“The piano-manufacturing business these days has gone the same way as many industries: the brand name is kept, but the instrument is made more cheaply in China, Korea, Japan, or Eastern Europe. Global competition means less variety. The Pearl River piano factory in China has 4,000 employees and is increasing production to 100,000 pianos a year, which they fabricate for more than twenty different companies around the world. How many people, when going to buy a piano, realize that their Bechstein could have been made in Germany or in Korea by Samick, depending on the model number (and price); or that the Boston piano designed and sold by Steinway is made by Kawai?”
Tag: 11.10.05
Looking For The Women
Where are the women composers? “For centuries men have dominated the history, theory and politics of music. In addition to history books that glossed over women’s contributions, early music theory distinguished between harmonically weaker ‘feminine’ cadences and strong, resolute ‘masculine’ ones. It’s easy to see why a woman might find this offensive. Music itself is neither masculine nor feminine, Joan Towers argues. It’s either good or it’s bad. ‘Everything in music goes counter to what we think of as feminine or masculine. It just doesn’t apply’.”
Chicago Theatre Online
The League of Chicago Theatres is launching an online ticket service to serve its 183 members. “The league is considering using software that can capture and massage information about patrons and their theater-going preferences. Such data would be useful for theaters and could guide patrons to other plays they may be partial to, much as Amazon.com does with goods on its Web site.”
Promoters Lobby For Tout Ban
Theatre, concert and sports event promoters want the British government to outlaw ticket touting. “Some unofficial agencies and auctions deceive and defraud fans as well as charging high prices, promoters say. But the government is not convinced a new law is needed and wants promoters to tackle the problem themselves.”
UK Orchestras Worth Saving
Julian Lloyd-Webber is tired of hearing people dump on orchestras. “What, exactly, is so ‘irrelevant’ about classical music? Its basic precepts of harmony and tonality permeate all the music we hear, whether in films, TV ads, shopping malls or churches. Even some of the most popular mobile ring tones are taken from the classics. Moreover, new collaborations abound…”
The Band That’s Proving The Internet Future?
“The internet has been touted as the future of the music business ever since file-sharing became big news: bands, it was mooted, would cut record companies out of the equation by posting their music on their websites and building up a virtual fanbase. But nothing of the sort happened. Selling music via a website became the province not of hip new bands, but old stagers considered defunct by their labels. They were making a living, but the whole business still carried a slight taint, the modern equivalent of flogging your records from a car boot. Then, three weeks ago, Sheffield’s Arctic Monkeys entered the charts at number one with their second single, I Bet You Look Good On The Dancefloor.”
Study: Twice As Much Sex On Tv Today
The Kaiser Family Foundation has released a study that says that children are exposed to twice as much sexual content on TV as they were seven years ago. “In the slightly more than 1,000 shows scrutinized in the study, nearly 4,000 scenes had sexual content, compared with fewer than 2,000 in 1998, when the foundation started studying TV sex. And yet the rate of teen pregnancy in this country has plunged by about one-third during approximately the same time.”
Kids Of Bipolar Parents Score High In Creativity
“Researchers said a sample of children who either have or are at high risk for bipolar disorder, which was formerly called manic-depressive illness, score higher on a creativity index than healthy children.”
Study: Workers Get Stalled By Tech
A new study claims that technology in the workplace is so complicated, that some workers waste up to a month per year trying to figure out how to make technology on their jobs work. “The demands of the 21st century office leave almost one in five workers (17 per cent) struggling to get their heads round simple tasks asked of them, according to the report.”
The Singing Mormons
The Mormon Tabernacle Choir is one of America’s oldest musical institutions. “Its syndicated radio program, ‘Music and the Spoken Word,’ found on 1,500 stations across the world, started in July 1929; it is the longest-running broadcast in the medium’s history. The choir has sung for every United States president since William Howard Taft, and in addition to its Grammy and Emmy wins, it has CD sales in the millions with two platinum records and five gold records.”