Thirty years after it was built (in 1972), Smith College’s fine arts center was “uninhabitable.” Why did this relatively new building fail to hold up while Smith’s other buildings are doing fine after a century? “Before the era of the modern movement, buildings were built in predictable and conventional ways. Builders knew how to build in that manner. Architects didn’t ask them to do anything else. But with the arrival of modernism, architects began to invent new kinds of construction. They experimented. A gap opened between the traditional builder and the modernist architect. No longer could the builder correct the architect’s mistakes. What happened to Andrews’s building is only too typical.”
Month: August 2003
Australian Court Fines Big Music Companies
Music giants Warner and Universal have been fined $2 million in Australia for trying to coerce retailers into not selling budget CD’s. “The commission originally launched legal action after the companies first threatened then refused to supply four Australian retailers that stocked so-called parallel-imported CDs.”
Wild About Harry – American Book Sales Soar
“Even more than anticipated, the June release of Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix gave business at the nation’s largest book chains a much needed jump start, revving up quarterly sales and igniting optimism that the momentum will carry over into the rest of the year.”
Building A Better Jazz Festival
As Chicago looks to building a better jazz festival, it could do worse than look to Montreal for a blueprint. “Twenty-four years ago, a small group of intrepid Canadian jazz promoters took a chance on staging a weekend-long mini-fest, hoping that a few listeners might show up. Approximately 12,000 did, and today the Montreal International Jazz Festival has grown into the largest, most intelligently programmed jazz soiree in the world. Its $12.7 million (U.S.) budget and 500-concert lineup easily outpace any American counterpart.”
Endangered Species – Dallas Classical Music Radio
Times are bad at Dallas-Fort Worth’s only classical music station. “Ratings have dropped to the point where WRR is no longer among Dallas-Fort Worth’s top 20 stations. ‘We’ve hit a wall in the last 18 months’.”
What’s Wrong At Dallas’ WRR
“Much as local listeners may grouse, some of the problems are built into WRR’s commercial format, which has to make room for the advertisements that pay the bills. Similar artistic concerns can be raised with classical-music stations in plenty of other markets. From coast to coast, classical broadcasting just isn’t what it was 30 years ago, in what now looks like a golden age. Classical radio has been hit by the double whammy of a general economic slowdown and a major rewrite of the laws governing the U.S. radio industry.”
Music – Best Of Times, Worst Of Times
“For the past few years, the music industry has been awash in gloom and doom. The grim chorus is now as familiar to the public as any top 40 hit: Piracy has gutted profits, CD sales are going steadily south for the first time since the format was introduced in the 1980s, corporate conglomeration has stultified any art in the business of recording and concerts. All of that is true, and in private even the titans of the business express fears that probably echo the anxious mutterings of railroad barons in the days when Model T’s began rolling down the line. But here is the funny thing lost in the histrionics: Today may be the very best time to be a music fan, especially one looking for a connection to a favorite artist or guidance and access to the exotic or rare.”
Don’t Dump On Disco
“Disco helped transform the DJ into a creative personality, and seeded the recombinant mentality that runs riot through hip-hop. It shifted hit-making power away from radio, and participated in the advent of technologies that have since invaded almost all forms of popular music, such as drum machines and audio loops. History is written by the victors, and the popular image of disco has been shaped by those who hated everything it stood for.”
How To Grow Opera Addicts
In Canada there are several self-taught opera gurus who specialize in igniting a passion for the grand art in their audiences. “What these men have in common, besides an encyclopedic knowledge of opera, is a seemingly insatiable urge to communicate their passion to others. They all talk as persuasively as the proverbial refrigerator salesman in the High Arctic. It hardly seems necessary, since there appears to be no shortage of applicants for their courses and guided tours.”
Can You Be Prosecuted For Violent Thought?
“Students across the United States have been getting suspended and arrested for written work that authorities have deemed threatening. After two students in Colorado opened fire at Columbine High in 1999, killing 12 other students and a teacher, states and schools have been scrambling to find ways to protect students before violence occurs. But critics say they’ve been overreacting and violating constitutional rights.”