Chicago’s WFMT radio is arguably the most successful and innovative commercial classical music station remaining in the US. Much of the station’s drive comes from longtime general manager Steve Robinson, who has worked to “adapt the station’s offerings to a rapidly shifting broadcasting environment, making WFMT less stuffy and more appealing to a broader spectrum of listeners and listener tastes.”
Author: sbergman
Music & Murder In South Jersey
80 years ago in the hardscrabble town of Camden, New Jersey, a conductor who had galvanized an orchestra and its community suddenly became public enemy #1 when his 25-year-old lover turned up at a police station with a gunshot wound to the gut.
Detroit Confident In Slatkin Selection
The big orchestral headlines regarding music directors may have been made in New York and LA this year, but the Detroit Symphony feels that it snared a gem of a leader in Leonard Slatkin. “Slatkin is the whole package. His musicianship won over the musicians while his commitment to education, his willingness to fund-raise and think broadly about an orchestra’s role in urban life, make him, as DSO president Anne Parsons put it Monday, ‘the ultimate partner.’ [And] Slatkin gets the Midwest.”
Canadian Art’s Breakout Year?
It was a good year for Canadian art and artists, relatively speaking. “Sotheby’s only provided further proof that the market value for contemporary Canadian art… had gained some traction in the money-drenched international art markets.” Still, there’s a long way yet to go.
Studios: Writers Have Lost More Than $151m
“Hollywood studios said yesterday that striking writers have now lost more in salary and benefits than they had hoped to gain by walking off the job.” Presumably, the writers’ union feels that larger future realities are at stake in the strike, but for the moment, they aren’t commenting on the studios’ announcement.
How Much Is A Museum Worth?
Several small Southern cities have recently committed to build major new museums, and have hired prominent architects to design them. No one believes that a single museum can suddenly transform Bentonville, Arkansas into Chicago or Boston, but many local boosters believe that the right building could help them mimic the cultural rise of smaller cities like Bilbao, Spain.
Hate Speech Finding Its Way To Cable Access
US law requires cable TV operators to set aside channels for public use – the much-parodied “cable access” channels. The idea is to give ordinary people an uncensored voice in the media landscape, but increasingly, “the loose restrictions governing the shows have unwittingly resulted in diatribes against ethnic and religious groups.”
Islam And The Architects
As more Muslims emigrate to the US, mosques are being constructed around the country, and that has given rise to an “uneasy relationship between Islam and the West and the future of mosque architecture in the U.S.”
On The Whole, A Non-Descript Year
For the UK’s visual arts scene, “it was a non-vintage year in many respects. No grand project opened its doors, no assembling of crack old masters (Caravaggio, Velázquez) shook the world-view.” But the art sales boom continued, Brit film made some strides, and all the usual prizes stirred the usual pots.
Chaos Reigns In The Music Biz
“It’s official: Nobody, from the mighty executive to the humble songwriter to the savviest analyst, has a clue what’s going on in the music industry.Chaos continues to be the guiding principle in every facet of the pop landscape, as veterans and upstarts alike grapple with the unraveling of old business models and a deeply uncertain future.”