Edinburgh will be getting a new concert hall within the next five years, if plans currently being floated go through. The new venue would replace the aging Queen’s Hall, would seat an audience somewhere between 500 and 1200 people, and would become the new home for the Scottish Chamber Orchestra.
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The Underlying UnFairness Doctrine
You’re open-minded? Sure you are. Of course. And yet… A study shows that “we may intend to be fair, but underneath our awareness, our minds automatically make connections and ignore contradictory information…”
Disney Makes A Deal To Sell Films Online
The Walt Disney Co. will sell its films online the same day they become available on DVD, thus closing the gap between DVD sales and video-on-demand by several months. The deal includes new releases plus some library titles.
French Artists – The Weight Of History
“It must be tough, being a contemporary French artist. All that hinterland to cope with. All those mould-breaking forebears who had only to cock a snook at the Académie Française…”
The Royal Shakespeare’s Unconventional Shaplin
Adriano Shaplin is an unconventional choice as writer-in-residence for the Royal Shakespeare Company. “These essentially conservative institutions, the National and the RSC, are now under new leadership and are looking around for the people who are making real ensemble theatre. It’s great that they’re turning to companies like the Riot Group and Shunt. The RSC has used the phrase ‘blood transfusion’. It’s so exciting.”
Reality – Playwrighting Tough On TV
More than 2000 people submitted plays to be considered for a UK reality TV show that would reward the winning entry with a West End production. “The contestants – including call-centre workers, chefs and supermarket shelf-stackers – were whittled down to 30, where the programme takes up the story. At the next stage, the remaining 10 writers were hot-housed by a team of theatre experts and had to produce their full-length play. Then it was down to the final three, one of whom would have his play staged in the West End.”
For Sale – A Spot On Our “Recommended” List
WH Smith – Britain’s biggest bookseller – is “demanding payments of £50,000 a week from publishers to get books on its supposedly impartial list of ‘recommended’ reads in the run-up to Christmas this year.”
The New Indie Biz
Indie presses are reinventing their businesses. “In big publishing, the line is that people don’t read, and we’re all competing for the same dwindling pool of readers. That’s not true. We’re going out and finding new readers, and showing people that reading can be provocative and exciting.”
The Enigmatic Moscow Art Market
“The economic free-for-all after the collapse of the Soviet Union created a new class of wealthy entrepreneurs who have been buying Russian art and are already widening their collecting interests. All this should favour the Moscow fair, founded two years ago, but nothing in Russia is ever as simple as it seems.”
The Anti-Racism Festivals That Preach To The Converted?
Have festivals organized to rally for political purpose lost their point? “Today’s anti-racism festivals are an entirely different affair because, essentially, they preach to the converted. The people who come to Finsbury Park in north London for Rise are logical human beings who already know that hating someone because of their colour and creed does not make any sense. It’s more likely that they’re in the park simply to enjoy a day in the sun, listen to music and eat some of the best jerk chicken this side of Jamaica.”