“While people still love music enough to track it down, collect it, argue over it and judge their Facebook friends by it, many see no reason to pay for it. The emerging practical solution is to let music sell something else: a concert, a T-shirt, Web-site pop-up ads or a brand. Musicians have to eat and want to be heard, and if that means accompanying someone else’s sales pitch or videogame, well, it’s a living.”
Tag: 12.28.08
Time To Relax The Taboo Against Deaccessioning?
In light of the recent troubles at the National Academy Museum and MOCA, “[w]hy, several experts ask, is it so wrong for a museum to sell art from its collection to raise badly needed funds? And now that many institutions are facing financial hardship, should the ban on selling art to cover operating costs be eased?”
Dorothy Sarnoff, 94, The Original Image Consultant
“Sweaty palms, nervous laughter, a Brooklyn accent, panic-induced silences. These were just a few of the image blemishes addressed by Dorothy Sarnoff, an opera singer and Broadway star who had a much bigger second career as one of the first, and most influential, image consultants.”
Birth Of A Ballet Collective
The story of five young women, all professional ballet dancers and adult undergrads at Columbia University, who got together at a diner one night and dreamed up the Columbia Ballet Collaborative, which provides themselves and other dancers the opportunity to perform outside the established company system.
Another Bogus Holocaust Memoir Foiled
“On Saturday, Berkley Books canceled [Herman] Rosenblat’s memoir, Angel at the Fence. Rosenblat acknowledged that he and his wife did not meet, as they had said for years, at a sub-camp of Buchenwald, where she allegedly sneaked him apples and bread.”
A Star-Studded New Transatlantic Troupe
The Bridge Project, a British-American theater company founded, by Kevin Spacey, Sam Mendes and BAM’s Joe Melillo, begins its inaugural season next month. “‘I don’t want London to feel it’s getting something from America, or America to feel it’s getting something from London,’ Mr. Mendes said.’I want to take those labels off entirely.'”
Lamenting The Polaroid
Michael Kimmelman: “Mystery clung to each impending image as it took shape, the camera conjuring up pictures of what was right before one’s eyes, right before one’s eyes. The miracle of photography, which Polaroids instantly exposed, never lost its primitive magic. And what resulted, as so many sentimentalists today lament, was a memory coming into focus on a small rectangle of film.”
A Day In The Life Of A Hard-Workin’ Ballet Man
Royal Ballet star Edward Watson describes his typical day at work, from the early morning gym session to class and rehearsals, juggling more than half a dozen roles, living on sweets and McDonald’s, and getting teased by colleagues for his “redhead moments” – “Oh God! Look at how Ed’s acting this out. Has he killed someone before?”
Yet Another Way The Internet Is Killing The Book Business
“In other words, it’s all the fault of people like myself, who increasingly use the Internet both to buy books and later, after their value to us is gone, sell them… [it’s] about the rise of a worldwide network of amateurs who sell books from their homes or, if they’re lazy like me, in partnership with an Internet dealer who does all the work for a chunk of the proceeds.”
Leaving Violins Behind On Public Transportation – It Happens Everywhere
Michael Kellet, a 42-year-old British violinist visiting Chennai (Madras) for a music festival, left two instruments behind on the local mass transit system after falling asleep on a train.