Leonard Slatkin won’t officially take over the reins of the Detroit Symphony until next fall, but he’s already full of ideas for advancing the orchestra’s reputation both at home and around the country. He plans to announce a five-year plan for the DSO for artistic and financial success. Of course, his initial contract only runs for three years, but a two-year extension “is already in the works.”
Tag: 10.24.07
Oldest Known Koran Sells For $2.3m
“A Koran written in 1203, believed to be the oldest known complete copy, has sold for more than $2.3 million at an auction.” The sale price was more than three times the auction house’s estimate.
Swiss Booksellers Encroaching On Germany
“Germany’s book culture is sustained by an age-old practice requiring all bookstores, including German online booksellers, to sell books at fixed prices. Save for old, used or damaged books, discounting in Germany is illegal… Now this system is under threat from, of all people, the Swiss. Just across the border, the Swiss lately decided to permit the discounting of German books — a move that some in the book trade here fear will eventually force Germany itself to follow suit, transforming a diverse and book-rich culture into an echo of big-chain America.”
Posthumous Celebrity Sell-Outs Safe Again
“The notion that celebrities could even confer the right to cash in on their personas post mortem was in dispute until 1984, when the California Legislature passed a bill that allowed stars to leave such rights in their wills. In May of this year, however, two federal courts interpreted the bill with regard to the [Marilyn Monroe] estate in a way that excluded her and other celebrities who died before the Legislature’s action… With some nudging from the Screen Actors Guild and the Monroe estate, the California Senate drafted clarifying legislation. Senate Bill No. 771, affectionately known as the Dead Celebrities Bill, passed without objection.”
Must Program Notes Be So Snobbish?
Why are program notes at orchestra concerts so badly (and pompously) written? “To be a program annotator, it seems, one must have passed a course in turgid prose and have demonstrated proficiency in windy, circuitous, elliptical writing… They are, to paraphrase Anna Russell, written by great experts to impress — and for the edification of — other great experts.”
Eggers & Heinz? (Sounds Like Breakfast.)
Author Dave Eggers was presented with a Heinz Award in Arts and Humanities for his work establishing a chain of non-profit literacy centers this week in Pittsburgh. “At 37, Eggers is the youngest winner of a Heinz Award, which comes with a $250,000 prize. He is giving the money directly to the [literacy] centers.”
British Indy Film Award Finalists Announced
“Control, Anton Corbijn’s biopic of the Joy Division frontman Ian Curtis, leads the nominations for this year’s British Independent Film Awards. The film, which traces the life of the singer who killed himself when he was 23 and on the brink of international fame, is nominated in 10 categories for the awards, which recognise the best of home-grown cinema.”
Dissecting The Wheeldon Backlash
Christopher Wheeldon, who has ridden a wave of almost universally positive press to his position at the top of the dance world, has lately been feeling the pain of the press’s rougher side. Judith Mackrell says it was bound to happen eventually. “It has been years since anyone planned a new ballet company of the scale and ambition Wheeldon was talking about, [and] even before Morphoses had set foot on stage, the volume of media coverage began to turn counter-productive.”
The Power of Theatre
London theatre critic Michael Billington, who has just published a 50-year history of the art form, believes that actors and playwrights serve as aids to societal change. “Theatre rarely topples governments or incites direct action. Margaret Thatcher survived the barbs of British dramatists, and Rupert Murdoch was not shamed into shedding his monopolistic powers by the success of David Hare and Howard Brenton’s Pravda. What theatre can do is shift attitudes, articulate discontent, and reflect, often with microscopic accuracy, the mood of the nation.”
North Korean Orchestra May Tour Britain
The New York Phil may or may not be headed to North Korea next year, but in a surprise move, Pyongyang has given permission for North Korea’s state orchestra to mount a tour of the UK in early 2008. The orchestra’s connection to Britain is the opera singer Suzannah Clarke, who has performed in North Korea to great acclaim.