“Three months after Los Angeles’ only country radio station, KZLA-FM (93.9) switched to a rhythmic pop format, leaving the nation’s largest market for country music with nowhere to tune on the radio dial, Tim McGraw, Faith Hill, Toby Keith and the rest of the twang gang are back on the air. But now they’re heard on the AM dial. In fact, when the country music broadcasts started recently on XSUR-AM (540) — transmitting from just across the border in Tijuana — the effect in L.A. was almost like tuning in on an old crystal set with the signal fading in and out.” On Friday, Los Angeles station KKGO-AM will go country, too.
Tag: 11.28.06
Broadway Tours: Manna To Dancers, Poison To Troupes
“It’s a fact of life: Dancers must make the choice between the artistic challenge offered by a concert dance company (a loose term that implies an artistic entity that presents stage performances of modern, ballet or other styles, for which dancers and choreography are the focus) and the steady work, paycheck and benefits that come with a big Broadway touring production, a pop concert tour, an industrial show or even a cruise ship.”
A New Life For Newark’s Symphony Hall?
Newark Symphony Hall exists in the shadow of the New Jersey Center for the Performing Arts, but the city’s revitalization efforts could mean a chance for the older, once-illustrious venue to redefine itself and recapture an audience. “There appears to be a fresh opportunity to transform the more than 80-year-old concert hall — perhaps into a version of the Brooklyn Academy of Music or Symphony Space in New York, community landmarks where the programming veers creatively away from the fare offered by Lincoln Center and other major concert halls.”
Too Few Music Teachers? Juilliard, Carnegie Send Reinforcements
“Two pillars of the classical musical establishment, Carnegie Hall and the Juilliard School, have joined forces to give birth to a music academy whose fellows will go forth and propagate musicianship in New York public schools. … Under the new program elite musicians will receive high-level musical training, performance opportunities at Carnegie Hall and guidance from city school teachers in how to teach music.”
Forbidden Skyscraper Provokes Protest In St. Petersburg
“Gazprom City, a proposed complex of stylish modern buildings that evoke, among other things, a gas-fueled flame, a strand of DNA and a lady’s high-heeled shoe, would sit on a historic site on the Neva River” in St. Petersburg, “opposite the Baroque, blue-and-white Smolny Cathedral. In any of six designs under consideration, the main tower would soar three or four times higher than this city’s most famous landmarks, an alteration of the landscape that has drawn heated protests from the director of the Hermitage Museum and the head of the local architects’ union.”
The Whitney Heads For The High Line
“A month after the Dia Art Foundation scrapped its plans to open a museum at the entrance to the High Line, the abandoned elevated railway line that the city is transforming into a public park, the Whitney Museum of American Art has signed on to take its place and build a satellite institution of its own downtown. … Plans call for the new museum to be at least twice the size of the Whitney’s home on Madison Avenue at 75th Street,” museum officials said, “and to be finished within the next five years.” Renzo Piano, architect for the Whitney’s now-abandoned uptown addition project, will design the new museum.
Novelist Bebe Moore Campbell, 56
“Bebe Moore Campbell, a best-selling novelist known for her empathetic treatment of the difficult, intertwined and occasionally surprising relationship between the races, died yesterday at her home in Los Angeles.”
Richard Meier’s Smog Eater
“When the American architect Richard Meier was asked to design a church in Rome to commemorate the 2,000th anniversary of Christianity, he offered an imposing white concrete structure dominated by three soaring ‘sails.’ The project’s main technical sponsor got to work on a coating that would enhance Mr. Meier’s trademark white sculptural forms. It came up with a material that essentially cleans itself, minimizing the need for maintenance. What the sponsor, the Italcementi Group, did not know was that the new material — which contains titanium dioxide, a white pigment — has another peculiarity. It ‘eats’ surrounding smog.”
Boxy Violins Made Of Balsa Wood And Graphite
“From Australia to Germany to Maui, there is something of an explosion under way in the use of science and new materials to test the limits of instrument making. And the traditional violin-making and violin-playing world is taking note.”