Tom Strini enumerates the decline of the classical music business and wonders if classical music will “regain the standing it had in society in the first half of the 20th century?” He concludes: “No. Classical music and new music rising from that tradition will remain marginal. We can take comfort in the fact that almost every cultural commodity is marginal these days – marginality is a matter of degree.”
Tag: 09.11.04
Guantanamo In NY
Gillian Slovo’s play about Guantánamo detainees was controversial in London – so how would it play in New York? “For a novelist who has not previously written for the theatre, New York did seem rather unbelievable, and, it has to be confessed, not a little frightening. This is a play, after all, that centres on British Asians or British Islamic converts, people who had all got caught up in the events that followed the obliteration of the Twin Towers. How would Americans deal with it?”
Film-Festivals-Fit-All
These days there’s a film festival for every taste. “The big festivals, Sundance (ski bums and L.A. players), Toronto (largely sold out before it starts) and Cannes (essentially a massive scrum of 3,500 journalists), mean congestion in the streets, lineups for everything and a hierarchy of press, industry and VIPs that can overwhelm a mere film lover. Add the logistics of getting tickets, getting into the theatre — never mind a party — and the bigger fests can start to feel suspiciously like work. Fortunately, for someone willing to travel, there are so many festivals that there is an almost endless choice of alternatives.”
Get Shorty
Every year hundreds of short films are made. But aside from landing on the lineups of film festivals, shorts are rarely seen in movie theatres. “So why then, do so many Canadian filmmakers continue to produce them in such numbers? The answer is as complex and varied as the films themselves.”
Pursuing The Enablers
U.S. government officials are recommending that Congress amend the nation’s copyright law to hold companies which “rely on copyright infringement to make a profit” liable for the actions of consumers who use their products. The new regulations, which are aimed squarely at file-trading enablers such as Kazaa and Grokster, are very controversial, with privacy advocates insisting that previous Supreme Court rulings prohibit such wide-ranging prohibitions.
A Phoenix In St. Louis
It was only four years ago that the St. Louis Symphony Orchestra faced the very real prospect of bankruptcy, with the best-case scenario seeming to be a drastic cutback in the ensemble’s artistic quality and national profile. And yet, as the SLSO prepares for its 125th season this fall, it has raised $80 million for its endowment, appointed a new high-profile music director (David Robertson) to replace the late Hans Vonk, and generally sent out word that it is as viable an organization as any in the U.S.
Change Coming In Detroit, But Don’t Hold Your Breath
“Neeme Jarvi says his impending exit as music director of the Detroit Symphony Orchestra wasn’t strictly his idea. He also declares he’d be happy to spend several weeks a year with the DSO while a search committee headed by Anne Parsons, the orchestra’s new executive director, looks for his successor. With Jarvi starting his final season at the artistic helm and Parsons just settling in, the landscape around the DSO might appear to be shifting. But don’t expect sudden upheaval.”
Temirkanov To Leave Baltimore
Yuri Temirkanov has announced that he will step down as music director of the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra at the end of the 2005-06 season. “He left his imprint on the BSO early during his tenure, replacing several principal players, including the pivotal position of concertmaster, with musicians who greatly enhanced the ensemble’s overall tone… Temirkanov has been on a year-to-year contract since his initial three-year contract with the BSO expired at the end of the 2002-2003 season.”
Scholarship By Committee?
When a Harvard scholar was recently accused of lifting several paragraphs of his new book from another author, he resorted to a now-familiar defense: it was his “research assistants” who had been sloppy and allowed the unattributed quotations. But that type of buck-passing infuriates some scholars, who are loudly questioning whether works written with the aid of multiple student researchers actually qualify as scholarship at all. “We’re not talking about razor blades or soap. We’re talking about creative endeavors. A book that bears a name is widely presumed to be written by that author.”
Defiant To The End
Chicago’s distinctive and aptly named Defiant Theatre closes its doors forever this week with a production of Anthony Burgess’s classic of violence and societal manipulation, A Clockwork Orange. “Anyone who’s been watching the distinctive theatrical work of Defiant — the original bad boys and girls of the off-Loop — over these last 10 years quickly gets [director Christopher] Johnson’s meta-point. Defiant is over… The original people have gone soft, gotten married, acquired proper jobs. You can’t keep churning out the old ultra-violence, as Alex would say, on a shoestring in those circumstances.”