“The Sydney Symphony receives nearly $9 million each year. That is more funding than goes to all of Australia’s visual artists, or all of the nation’s writers and publishers, or all the dancers, or all the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander artists, or all the community art practitioners. My problem is not that we still fund classical European culture, it’s just that we fund so bloody much of it and so very little of everything else.”
Tag: 10.18.07
So Where Are Libraries In Copyright Fight?
“Public libraries are invisible in most debates about copyright as it affects mass consumption. Still, they are the institutions which have the longest experience of making copyright goods available fairly to people who have not paid directly for them; and in all the time libraries have been around, no one has come up with a better model. Libraries don’t abolish copyright, and in some ways are more scrupulous about it than most institutions. But they allow the price of copyright goods to be lowered to the point at which they become worthwhile both for individual buyers and for the makers.”
RIAA Can Dish It Out, But Hates To Take It
“The music-industry lobbying-and-litigation arm is protesting a federal magistrate’s recommendation that it cough up hundreds of thousands of dollars in legal fees for an Oregon woman. Tanya Andersen, 42, says she racked up the expenses defending against an RIAA infringement lawsuit that was ultimately dismissed for lack of evidence… The RIAA is arguing in court documents that the association shouldn’t have to pay defense counsel fees, because Andersen is probably guilty anyway.”
Maybe It’s An Elaborate New Piracy Scheme
Chris Walla, guitarist for the indie rock band Death Cab For Cutie expected to be mixing the band’s latest album in Seattle this month, but the hard drive containing the raw tracks never made it from Vancouver, after border agents seized the drive. “Walla said he believed the confiscation was random, but [the record label] and some music publications hinted that the seizure of such a politically charged album may have been more than a coincidence.”
Booker Finalists To Be Distributed Free Online
“The Man Booker Prize has been criticised over the years for selecting dark, unreadable and worthy tomes unlike the winners of other more populist literary prizes. Now, in the week that Anne Enright became its 2007 winner, it is shaking off criticisms of being elitist and out of touch by taking the radical step of placing all its shortlisted novels online, available free to anyone worldwide.”
The Unabridged Raymond Carver
“Almost 20 years after his death, the famously lean prose of the short-story writer Raymond Carver may be about to put on a little weight. His widow, the poet Tess Gallagher, is planning to bring out a new version of What We Talk About When We Talk About Love, the collection that made his name on its publication in 1981. It’s the latest round in a tug of war over Carver’s fiction between his second wife and Gordon Lish, the editor who launched Carver’s career.”
What Good Are Architecture Prizes?
The Stirling Prize, the UK’s top award for architecture, gets handed out on live TV, but it hardly makes the cultural radar for most Britons. And in contrast to the success enjoyed by authors who win major prizes, architects who take home the gold rarely see a major bump in commissions. So why do we even have such prizes?
Actress Deborah Kerr, 86
“British actress Deborah Kerr, known to millions for her roles in The King And I, Black Narcissus and From Here To Eternity, has died at the age of 86. Born in Scotland in 1921, the actress made her name in British films before becoming successful in Hollywood. Nominated for the best actress Oscar six times, she was given an honorary award by the Academy in 1994.”
Maybe Next Time, She’ll Take The Viola Section
A NASA astronaut will be taking some music with her into space next month. And no, it’s not on an iPod. Stephanie Wilson, a lifelong fan of the Boston Symphony, approached music director James Levine about the idea of taking something symbolic into orbit, and wound up the recipient of a page from the conducting score of Beethoven’s 9th, signed by Levine and the musicians of the BSO.
Not Everyone Likes Cultural Exchanges
The simmering tensions between Iran and the West apparently aren’t limited to the geopolitical arena. This summer, after taking a German orchestra on a Mideast tour which included two concerts in Tehran, conductor Michael Dreyer received more than 100 irate e-mails from people who don’t approve of his efforts to reach across international boundaries with music. But he isn’t the only one making the attempt…