A fan campaign to nominate Harry Potter author JK Rowling for a Nobel has fizzled. “Not a single person sent a letter to the Nobel Committee suggesting her for the 2004 literature award despite an internet crusade asking them to do so.”
Month: August 2003
Why Our Theatres Are Empty?
“With virtually every one of our companies — big and small — facing a distressing number of empty seats, it make sense to ask why the under-35s aren’t more devoted playgoers. I think it comes down to two things: For most of them, conventional theatre costs too much and means too little. It’s not that they hate the art form. Far from it. All you have to do is hang out at the Fringe or Summerworks to encounter hundreds of people who wouldn’t be caught dead at Stratford, Shaw or CanStage.”
London’s West End On Sale
“London theatre is succumbing to a frenzy of price-cutting wheezes that don’t so much offer customers a healthy, free-market range of bargains as lead to a muddle, which will confuse everyone as to the real cost of a ticket and create resistance to the standard price.”
Backtracking On The Mozart Effect
“The ‘Mozart effect,’ which was first suggested in a study in 1993, showed that listening to 10 minutes of Mozart before a spatial skills test appeared to improve performance. Scientists soon reported a ‘Schubert effect’ and even a ‘Stephen King effect’; hearing lively prose from the author before spatial tests also appeared to improve scores. Now researchers are discovering why the so-called Mozart effect happens, and they are finding that the benefits of music lessons may have been overstated.”
Reducing Ideas To Slides (The Quickest Way To Kill Ideas?)
“Slideware -computer programs for presentations -is everywhere: in corporate America, in government bureaucracies, even in our schools. Several hundred million copies of Microsoft PowerPoint are churning out trillions of slides each year. Slideware may help speakers outline their talks, but convenience for the speaker can be punishing to both content and audience. The standard PowerPoint presentation elevates format over content, betraying an attitude of commercialism that turns everything into a sales pitch.”
Copyright Would Be Great If It Paid Creators
In theory it’s a good idea that those who create something should be entitled to be paid for it. Trouble is, most copyrights aren’t owned by the person who created them. So complaining that “artists need to be paid” as a justification for the current copyright laws is… well…
Taking A Harder Listen At Bard
When Bard College’s new performing arts center opened last April, it got admiring reviews from critics, both for its looks and its acoustics. “Now, after a fuller range of musical and dramatic events at the just-completed annual Bard Music Festival and the new Bard SummerScape, one can better judge those acoustics — along with the aesthetics of the interiors and the prospects for how the center will be used year-round.”
Swimming Alone In A Five-Hour Korean Opera
In Edinburgh this summer, you can see a five-hour Korean opera. Maybe it’s good. But without some help, how are audiences supposed to figure it out? “How was the audience, unguided, supposed to navigate this terra incognita? It was not surprising that on my visit the Reid Concert Hall was half empty, with at least a dozen leaving at the first pause and more at the interval.”
Opera For The Short Attention Span
Is opera too long? Does it require too much attention? “Opera North, based in Leeds, will stage eight one-act operas in four varying double bills next spring as part of its 25th birthday celebrations. The cautious and the initiated alike will be able to buy tickets for either or both shows on any night.”
A Disney Spectacular
The hottest ticket in LA this fall is the opening of the Frank Gehry-designed Disney Hall, new home to the LA Philharmonic. “What does this do for the city? I’m quite amused by the fact that the hottest ticket in L.A. is a classical music/architectural event, not some Hollywood thing. I’m going to enjoy that. It won’t happen again.”