Matt Savage is 10 years old, and he plays the piano well enough that he turns heads in New Orleans, where he lives. He’s playing jazz in concerts around the world. But he isn’t just a prodigy, he’s also autistic, and “when he was younger, had great difficulty communicating, did not like to be touched and – most incredibly for a musician – couldn’t stand the sound of music or of household noises like a blender or a vacuum cleaner”
Author: Douglas McLennan
Atlanta Arts Cuts
Fulton County, which is Atlanta’s biggest arts funder, has proposed a $1 million cut in the arts budget next year. “The arts council’s annual budget is $5.7 million; $3.4 million of that is granted to about 100 arts groups through the county’s contracts for services program. The rest of the money goes to operate the county’s school programs and five neighborhood arts centers.”
TV – The Business Against Quality
Why do good TV shows get canceled? “The big lie in television is that network executives are idiots. Most of the time, that’s not true. They’re smart, but their decisions are guided by fear of failure and job loss. Because they’re smart, they usually like quality shows. But because it’s a business, those shows often get canceled.”
MTV Of The Arts?
“Classic Arts Showcase” is the project of one Lloyd Rigler, who decided on his own in the early 90s that there should be more arts on television. He provides round-the-clock feeds of performances by artists “available free, by satellite, to PBS stations, educational and community access channels and other nonprofit broadcasters since 1994; it currently reaches an estimated 65 million homes.” But it’s free to all but Mr. Rigler – he’s plowed $50 million into the project without a hope of ever getting it back.
Buying Local
There’s local programming, and then there’s local programming. A station in Raleigh North Carolina has started an all-local all-the-time format, playing only music by local bands. “WBZB went on the air July 15. Its signal is so weak the station can be picked up in the car only in a small area because power lines interfere with it. It can only be heard in parts of Raleigh, and it broadcasts on the Web.”
Learning To Play The Game
“For countless authors, movies have proved a fatal temptation, savaging great novels from The Naked and the Dead to Portnoy’s Complaint, and corrupting F. Scott Fitzgerald and others who lived out their Hollywood years in drunken decline.” But in recent years, prominent writers have been finding success on the screen, “both by carefully choosing those who would adapt their books and by participating in the filmmaking process themselves.”
Needless Waste
Why aren’t more theatre performances recorded? Especially the really good ones, the historic ones? “We have the technological means to record a show without huge financial outlay and with a fair degree of style. It’s called video. We do commit theatre to tape in this country but we do so so sparingly, so shamefacedly, that it ought to be a national scandal.”
Why Mies Stayed
When the Nazis closed the Bauhaus School in the 1930s, Mies van der Rohe chose to stay. He believed, he said, in “something more noble than politics, the ruthless pursuit of the perfect modern building, the true heir, he thought, to Greek temples and gothic cathedrals – buildings constructed on earth in order to escape it. These were cathedrals for the new religion, commerce and industry – factories, office blocks, skyscrapers and apartment towers, the modern urban landscape, whose architecture had yet to be invented. The form lay out there for him to discover.”
One (Bad) Way To Choose Public Art
Art for the walls of Denver’s main performing arts complex is put up on a first-come-first-served basis. Artists sign up and wait until their turn comes up. But the art is democratic, it’s almost nearly always bad, writes Kyle MacMillan. “It is only logical that what is shown on the walls of the Boettcher and Buell should be of the same caliber as the dance, music and theater presented on the stages of the two halls. Anything less demeans the performers who appear there, and it reflects badly on an otherwise vibrant local art scene and the city at large.”
Blessed With Success
What’s the fastest growing segment of the US recording market? Contemporary Christian music, “or in the land of acronyms, CCM. It generates $800 million a year in album sales, more than jazz and classical combined.” The most successful bands sell out arenas and sell millions of recordings…