“How hard it can it be? A 70-piece ensemble is waiting expectantly for my downbeat for the first movement of Beethoven’s Fifth. What kind of a maestro should I be? The conductor is, after all, not the karaoke conduit I have been play-acting for years. He is mentor, scholar, motivator, interpreter, leader, follower, idol. He is all of those and none, a cryptic figurehead who can mean everything or nothing depending on what he brings to the performance.”
Tag: 08.13.08
Journalism’s Corrections Fetish
“No one can accuse The New York Times of papering over its mistakes. America’s most famous newspaper today issued a formal correction to a review of a Broadway production of West Side Story published no less than 48 years ago.”
The Ownership Gridlock
“The commons leads to overuse and destruction; the anticommons leads to underuse and waste. In the cultural sphere, ever tighter restrictions on copyright and fair use limit artists’ abilities to sample and build on older works of art.”
Sotheby’s To Move Its Asian Art Sales To Asia
Sotheby’s said it will cease holding auctions of Asian contemporary art in New York and ‘consolidate’ them instead in Hong Kong, with biannual sales in the Asian city.
Why Is Music For Theatre So Bad?
“I genuinely can’t understand why this is so. Because no good composers are working in theatre? Because directors are worried it’ll somehow dominate, or turn it into opera – or, worse, a musical? Surely it can’t be because they don’t know any better? Can it?”
Dallas Opera Hires New York Star To Lead It
George R. Steel said on Tuesday that he was resigning as executive director of the Miller Theater at Columbia University, which he has turned into a vital and adventurous part of New York’s music scene, to become general director of the Dallas Opera, starting on Oct. 1.
Elgar Without The Vibrato? The Horror!
Roger Norrington proposes to perform at the Proms sans the vibrato. “The dispute sits atop the intersection of deeper issues, like British national pride and how to bring art of the past back to life. At the heart of the kerfuffle lies the reputation of Edward Elgar, the quintessentially British composer in a country that can be sensitive about its relative dearth of great masters.”
Actor Pressures Canada’s Shaw Festival To Diversify
“Toronto’s Andrew Moodie, 40, electrified the country’s theatrical community last week when he announced that he was starting an online initiative he calls Share the Stage to lever the festival, started 46 years ago at Niagara-on-the-Lake, Ont., to embrace such practices as colour-blind casting. In the announcement, Moodie asks: ‘Does the festival actually have a policy to exclude people based on race?’ ”
Palestinian Poet Mahmoud Darwish Gets A State Funeral
“Palestinians are staging the equivalent of a state funeral for Mr. Darwish, 67, an honour previously accorded only to Palestine Liberation Organization leader Yasser Arafat, who died in 2004. Mr. Darwish’s award-winning poetry, translated into more than 20 languages, has served as an eloquent witness of Palestinian exile and loss of homeland.”
Claim: UK Conservatives Are Now “The Party Of The Arts”
So says Tory shadow culture minister Ed Vaizey. “There will always be people who claim ‘Labour good, Tory bad’, even in the face of the most incontrovertible evidence to the contrary. It is intensely frustrating when those you are talking to choose to hear only what they want to hear. Sometimes, I guess, you just can’t teach an artistic director new tricks.”