“Three longtime media executives are building an automated system to allow newspapers and magazines to charge for online access, including an ‘all you can read’ subscription that would allow access to multiple publications, the executives said on Tuesday.” The company is called Journalism Online, and among its founders is one Steven Brill.
Author: Matthew Westphal
Kent Nagano Extends In Munich
The Californian conductor has extended the term of his contract as music director of the Bavarian State Opera to 2013. According to Bavaria’s culture minister, the relatively brief extension (two years) will make Nagano’s tenure coterminous with that of the house’s general manager, Nikolaus Bachler; any further extension will be discussed “at the appropriate time.”
Charles Teitel, 93, Who Brought Foreign Cinema To Chicago
“Charles Teitel’s World Playhouse Theater on Michigan Avenue was the first foreign art house in Chicago, screening such seminal films as The Bicycle Thief and Z as well as movies that city censors tried to ban for racy content.”
Unpublished Stories By Vonnegut To See Print
“Kurt Vonnegut’s longtime publisher, Delacorte Press, has announced it will issue 14 never-before published short stories by the author, who died in 2007, in a new collection, Look at the Birdie, slated for publication in November 2009.”
Linking Shakespeare And Hip-Hop
“[Rapper] Akala engages [a group of teens] in a series of exercises that explore the close relationship between the rhythms of modern hip-hop and the iambic pentameter of Shakespeare. He hands out cards printed with a couple of lines. We have to decide whether they’re the work of the playwright or a rapper. It’s harder than you’d think.”
Western Photographer Robert Adams Wins Hasselblad Prize
“Robert Adams, whose images of the American West have made him an internationally celebrated photographer, just got $61,000 richer. That’s the amount Adams received this week as part of the Hasselblad Prize, one of photography’s top honors.”
Pliés And Paella
Choreographer Shobana Jeyasingh’s new work Just Add Water? “explores not only the global ethnic mix that makes up modern Britain, but the cuisine that results from it.”
Pittsburgh Opera Gets $1M Capital Grant From Pa.
“No telling how well Gov. Edward Rendell sings, but the Pittsburgh Opera was all ears when he presented the company with a $1 million Capital Budget Redevelopment Assistance grant at the Allegheny County Courthouse yesterday.”
Latin Bandleader Manny Oquendo, 78
The native New Yorker, an expert on percussion and the timbales, infused Latin jazz with the típico Cuban rhythmic style.
Da Vinci Portrait Discovered In Stained Glass
“A new, vividly colored portrait of Leonardo da Vinci has emerged from the windows of Arezzo’s Cathedral in Tuscany, Italy, claims an Italian scholar who has published the finding in a new book, The Portraits of Leonardo.“