Music fans rejoiced last week when the FCC announced that, in order to settle allegations of rampant payola, radio stations and the corporate conglomerates which own them had agreed to devote 4,200 hours of free airtime to local, independent artists. That sounds like a lot, but in reality, most big-city stations won’t have to change their playlist much at all. In fact, a Clear Channel station with a single one-hour local music program per week already meets the quota.
Author: sbergman
From Mario To Mozart
Just as the people who design video games are finally gaining respect as artists of one sort or another, those who write the music for the adventures are starting to be recognized in the same way that film composers have been for decades. And while gaming music has only recently embraced the full symphonic scale that epic games have long demanded, one Japanese composer has been churning out the hits ever since Mario and Luigi started bopping turtles.
Are School Standards Hurting The Arts?
President Bush’s No Child Left Behind act has been praised for making public schools more accountable for the quality of education they provide, but there’s no question that the act’s renewed focus on the basic building blocks of education has put the squeeze on subjects that aren’t reading or math-related. Even though NCLB designates the arts as one of five core learning areas, “schools are so concerned with making the grade in math and reading that they’ll pull resources away from the arts, physical education and foreign languages to make it happen.”
I Am Woman, Hear Me Ka-Ching!
Broadway has no shortage of famous men trodding its boards this spring, and their presence has cash-hungry producers licking their chops. But so far, it’s the women of Broadway who are showing the fastest commercial appeal: “Vanessa Redgrave, Joan Didion, Angela Lansbury and Marian Seldes have been racking up impressive numbers, far outselling big boys like Kevin Spacey, Christopher Plummer, Brian Dennehy, Frank Langella and Michael Sheen.”
D.C. Ballet School Names New Head
“Former Boston Ballet soloist Kee-Juan Han, 49, has been named to head the Washington School of Ballet, the institution announced yesterday. He will take over in July, becoming only the third director of the 63-year-old school, founded by the late Mary Day.”
Tacoma Company Closes Its Doors
“Tacoma Actors Guild, Tacoma’s only resident professional theater company, ceased operations last week,” citing insufficient funds to continue with its current season. The company had been thought to be turning its fiscal fortunes around in recent months, but a cash shortfall forced the shutdown.
Philly Museum Moving Art Around
This week, the Philadelphia Museum of Art will pack up literally millions of books, documents, and artworks, and carefully move them across the street. The move marks the beginning of “the museum’s looming $500 million expansion that aims to increase public space in the main building by 60 percent.”
The Russian Dance Tradition, As Seen From Maine
Okay, so a Marine and a former Soviet ballet star walk into a dance school… no, wait, it’s not a joke. “The choreographer and the combat veteran perform a unique pas de deux as artistic director and executive director” of a small but intense dance academy in small-town Maine, which “carries on the art’s much-revered Imperial Russian tradition yet aspires to become America’s preeminent school for training dancers for the professional ballet.”
The Art! It’s… it’s… ALIVE! (And Dangerous?)
The relatively new field of bio-art, in which practitioners “use live tissues, bacteria, living organisms and life processes to create works of art that blur the traditional distinctions between science and art,” is growing in popularity and visibility. But some animal rights activists object strongly to the genre, which they consider exploitation, and at least one bio-artist is being prosecuted by the U.S. government for his use of certain restricted bacteria that could be used to make biological weapons.
Chicago Spire Plans Head To Civic Review Group
“Final design plans for the twisting, 2,000-foot Chicago Spire, designed by architect Santiago Calatrava, will be presented at a public meeting of the Streeterville Organization of Active Residents (SOAR), an influential neighborhood group, March 26… The proposed skyscraper would rise on a site across Lake Shore Drive from Navy Pier. If completed, it would be the nation’s tallest building.”