“For years record buyers have complained that CDs are overpriced and the music industry has responded by saying, as politely as possible, put up or shut up. Now, panicked by the pirates, they’ve finally been compelled to slash prices to a reasonable level and sales have reached an all-time high. Profits are down but that’s what happens when you stop charging £16.99 for an item that costs 50p to manufacture.”
Month: August 2003
Chopin As Jazz
A Chopin festival in Warsaw experiments with connections between the great Polish composer and jazz. “Because Polish musicians live and breathe Chopin’s music practically from the moment they first place their fingers on a piano or a fiddle, jazz artists such as violinist Maciej Strzelczyk and pianist Filip Wojciechowski were well equipped to radically reconceive themes from Chopin’s preludes, waltzes and etudes. To these artists, reworking a motif from a classic Chopin piano piece is akin to an American player riffing on the chord changes of George Gershwin’s “I Got Rhythm” — this indigenous music courses through their veins.”
Librarian To The Rescue
An “action figure” company has come out with its latest doll – an action figure librarian based on Seattle librarian Nancy Pearl. “The company, which has produced a successful series of historical action figures that include Jesus, Moses and Benjamin Franklin, jumped at the idea. Nancy Pearl became the second installment in their newest line of action figures based on everyday people in everyday jobs.”
Novice Creates Brass Fest
Geoff Collinson is a French Horn player in Melbourne who had an idea to stage an international brass festival. With no experience running an organization, a tiny budget, and an artistic director who lives across the world in Switzerland, he managed to pull it all together.
Is Technology Progress Threatened?
“The defining political conflict of the 21st century is shaping up to be the battle over the future of technology. Fortunately, technological progress doesn’t just have opponents; it also has boosters. The rise of neo-Luddism is calling forth self-conscious defenders of technological progress. Growing numbers of extropians, transhumanists, futurists and others are entering the intellectual fray to do battle against the neo-Luddite activists who oppose biotechnology, nanotechnology, and new intelligence technologies.”
Is Radio Drama Making A Comeback?
“For its passionate fans, radio drama is a radical performance mode, a near-telepathic transfer of audio cues from the speaker to the listener’s brain, intensely visual because the hearer supplies the images and completely different from the more communal experience of movie or television viewing.”
Playing On DVD
Movies of plays have not always conveyed a satisfactory experience of the play. DVD’s offer more. “In the last few years, several companies have begun issuing play collections on DVD, often with name directors and stellar casts. What distinguishes these collections is that, unlike a stereotypical Hollywood adaptation, there is as much respect for the original work as there is for the film’s end result.”
DVD’s Rule
“For the movie industry, the DVD has become so important that the tail now appears to be wagging the dog. The studios — and the rest of us — have realized that nothing they put on screen will ever go away again. As a result, features that were created to appeal to connoisseurs, and that were once available only on large, unwieldy and expensive laser discs, are now routinely enjoyed by mass-market film fans. The esoterica of film culture, formerly consumed by a moneyed geek elite, is now aimed directly at — and snapped up by — the broader public.”
The Forgotten Everyday Details
“Biography of the long-lost past poses special problems. The most basic knowledge proves elusive, often never recorded in the first place. It’s one thing never fully to know your subject’s thoughts and dreams. It’s another to visit a room, intact after 350 years, where a beam of sunlight shining through a prism produced the most famous optical experiment in the history of science, and still fail to find out whether there had been glass in the windows.”
Taking A Reading
Readings of new plays have become an ubiquitous part of the process of getting a new play to the stage. “Readings have become, if not the name of the game, at least a very important part of the game when it comes to the art and business of the theatre. And the topic also raises the hackles of many playwrights and actors, who feel readings have, in many cases, become an abusive substitute for salaried rehearsals or even productions. At the same time, it’s generally agreed that when done with proper intention, readings can be invaluable for writers and performers.”