“The hall sounded like a winner. It’s got a very attractive resonance, flattering to all parts of the orchestra and especially to voices on stage. The sound is warm and a bit contained, but without dryness. It is clear enough to expose every section of the orchestra (a challenging asset), and to give maximum transparency to sung or spoken text.”
Blog
Baseless Art – Royal Academy Makes A Mistake
“Britain’s Royal Academy of Art put a block of slate on display, topped by a small piece of wood, in the mistaken belief it was a work of art. The slate and wooden stick was actually a base meant to hold up a laughing human head made by British sculptor David Hensel.”
How Royal Academy Mistook A Plinth For Art
“On a trip to see his work in situ, he came across the slate slab and the tiny piece of wood that supported the sculpture, but the macabre countenance was nowhere to be seen. That, the Royal Academy said, was because the artist had submitted the two components separately and the judges had simply preferred the plinth to the head.”
Music Firm Claims iPod Infringes Patents
“Creative has asked the International Trade Commission to issue an order stopping Apple from marketing, selling or importing iPods into the US. It claims the iPod infringes its patent for a music player navigation menu.”
Expert Dismisses Leicester Theatre Plan
Theatre consultancy guru Richard Pilbrow has dismissed designs for the new £48 million Leicester Performing Arts Centre by leading architect Rafael Vinoly as “impractical” and “extremely problematic”.
The Creative Economy
“The U.S. is at the forefront of this global creative economy. Over the next decade, it’s projected to add 10 million more creative sector jobs, according to the newest numbers from the Bureau of Labor Statistics. At the present rate of increase, creative jobs alone will soon eclipse the total number of jobs in all of manufacturing. Already, more than 40 million Americans work in the creative sector, which has grown by 20 million jobs since the 1980s. It accounts for more than $2 trillion USD—or nearly half—of all wages and salaries paid in the U.S.”
Hollywood’s Internet Marketing 2.0
This summer Hollywood studios are turning to new websites. “Some of these studios are enjoying massive exposure by placing marketing materials on smaller, cutting-edge sites that emphasize on-demand and user-generated content, as well as video sharing. While still promoting their films through standard ad buys on big-reach portals like Yahoo!, MSN and AOL, many studios are seeding their content on smaller venues and banking on their fans to form their own distribution channels.”
Singing Carlos Acosta’s Praises
So why isn’t the Royal Ballet’s Carlos Acosta a popular hero? “Why isn’t he a celebrity on the scale of Nureyev? He is incontrovertibly one of the great artistic phenomenona of our time. It’s hard to imagine anyone else, in any artform, who could combine such of virtuosity, wit, charm, grace and interpretative skill.”
The Bolshoi’s Precarious Condition
The Bolshoi has been threatening to disintegrate for years. The original theatre was built between 1821 and 1825, then destroyed by fire and rebuilt in 1853. In 1920, the building started to shake during a performance. They fixed that with a concrete base beneath the floor – which affected the acoustics. In 2002 a second world war bomb was discovered beneath one of the theatre’s entrances. But it wasn’t until last year’s closure that anyone realised exactly how serious the situation was. The foundations had sunk by 20cm. There were areas of brickwork that, when the restorers tried to take them apart, crumbled to the touch.”
Pacific Northwest’s New Dance Era
Seattle’s Pacific Northwest Ballet finishes its first season of a new era under director Peter Boal. Portland’s Oregon Ballet picks up some of PNB’s DNA with its director Christopher Stowell, son of former PNB directors Francia Russell and Kent Stowell…