You would be hard-pressed to find a more celebrated conductor of the moment than Valery Gergiev, and the still-young Russian is mounting a very public push to propel one of his orchestras, St. Petersburg’s Mariinsky, into the top of the international ranks. But “[Gergiev’s] energy has not always endeared him to orchestras or critics, some of whom equate his jet-setting lifestyle with a shallowness of preparation. Stories are legion of Gergiev turning up hours late to rehearsals, giving interviews during concert intervals and holding up the second half, and cutting his schedules so fine that they give orchestral managers panic attacks.”
Blog
Study: Women Driving Sales Of Recordings
An awful lot of money has gone to marketing pop music to men. But new studies show that “more women now spend more time listening to music than their male counterparts, with record labels speculating that the rise in digital downloads means they now find it quicker and easier to explore new artists.”
King Tut Goes Online
“Oxford scholars are preparing to post the notes, diaries, drawings and photographs from the 1922 excavation of the tomb of King Tutankhamun on the internet in an attempt to study it completely.”
Is The Bar Lowered For Artists Who Make Films?
An increasing number of painters, sculptors and other artists have recently been turning to film as a second medium, and many of the resulting films have been winning some high-profile prizes. “It is surely good that the art of film is developing in such a way as to be judged in arenas other than those in which Hollywood entertainment and the box office are the only criteria. And yet are these art-installation movies having the bar lowered for them? Aren’t they being judged by much less exacting standards than regular films?”
Write A Screenplay, Win The Lottery – It’s all The Same, Isn’t It?
Want to strike it rich? Write something. At least that’s what an awful lot of people seem to be thinking about these days. They are writing the screenplay – or, since Harry Potter, the children’s book – that will overnight, pay off the mortgage, free them from the job, allow the kids to have a great education and pay for the rest of their lives to be lived in tasteful but significant luxury.” Trouble is – your chances of that ever happening are about the same as winning the lottery…
The Great eBay Publishing Experiment
“A first-time author has bypassed the traditional route of getting an agent, and is publishing a collaborative thriller on eBay. The novel is being written one page at a time, one writer to a page. As each installment is finished, the chance to create the next is offered for auction on eBay. So far, 17 pages have been completed, with 234 to go, and while the quality of the writing might charitably be described as variable, there is no shortage of plot.”
Do We Need To Remember To Fail?
“The unprecedented success of technology in the last 50 years may have also created an expectation that failure should be anticipated and eliminated in all aspects of life. This leaves less and less tolerance for its inevitable persistence; very little margin is left for error. That is understandable in deciding whether bolts or welds should be used in a skyscraper (as became an issue in the Citigroup Tower in New York); large forces hinge on such small decisions. But that absolutist approach also entails unexpected sacrifices in other aspects of life, particularly when avoidance of failure and accident becomes the guiding principle for future design and behavior.”
Getty: We’re Not Panicking
“Rather than impressing the governments of the Mediterranean lands to which it pays such elaborate tribute, the Getty Villa in Pacific Palisades, Calif., has roused their anger. Saying that the villa’s galleries are full of antiquities that were illegally removed from their historical settings, Italy and Greece are demanding the return of dozens of objects.” Getty Museum director Michael Brand plans a stead hand: “It is a matter of not panicking and thinking the Getty Museum has a crisis, but of approaching it calmly and rationally and trying to work toward a solution.”
New Orleans Gets Its Dance Back
The New Orleans Ballet Association has got up and running again. “NOBA lost most of its season and its chief venue, the Mahalia Jackson Theater for the Performing Arts, to Hurricane Katrina. It also was forced to suspend its educational outreach efforts temporarily with thousands of area youth. Help has poured in from patrons, volunteers and artists, including the New York-based Parsons company, which waived fees for its Wednesday and Thursday performances.”
Gelb’s Met: Artists May Love It, But Will Audiences Follow?
As Peter Gelb prepares to take the helm of New York’s Metropolitan Opera, he has served notice that he intends to make some major changes to the venerable company. “Gelb argues that this approach will attract, not threaten, the opera establishment: ‘By having more new productions in any given season – of standard repertoire as well as new operas – the Met will become an even more attractive place for the top singers. The greatest artists and conductors want to be stimulated.’ Ah – but do opera audiences? There’s the rub.”