“As they head back to the classrooms in coming weeks, kids may find their favorite part of school cut or reduced. The culprit, some educators and arts advocates say, is a combination of historic fiscal crises in the states and new federal standards stressing academic basics. Some critics say that if school officials cut unnecessary overhead costs they wouldn’t have to touch academic programs and activities.”
Month: August 2003
Keep Art Alive
A California state legislator writes of his fight to keep arts funding alive in California: “We are truly at a turning point in the relationship between government and the arts. I had one of the hardest fights of my life this year to prevent the legislature from eliminating the California Arts Council entirely. Not just defunding it, but eliminating it from the state. I have no idea how or why this proposal came about, but it was made and it very nearly happened — California almost became the first state in the nation to abolish all public funding of the arts. As it is, we will continue to fund the arts, but at a level that is the lowest in the nation. Lower than Mississippi. Lower than Alabama. Lower than North Dakota. The state’s General Fund, which last year gave the California Arts Council about $18 million, will now fund it at $1 million. We will thus be spending less than 3 cents per capita on the arts. For comparison, the national average is $1.00 per capita. The math on that is fairly easy — California spends about 3% of the national average on the arts.”
The Old Blind Violin Side-By-Side Comparison Test
Audience members at a concert will be asked to judge between a Strad and a modern instrument. “At the concert on 15 September, a Nagyvary violin, built in six weeks earlier this year, and the $4 million Rochester Stradivarius, built in 1720 by Antonio Stradivari, will each be played behind a screen by violinist Dalibor Karvay. Audience members will attempt to distinguish between the two, and at intermission their guesses will be tallied up.”
Claudio Abbado Returns
Conductor Claudio Abbado has resurrected the Lucerne Festival Orchestra. “For musicians and audiences alike, Mr. Abbado’s return was also the stuff of emotion. Last year he stepped down after 13 years as chief conductor of the Berlin Philharmonic. But more pertinently, after a diagnosis of stomach cancer in 2000 he is again in good health and, at 70, has proven strong enough to lead a new orchestra. It is something he is practiced at doing.”
Piling On To Martin Amis
Martin Amis’ new novel hasn’t even been officially released yet and it’s been nominated for this year’s Booker Prize and stirred up the ire of a number of critics. “Though it might seem odd to declaim in August about a novel that is not scheduled for publication until Sept. 4, nothing is odd, really, when it comes to Mr. Amis and the strangely potent brew of envy, unease, schadenfreude and fury he inevitably provokes in fellow writers here.”
Florida Philharmonic – Autopsy For The Future
Can the bankrupt Florida Philharmonic be restarted? Perhaps – but a new model is needed. “Clearly what we did did not work. A different business model needs to be considered. Whatever is decided to be done, you’ve got to be put on good financial footing to begin with, with the money down before you build anything. That was never done with this orchestra.”
Florida Philharmonic – Anatomy Of A Dead Orchestra
“It was never any secret the Philharmonic was staggering from one financial crisis to another, although most patrons and the public never realized how deep the problems ran. Since 1989, the Philharmonic burned through roughly $123 million, with yearly expenses soaring over $10 million, its financial records show. The orchestra’s board and managers borrowed from its own foundation and endowment funds, which were supposed to guarantee its survival.”
Florida Phil Conductor Leaves Quietly
Conductor James Judd left Florida last week without much of a sendoff from the orchestra he led for 16 years. “Recent circumstances make a festive send-off difficult. The Florida Philharmonic, which Judd helmed for 16 years and helped raise to its highest creative level, is in bankruptcy; with a reorganization effort floundering for lack of funds, the orchestra’s demise appears all but certain. The conductor’s abrupt resignation, following several dubious moves by an interim management team that left him out of the loop on key artistic decisions, widened the divide between himself and the organization into a gaping chasm. Still, it’s an undeservedly quiet coda for the charismatic Englishman who built the Florida Philharmonic into a major regional arts institution and brought it international recognition.”
Is It Live Or Is It… “Auto-Tuned”?
“Pop stars and punk bands alike are piping their voices through the hardware, which corrects and improves their vocal pitch during concerts and on records. With musicians on the road touring for weeks on end, the autotuner has become a safety net that catches the occasional clinker on days when their voices may be off. (In a nutshell, the autotuner is told what key the vocal is in and analyzes the wave form in real time. If the singer is off-key, it will adjust the pitch to the closest note in that key.)”
CD’s Are Forever? HA!
So you’re transferring your music to recordable CD’s so you’ll have them forever? Better think again. A Dutch magazine tested CD’s that had been recorded less than two years ago and discovered many of them no longer play. “It is presumed that CD-Rs are good for at least 10 years. Some manufacturers even claim that their CD-Rs will last up to a century. From our tests it’s concluded however that there is a lot of junk on the market. We came across CD-Rs that should never have been released to the market. It’s completely unacceptable that CD-Rs become unusable in less than two years.”