Last year several executives and board members of the Honolulu Symphony resigned after the musicians themselves audited management practices. The orchestra is still looking for a new music director, but a new manaqgement team is beginning the task of rebuilding the organization.
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Want Me To Shop? Give Me A Show!
“A simple plate-glass window festooned with goods is no longer enough to stimulate the desensitized public. To compete with soulless megamalls and the Internet, shops are returning to their loyal old helpmeets: architects. The ancient Romans concentrated their stores in dense arcades, an idea that the 19th century picked up with enclosed gallerias, which in turn begat the modern indoor mall 50 years ago.”
Signs Of Change For BBC Orchestras
The biggest sign, writes Norman Lebrecht, is that “the BBC announced Jiri Belohlavek last year as chief conductor of its flagship ensemble, times of music downloads, media convergence and multi-skilling. Broadcast orchestras are breaking out of stereotype, as the BBC Philharmonic demonstrated from Manchester with its million-download Beethoven cycle. The whispering Czech was hired for London to raise standards and restore self-belief.”
Twin Cities’ New Guthrie A Gem
“Rising at the edge of the Mississippi, its confident forms are rooted in a vision of a muscular industrial America, and its structural bravura will certainly please the techno-fetishists. As a thoughtful response to the American city’s evolving role as a haven for cultural tourism, it also coaxes new meaning out of a haggard landscape.”
Longtail – No More Hits?
We’re moving from a mass culture to one that’s dominated by niches. So does this mean the end of the blockbuster?
Just Wondering – Where are The Video Game Critics?
Video games have become a big cultural force. So where are the great video game critics? “Many people write video-game reviews and that there are entire magazines and myriad Web sites devoted to this subject. But what these people are writing is not really criticism. Almost without exception, it’s consumer advice; it tells you what old game a new game resembles, and what the playing experience entails, and whether the game will be commercially successful. It’s expository information. As far as I can tell, there is no major critic who specializes in explaining what playing a given game feels like, nor is anyone analyzing what specific games mean in any context outside the game itself.”
Code: Spinning Music For Computer
“A new brand of music maestro is turning programming into performance, eschewing turntables for a compiler and a mind for syntax structure. ‘Livecoding’ practitioners improvise using Perl or homemade programming architectures to build compositions from the ground up, replacing instruments and samples with raw code authoring before a live audience.”
Salt Lake City Ponders Arts District
Some in Salt Lake City want to built and new arts and cultural district, with new theatres. But the city’s non-profit theatres have had declining attendance, and critics worry whether the city can support the new activity.
Orchestra Takes Itself Off eBay Auction
The Belgian chamber orchestra that put itself up for sale on eBay has taken down the ofer after bidding topped 100,000 Euros. “eBay representatives had contacted orchestra management over the weekend and reminded them of two important facts. First, listing, bidding and sale on eBay constitute a binding contract: the seller must sell the object listed to the highest bidder, and the highest bidder must pay the price he or she bid. Second, buying and selling people is against the law.”
Top Collectors
ArtNews is out with its annual list of the world’s top art collectors. “This year’s list contains 20 collectors who did not make it last year. The study showed that 61 percent, or 122 collectors, who made the list in 1996 were not on the 2006 list.”