“The Kansas City Star has eliminated the position of classical music critic, and with it Paul Horsley, who was given his walking papers on Monday after more that eight years in the job. Also gone from the culture department are the fashion editor and two of the three calendar editors.”
Month: June 2008
Edinburgh’s International Book Festival Swamped With Ticket Demand
“Organisers said they were experiencing an unprecedented demand for tickets for book festival events. Its website had more than 300,000 hits in its first hour and phone lines took more than 21,000 calls.”
Britain Gets Its Own “El Sistema” Orchestra Program
Pupils as young as four will be in the £3m, three-year “In Harmony” programme, led by the cellist Julian Lloyd Webber. It will begin in three or four pilot areas within months.
UK Bookstore Chain Adds Instant Printing Machines
“The self-service machine, which will eventually be installed in 50 stores across the country, offers a choice of around one million titles. The fully-bound books are printed to library quality, including a front cover.”
Italian Movies Making A Comeback
Italian movies placed high at Cannes this spring. Now some are wondering if Italian films are coming into another Golden Age…
Reimagining A Future For The Music Business
Will there be such a thing as a pop superstar in 20 years? There might not be such a thing as a major record label.
Osage County Coming To London
The play, by Tracy Letts, which won five Tony awards last week, will receive its UK premiere at the Southbank venue in late November, although an exact date is yet to be announced.
Matthew Bourne Looks For Youth
“I knew where Fred Astaire stayed and I used to hang around his hotel like a stalker. We were incredibly polite, me and my friend, calling everyone mister and miss. I met Astaire a few times and he got to know me a little bit, as in, ‘Oh, there’s that boy again.'”
Is Romance Lost To Higher Lit?
“Publishers must delicately exploit the middle ground between high and low. Elements of genre writing are often introduced to spice up the ‘literary’ kind and some genres are given credence, their merits discussed. They are reclaimed for seriousness; seriousness is arguably the better for it. Yet one staple of genre fiction, the sentimental, soft-focus romance novel, remains apparently beyond rescue.”
Viewers Abandon TV For Web Video
More signs of the Internet apocalypse for TV’s old guard: U.S. Web surfers viewed some 11 billion online videos in April, a gain of 33% from the same month last year.