Author: Douglas McLennan

THE FIRST GREAT AMERICAN COMPOSER

“Copland was the first, the only and probably the last American classical composer upon whose greatness and importance everyone could agree. His 100th birthday is Nov. 14, and the celebration has taken on something of an iconic status. If we fall into the temptation to look back at the 20th century as the American century, Copland, born as it began, becomes a ready symbol for a nation coming of age.” – Los Angeles Times

OVERSIZED ‘AIDA”

“In an evening of not quite high culture and a few moments of low comedy, a cast of 2,200 performed the tale of doomed love between an Egyptian general and an Ethiopian slave girl as the centerpiece of this year’s China Shanghai International Festival of the Arts. And while the sound was remarkably good for such a huge venue, the theatrics stole the show.” – New York Times

FILLING IN THE SILENCE

Conductor/musicologist Gillian Anderson has “restored the original music for 25 films – she calls them ‘early’ films, pointing out that they ‘were never silent’ but were regularly played with live piano, organ or orchestral accompaniments. She has conducted this music during showings in Europe and North and South America – notably at the Louvre in Paris and the National Gallery of Art in Washington.” – Washington Post

THE NEW BREED OF ART SELLER

In Toronto, a quiet revolution in the way art galleries are presenting their work. “The new dealers tend to hunt out work they like, then simply hang it on the wall to see what happens.” That means mixing artists and group shows. ” Instead of having to come to grips with a single body of work, take it or leave it, customers now had a menu of art options to browse through, as in any other store. And that seemed to make them feel at home, and readier to buy.” – The Globe and Mail (Canada)

HISTORY YOU CAN HOLD IN YOUR HANDS

As libraries become more and more electronic, they’ve been dumping some of their paper archives. “When the British Library decided to dump a historic archive of American newspapers, the best-selling novelist Nicholson Baker was so horrified he decided to buy it for himself. He is now engaged in a one-man campaign to rescue ‘the raw store of history’ that microfilm and the internet promise to destroy.” – The Telegraph (UK)

GLYNDEBOURNE CHIEF QUITS

Nicholas Snowman resigned this week as general director of the Glyndebourne opera festival. “The abrupt departure of Mr. Snowman, 57, took Glyndebourne’s board by surprise and left it with no one in the top job. “Yes, we were surprised. He said he’d been here for two years and achieved what he wanted to do.” – New York Times

AMERICAN COMPOSERS NAMES NEW MUSIC DIRECTOR

“Steven Sloane, a 42-year-old American conductor, has been named music director designate of the American Composers Orchestra, the only orchestra today dedicated entirely to the creation, performance and preservation of music by American composers. Sloane will succeed Dennis Russell Davies, the principal conductor and music director who founded the orchestra in 1977 with the composer Francis Thorne.” – New York Times

NEW LINCOLN CENTER PREZ

Gordon Davis, on taking the top job running Lincoln Center: “If you go to Lincoln Center in all its different facets, there is already a wide diversity of audiences, which is wonderful. What some people don’t understand is that you don’t try to reach more diverse audiences because it’s somehow “The Right Thing To Do.’ You do it because that is where creativity ultimately comes from-broadening and invigorating the arts. It’s in our self-interest to reach the broadest audience.” – Backstage

WAS RED HIS FAVORITE COLOR?

“Picasso as a Cold Warrior for the Evil Empire? Although the artist’s membership in the Communist Party in the late 1940s and early ’50s is well known, it has been largely ignored by scholars as a casual flirtation, with slight, if any, bearing on his art.” A new book wonders if it really was so casual. – ARTNews