Author: Douglas McLennan

ART OF BUILDING

“During the past decade, new American performing arts facilities have been popping up like mushrooms after a rain, but architecturally they’ve been a pusillanimous lot. When not actively nostalgic, as in Fort Worth’s Bass Performance Hall, they’ve tended to favor a kind of buttoned-down corporate look, as in Seattle’s Benaroya Hall, or shopping-mall lite, as in Fort Lauderdale’s Broward Center and West Palm Beach’s Kravis Center.” – Dallas Morning News

LIFE WITHOUT BOULEZ?

Where would our musical cultural have been without Pierre Boulez? “Important works by a vast number of other composers — Elliott Carter, Gyorgy Ligeti, Harrison Birtwistle — would never have been commissioned or recorded. And there would have been no one to keep contemporary music in the public eye, especially in the public eye represented by the television camera.” – New York Times

MCLUHAN GETS ANOTHER 15 MINUTES

Marshall McLuhan was seen as a visionary in his time, but soon after he died, his pronouncements were regarded as quaint and outdated. But now he’s been adopted as an icon of the new digital age. “Everyone thought that McLuhan was talking about TV, but what he was really talking about was the Internet — two decades before it appeared.” – New York Times

RAGE AGAINST THE DUMBING DOWN

For years, British composer Harrison Birtwistle lived as a recluse on a remote French hillside. Now, at 66, he’s moved back to Britain, with some strong ideas about English culture. “I believe we have in this country the best musicians in the world, but we don’t have the best orchestras because we don’t give them the money to rehearse. It’s spread too thin. So second-rate becomes good enough, and we don’t know the difference any more.” – The Telegraph (UK)

CLAP TRAP

Audiences are clapping more and more in the London Theatre. “It is common in the West End for audiences to applaud the first entrance of major stars, as if grateful that they bothered to show up at all. Elderly actors always get a particularly big hand. This has nothing to do with their acting ability and everything to do with their longevity. This applause does not mean ‘You’re marvellous’ but ‘Isn’t it amazing that you aren’t gaga and in a bathchair’?” – The Guardian

LITERARY DETECTIVE

John Sutherland is a detective of literature. He examines, “with forensic precision, neglected details and apparent anomalies in classic novels and plays,” wondering – was Heathcliff a murderer? Or, posing a full evidentiary hearing about whether or not Shakespeare’s Henry V, was a war criminal? His books have become best sellers. – The Age (Melbourne)

RAGE AGAINST THE DUMBING DOWN

For years, British composer Harrison Birtwistle lived as a recluse on a remote French hillside. Now, at 66, he’s moved back to Britain, with some strong ideas about English culture. “I believe we have in this country the best musicians in the world, but we don’t have the best orchestras because we don’t give them the money to rehearse. It’s spread too thin. So second-rate becomes good enough, and we don’t know the difference any more.” – The Telegraph (UK)

BOYS CLUB

Women divas dominate the Australian pop charts. But the power in pop music is still male. “For a business that sells itself as hip, liberal and progressive, key aspects of the music industry remain as much of a boys’ club as they were when Elvis Presley moseyed into Memphis and signed up with Sun Records. It begs the question: if 50 per cent of all record producers since Rock Around The Clock had been women, how different might the catalogue of western pop sound? Would we have landed elsewhere musically in 2000?” – Sydney Morning Herald