College libraries are finding that students are abandoning libraries. “Today’s students can go through a semester, or even a year, without ever wandering into the stacks or opening a hardbound volume, and that’s a reality more and more librarians are recognizing. That circulation is down shows students aren’t simply using the Internet to check things out in digital form, but using it in lieu of checking things out at all.”
Tag: 09.07.05
Even Better The Second Time Around
We’ve all heard stories of those strange, obsessive types who attend the same play hundreds of times. This may not be normal behavior, but Rupert Christiansen says that there is great pleasure and intellectual growth to be derived from viewing the same work of theatre, art, or music more than once. “The point about the return visit is not the infantile pleasure of repetition, but the possibility of surprise. A good work of art never stays quite the same: it ambushes you, outwits you. A first exposure can provide the primitive excitement of wanting to know what happens next, a second provides the opportunity to register details, a third brings a sense of the underpinning joints and girders that make up the structure. And so it goes on.”
Montreal Film Fest Ends With A Question Mark
The beleagured Montreal World Film Festival wrapped up last weekend amid speculation that it would not live to see another summer. “Funding agencies gave $1 million of [World Film’s] funding to a new event after an analysis criticized the festival’s operation.” But founder Serge Losique insists that the show will go on in 2006, and claims that 34 countries have already signed on to provide films. Where the money will come from is another question, and one which likely will not be answered for months to come.
Webern In Hindsight
Sixty years ago next week, Anton Webern stepped outside of his house for a smoke and was accidentally shot dead by an American soldier. Thus ended the remarkable career of one of history’s brilliant and contradictory composers. Norman Lebrecht says that in order to appreciate Webern, it is best to embrace the contradiction. “Inspiration was anathema to Webern. All had to be strictly counted and numerically correct. If pleasure entered the process, it was the solitary satisfaction of making a line read the same forwards, backwards and upside down. Inverted by nature, Webern wrote music that turned in upon itself, rejecting every human value except absolute order. [And yet,] scan the entire canon, Passacaglia to posthumously published piano pieces, and you will not find one weak work of Webern’s, or one that fails immediately to proclaim its authorship. In the history of western music, that statement is true only of Beethoven and Wagner.”
Fiddling As Rome Burns? Exactly.
Critic Mark Morford spent the days during and after Hurricane Katrina at the infamous Burning Man festival in the Nevada desert, filing reports that struck some of his readers as lacking in gravitas, given the events unfolding on the Gulf Coast. But as Morford points out, the world does not stop when a tragedy occurs, and leaving aside the fact that the Burning Man participants passed the hat and raised thousands for the relief effort, “in the wake of any national disaster or mounting death toll, it is exactly those things that celebrate life that we turn to offer salve and balm and resurrection of spirit. In other words, in the aftermath of hurricanes and national tragedies and in the face of the most ham-fisted and heartless and freedom-stabbing administration in recent American history, we need this sort of ‘trifling’ Burning Man fluff more than ever, to act as spark, as beacon, as counterbalance.”
Paris Opera To Offer Cheap Tickets
The famed Opéra National de Paris is going the route of companies in Germany and the U.S., offering standing room tickets for its upcoming season, priced at €5 and aimed squarely at young audiences who otherwise might not attend a production. The company will allow 62 standing-room patrons per performance, and the tickets, which will be limited to two per buyer, will go on sale only 45 minutes before curtain.
Facing The Music In Pittsburgh
It’s trial by fire time for 25 arts and culture organizations in Pittsburgh, as the city’s Allegheny Regional Asset District prepares to distribute some $78 million in funds. Rather than simply considering grant applications, the RAD board grills representatives of applying groups at a series of public meetings, then renders its decisions based on the board’s impressions of the stability of the applicants. This year, the Pittsburgh Ballet Theatre, which recently dropped its live orchestra and is struggling to stay afloat, is on the hot seat, with the RAD board worrying that PBT is “draining its endowment to balance its budget.”
Carping Before The Shows Even Open
The new Broadway season is almost upon us, so how are New York’s infamous theatre critics viewing the crop of hot new shows about to descend on the Big Apple? Well, as you might expect, they’re hot for Chita Rivera, tired of Matthew Broderick and Nathan Lane, and just generally bitchy as all get-out…
KC Symphony Musician Murdered
51-year-old bass player Steven Peters, a 21-year veteran of the Kansas City Symphony, was found murdered in his home on Tuesday. Police are releasing little information about the crime, but Mr. Peters’ brother-in-law has been quoted by the Associated Press as saying that the house had been burgled four times in the last six months. Members of the orchestra were notified by phone Tuesday night.
Canada’s Minister Of Hot Potatoes
Minister of Canadian Heritage might not sound like the most high-pressure government job, but don’t tell that to the woman currently holding that title. The CBC lockout falls under her purview, for one thing, and she is openly disdainful of the bickering that led to the work stoppage, insisting that the CBC’s problems are “not a question of money… [but of] governance.” Then there’s the dustup over satellite radio, which Canadians broadcasters desperately want to launch, but which some worry will spell the end of Canada’s historic controls on commercial broadcasting which have allowed the country’s own artists to thrive without being swamped by the American media machine. On that issue, Heritage Minister Liza Frulla admits she still isn’t sure which way she’ll turn.