven symphony conducted by Claudio Abbado or yet another opera starring Placido Domingo. More than likely, those little record labels that already dot the scene would become more significant, fill in the gaps and keep the fires of classical music burning. – Baltimore Sun
HARD MAKING IT AT HOME
There are some terrific British jazz musicians. But getting noticed at home is difficult. “With a few laudable exceptions, the greatest appreciation of British jazz comes from outside the United Kingdom.” – The Observer (UK)
ON JESSYE NORMAN
“She is 54 now, and past her vocal prime. Time has accentuated her tendency to sing sharp, and the sheer brazen splendour of the sound she once produced is irrecoverably tarnished. As if to compensate, she has developed a grand manner on the platform – complete with radiant smiles, gracious waves and a rapt pose suggesting fervent prayer to the Almighty – which forcibly brings to mind the Irish adage of ‘all gong and no dinner’.” – The Telegraph (UK)
MARLBORO MATTERS
“Part artist colony, part musical monastery, part summer camp, Marlboro is the place where 80 or so musicians, from teenagers to septuagenarians, come together in this tough-love utopia to explore music at the greatest possible depth. The musicians are often those who stand to make a difference: those in the United States’ Big Five orchestras.” – Philadelphia Inquirer
IN THE LAND OF THE PHILISTINES
There are, of course, all the standard reasons for a publisher to turn down a book. “But what, I wonder, are ‘all the standard arguments’? The notion that fortune – in the shape of a huge advance and a lot of hype for an unwritten first novel – favours the young? That the winner, so long as he or she has no literary record, takes all? That what sells a book is a pretty face on the jacket? No publisher would dare reject a book because the author was the wrong colour or the wrong gender, but to be the wrong age is unforgivable.” – The Observer (UK)
THE NEW DANCE
The line between performance and entertainment has blurred considerably in the last few years. Riverdance, Matthew Bourne’s ‘Swan Lake’ and most notably the teaming of the experimentalist Julie Taymor with Disney to produce Broadway’s ‘Lion King’ have forged significant links between art and commerce. Choreographer Elizabeth Streb, herself a hybrid of working class roots and MacArthur Foundation ‘genius grant’ credentials, cites Ringling Brothers and Barnum & Bailey, Cirque du Soleil, Stomp, ‘Bring In da Noise, Bring In da Funk’ and Zingaro as precedents. – New York Times
HOME FOR THE UNTALENTED
Two of Russia’s best dancers – Altynai Asylmuratova and Irek Mukhamedov – come to London and talk about British dance: “Here you can teach anybody – even when there’s no talent. Even if they’re like this [his hands mime pigeon toes] or like this [he conjures a fat little troll] if their parents pay. And what happens to this person-who-is-not-quite-talented? They go to school; they dance; they become a teacher.” – The Telegraph (UK)
NEVER NEUTRAL
“In 1991, Pauline Kael decided to stop writing movie reviews for The New Yorker, which she had been doing more or less continuously since 1968. Nine years later, everyone still wonders what the most influential movie critic of all time thinks.” – Toronto Star