A new holiday movie is quietly ushering in a new revolution in digital animation. The Polar Express was performed by real actors covered in motion sensors, whose movements were converted into animation in post-production. The result is a new breed of film blurring the line between live-action and animation, and “from a technical perspective it could mark a turning point in the gradual transition from an analog to a digital cinema.”
Tag: 10.24.04
Opus Posthumous
British playwright Sarah Kane committed suicide five years ago, and today, her plays are some of the hottest properties on the European theatre scene. But how much of that posthumous success has to do with the quality of Kane’s work, and how much can be attributed to the power of her personal story?
It’s Not Who You Teach, It’s How Many Senators You Know
In Philadelphia, the new music-focused Orchestra 2001 is looking (so far, unsuccessfully) for a $20,000 grant to fund a groundbreaking music education series for underprivileged children. Meanwhile, Philly Pops got $150,000 in government funds last year for educational activities that were not exactly the height of creative engagement. Worse, the pops orchestra hasn’t even used the vast majority of the money. Why the inequity? David Stearns says that it has little to do with artistic integrity, and a whole lot to do with political connections.
Philly Mayor Deep In The Orchestral Trenches
It was something of a surprise when Philadelphia mayor John Street, who has never taken a leading role in the city’s arts community, stepped into the middle of the acrimonious Philadelphia Orchestra contract negotiations last week. But apparently, Street means to stay involved in the delicate contract talks: after brokering a new extension of the existing agreement, the mayor and his Commerce Director have taken a direct role in the process, and hope to use their combined clout to avoid a work stoppage. The intervention means that both musicians and management will likely have to stop posturing and actually make a good-faith attempt to settle their differences.
Another Audubon Controversy
The Audubon Quartet is making headlines again, three years after the group was dismissed from the faculty of Virginia Tech in the wake of recriminations and lawsuits stemming from the group’s decision to split with its first violinist, David Ehrlich. The Audubon has continued to perform with a new first violinist, ever as Ehrlich has continued to challenge the group’s right to perform at all. Now, Ehrlich has been suddenly and unexpectedly rehired at Virginia Tech as an “outreach” coordinator, and the music faculty are furious.
Edward Said: Above All, Musician
Daniel Barenboim remembers his good friend Edward Said: “Edward Said was, for many, a great thinker, a fighter for the rights of his people, and an incomparable intellectual. But for me, he was always, really, a musician, in the deepest sense of the term.”
A Cheaper (Better?) Piano?
The piano is 300-year-old technology. So can it be improved? Made more cheaply? An engineering professor is looking in to it. “Is there some material other than wood that will produce the dulcet sound of a Steinway without costing a mint? Can we figure out a way of constructing the keyboard-action mechanism (the keys striking the strings) so that it doesn’t take an army of craftsman to put it into place? Can you change the shape of the piano and still allow it to resist the 20 tonnes of pressure the wires exert? Can piano wire be made differently?”
A Jazz Beachhead
Will Lincoln Center’s new jazz temple revive interest in the art form? “No one will doubt the scope and ambition of the venture, which marks the first time a cultural center has been conceived from the ground up to honor jazz, a music now virtually ignored by the country that invented it. Whether future generations will look upon the grand edifice as a turning point for indigenous American music or a glorious last stand for an art form that’s slowly slipping from public consciousness (at least in the U.S.), Jazz at Lincoln Center clearly showed no hesitation in making its plans.”
The Mozart Of Painting (Or Is It Just Hype?)
Meet the art world’s hottest young artist: “Within a week of her most recent exhibition, she had been filmed by more than 10 TV crews, received calls from David Letterman, Ellen DeGeneres and Oprah, and been labelled a ‘world-famous Abstract Expressionist’. But the artist herself is said to be oblivious to it all. She is, according to those closest to her, ‘kind of reclusive’, ‘very sensitive’, ‘temperamental’ at times, and extremely loath to talk about her work.” And she is… four years old!
Classically Speaking – Today’s Classical Music Critic
There are plenty of things wrong with the way classical music is covered in today’s newspapers. A symposium in New York last weekend focused on what it’s like to be a classical music criic…