Looking back over this year’s offerings in arts and entertainment, there’s one trend that’s easy to spot – a low reading on the substance meter. “Maybe this year we needed an extra dose of escapism. But if the entertainment industry wants to stay connected with us in the long run, it needs to make more works that matter.”
Tag: 12.08.02
Incubators R Us
Atlanta’s main presenter of touring Broadway musicals proposes to build a new school and theatre – “a laboratory-like theatrical environment where, over a period of 10 to 12 weeks, all aspects of a show can be presented to a live audience, revised, shown again, revised again . . . until a Broadway-ready project has emerged.” The theatre says the project would be a “one-of-a-kind incubator of new musicals that would make Atlanta an invaluable stop on the road to New York.”
Chew You Up, Spit You Out
Think being nominated for the Turner is the answer to an artist’s prayers? Not always. “The Turner Prize picks up little-known artists and throws them, albeit briefly, into the eye of a news storm. Unlike actors at the Oscars, artists tend to be among the least well equipped to deal with the sudden, intense attention.”
SF Opera – Best Of The Rest?
Of course the Metropolitan Opera is America’s best – and biggest. But San Francisco is surely second (or third?) best?
The Increasingly Blurry Lines Between Opera And Broadway
Opera companies producing Broadway musicals. Broadway taking on opera classics. What’s going on? “There are two main reasons for this sudden fusion, neither of which originate in artistic concerns.”
Mahler Manuscript Means Much
So what difference does the discovery last month of a new manuscript of Mahler’s First Symphony make? “It changes not the substance of the symphony but its sound: its orchestration and how, by means of stress and rhythmic detail, its ideas are articulated — how, in a word, it speaks.”
Isn’t Payola Illegal?
Er, yes…but if you’re a Latin music artist and want to get airplay on the radio, you’ve got to pay. “Because payola adds so much to the cost of promoting a recording – between 20 percent and 30 percent, according to former major-label employees – it cuts out most smaller, independent labels, typical sources for new genres and artists.”
Ticket Prices On The Way Down
In recent years concert ticket prices have spiraled up. But in the past six months the concert industry has discovered consumer resistance to the high cost, and finally, prices are staring to decline. One promoter predicts ticket prices will be down 15 percent from last year.
Answering A Complaining Critic
Last week the Chicago Tribune published a damning series of criticisms about the acoustics in Chicago’s Orchestra Hall. This week, the orchestra’s president responds to music critic John von Rhein’s complaints. “What confused us was not so much that Mr. von Rhein reversed the opinion that he had stated at the opening of the refurbished Orchestra Hall in 1997 – that the renovation brought “marked improvement” in the area of sound – but that he reversed views that he has been expressing consistently since.