Month: August 2000

ONE MAN’S MUSIC…

Nearly 30 years after his composing debut, Steve Reich’s music still receives tumultuous receptions wherever its performed, splitting audiences between those who hear genius and others who just hear noise. “’Minimalist’ is a label he hates but how else to describe his music, much of which involves a great deal of repetition? Think of Andy Warhol with his repeated pictures of Campbell’s soup tins and translate that visual image into sound. – The Herald (Scotland)

ONE MAN’S MUSIC…

Nearly 30 years after his composing debut, Steve Reich’s music still receives tumultuous receptions wherever its performed, splitting audiences between those who hear genius and others who just hear noise. “’Minimalist’ is a label he hates but how else to describe his music, much of which involves a great deal of repetition? Think of Andy Warhol with his repeated pictures of Campbell’s soup tins and translate that visual image into sound. – The Herald (Scotland)

PASSING THE GRIME TEST

Londoners are apparently breathing easier these days; air pollution in the city is the best it’s been since the Industrial Revolution. How do they know? Scientists have been monitoring the walls of St. Paul’s Cathedral to test for acidification and stone condition – since 1720, an inch of stone has dissolved from the cathedral’s balcony. – London Evening Standard 08/30/00

MONUMENT TO WOODSTOCK

New York billionaire Alan Gerry announces plans for a performing arts center on the grounds of the original Woodstock Festival in upstate New York. “The plan calls for a 4,000-seat covered theater with 15,000 additional open-air seats. The Gerry Foundation will own and operate the $40 million facility; the state will pay $15 million of the construction costs.” – New York Daily News 08/30/00

MEXICAN POLITICAL TURN HAS ARTISTS WONDERING

“No matter how we voted, for many of us in the arts and letters the election of the charismatic Mr. Fox is as bracing as a cold shower. No one really expected the plain-spoken rancher from Guanajuato to win, and we’re flummoxed by a world turned suddenly inside out: a political right that has promised to reject its traditional religious, censorious, and invasively straight-laced stances, and a left adrift without a compass. Artists and intellectuals dependent on government largesse are at a loss as to how to court the unknown.” – Christian Science Monitor 08/30/00

THE FORGETFUL CENTURY?

“While Susan Sontag has argued that tuberculosis preoccupied the 19th century and cancer, then AIDS, dominated the 20th, there are signs that Alzheimer’s is becoming an important cultural metaphor for our new century.Consider the number of recent novels, stories and memoirs in which characters with Alzheimer’s figures prominently.” – The Globe and Mail (Canada) 08/30/00

WHAT HAPPENED TO THE ART OF BEING BORED?

New study suggests that today’s kids are so programmed that they are losing the time for imagination. “Playtime has morphed into what Klauber calls a “digital wonderland” – a fast-moving, goal-oriented zone that affords little time for aimless fun. Many kids today are focused on competition, efficiency and results. One consequence of this development is that their imaginations are beginning to atrophy: Play is all about the destination rather than the journey.” – The Star Tribune (Minneapolis) 08/30/00