In three weeks, designs for the tallest tower at the World Trade Center site must be finished. And there is constant negotiating going on. “Although many aspects of the proposed new tower are still in flux, several features are consistent to every recent draft rendering of the tower. Surviving from Daniel Libeskind’s original proposal is the asymmetrical shape of the tower, along with its narrow spire feature, both of which are meant to simulate the torchbearing arm of the Statue of Liberty seen from the harbor. Also surviving is the slanted roof that gives a spiraling sweep to the shape of the circle of the five skyscrapers, of descending height, called for in his master plan.”
Tag: 11.26.03
Lofty Goals
“On Friday evening, Ottawa’s National Arts Centre will come alive with the hopes of an entire art form. Matjash Mrozewski, the 28-year-old Toronto-based choreographer who is rapidly gaining profile here and abroad, will unveil a work commissioned by the NAC for no less a purpose than getting young Canadians turned on to modern dance. It’s too early to say whether it will succeed on that lofty level, but given Mrozewski’s usual dynamic approach, not to mention the teenage focus group the NAC assembled to help guide his efforts, you can at least bet it won’t be boring.”
A Bollywood Nightmare
When Troy Niemans scored a job editing a big-budget Bollywood film, he thought his career was finally taking off. But after less than a month in India, the Canadian editor found himself unpaid, unwanted, and eventually jailed for supposedly stealing from the film company. India’s film industry is infamous for its heavy-handed tactics and alleged ties to gangsters and organized crime, but Niemans never suspected that he would become enmeshed in it all.
How To Make An Arts City
Vancouver has become quite adept at creating win-win situations for developers and arts groups, with the city making a push to increase its cultural visibility, even as it fills a need for new housing in the urban core. “In exchange for increased density for their buildings the developers are paired with non-profits that need new public facilities. The developer gets more condos or more offices to sell; the non-profit groups, 13 to date, get free use of programming space built specifically to their needs.”
World Idol – Will It All Sound American?
There is to be a “World Idol” music competition. One wonders what it will be like though, based on the “Australian Idol” experience. The “biggest problem with Australian Idol: all those talented young people performing as if they were country and western singers straight off a Qantas jet from Nashville. Even Beatles songs were Americanised. Sacrilege! In the context of the debate over the proposed free-trade agreement with the US, in which Australia may have to sacrifice its right to set local content quotas on TV for such things as Australian drama, it really grated.”
Cutting The Music In Australia
The Adelaide Symphony Orchestra is laying off staff and will shortly be dismissing five members of the orchestra itself, in a desperate effort to get its books in balance. The ASO’s problems are not unfamiliar to other Australian orchestras: since orchestras went to a system of private funding, known as “corporatisation,” nearly every orchestra involved has struggled financially.
Israel’s Conductor
“The association of the Israel Philharmonic with Zubin Mehta is going into its fifth decade and the symbiosis between the two is closer than ever. Mehta’s English is peppered with Hebrew and Yiddish; the food at orchestra outings is peppered with the fiendishly hot chiles that Mehta is famously fond of.” The IPO, which has a reputation of being one of the most argumentative collections of musicians anywhere on Earth, genuinely loves this man who, more than any other conductor alive, has crafted his own identity within the national identity of Israel.
Why Are There So Few Women Directors?
“In 2001 only 15 of the 250 top-grossing films were made by women. The reasons for this are mystifying. People suggest that women are less good at the kind of hustling needed to get a movie off the ground; perhaps it is related to the way filmmaking requires an obsessive dedication over a period of years; maybe female directors take time out to have children – and a year off is equivalent to death in the industry.”
Big Instruments Down
Some of the bigger orchestral instruments are so unpopular with young Britons, that there’s a big shortage of players opening up. “It seems that the tuba, bassoon, double bass and trombone are too ugly and expensive for a new generation of teenagers who, if they like classical music at all, prefer the charms of the flute and clarinet. The result, according to the some of the country’s leading instrumentalists, is that Britain’s bass line is in danger of fading out.”
Assessing Edo
When Edo deWaart took up the reins of the Sydney Symphony Orchestra in 1993, he was exhausted, drained by the various stresses of leading orchestras in the dual pressure cookers of Europe and America. This week is deWaart’s last in Australia, and as he prepares to take over as music director in Hong Kong, he refers to Sydney as his “spiritual holiday.” During his tenure, the SSO significantly improved its musicians’ wages and working conditions, and critics say that the orchestra is a decidedly better ensemble than it was when he arrived.