The Edinburgh Festival has a new director. “Just how Edinburgh, the city of Hume and Mill, the home along one main street of three latterday Walter Scotts – Rowling, Rankin, McCall Smith – the Venice of the North, the greatest arts festival between Aix-en-Provence and Santa Fe, just how Edinburgh got itself into such a selection muddle that it had to hire a minnow from the other side of the world is almost beyond comprehension.”
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Blurry Boundaries – Where Is Classical Music?
“Where does classical music begin and end? I don’t mean in terms of chronology – whether it starts with Josquin or Monteverdi, or finishes with Schönberg or Stockhausen. I ask the question in relation to generic boundaries, and I want an answer because so much effort has been expended recently on “breaking down the barriers” which supposedly surround classical music that it has become impossible to maintain any focused sense of what those barriers were originally intended to mark.”
Cincinnati Museum Votes Expansion
The Cincinnati Art Museum is embarking on a huge expansion. “It will cost at least $125 million and add 110,000 square feet, underground parking, new and renovated galleries and an outdoor sculpture park. And it will eclipse the city’s most recent art museum projects: construction of the $35 million Contemporary Arts Center in 2002-03 and the $22.8 million renovation and expansion of the Taft Museum of Art in 2003-04.”
Another Whitney Biennial? Hmnnn…
“The Biennial embodies the Whitney’s eternal identity crisis. The museum cannot abandon its American focus, but today there’s every reason to emphasize global rather than national perspectives. (Besides, art fairs churn out surveys constantly.) What’s the Whitney to do with the Biennial? Its predicament is serious but also funny.”
Shakespeare’s Picture (Probably)
“After three and a half years’ research, and the detailed examination of six paintings, the National Portrait Gallery has concluded that the so-called Chandos portrait shows the true face of Shakespeare – probably.”
Poll: People Like Happy Endings
“Forty-one per cent are overwhelmingly in favour of books with a happy ending, as against 2.2% who like it sad. Women were 13% more likely than men to say they want it all to end happily. Almost one fifth of men expressed a preference for books with ambiguous endings.”
A Trend To Audiobooks
Sales of audiobooks were up four percent in 2004. “The major trend emerging from the survey showed higher revenue from new audio formats and the continued slow fade of the traditional audio cassette. MP3 CDs represented 1 percent of sales and digital downloads represented 6 percent of sales in 2004.”
What’s The Hold-Up In D.C.?
Washington Ballet “has been on hiatus since mid-December, when negotiations on a first-time union contract for the dancers turned sour. Among the issues still unresolved: how the school’s students will be used in professional productions, how many dancers will be in the company, and terms of employment. By all accounts, these are standard fare for the negotiating table. In other dance companies, somehow a balance of interests is achieved and shows go on. So what’s holding up the Washington Ballet? A year after its dancers joined a union to correct what they say were poor working conditions, and after months of negotiating an employment contract, why is there no deal? And no dancing?”
Two Opera Companies Form Partnership (But Don’t Call It A Merger!)
“The Pittsburgh Opera and Opera Theater of Pittsburgh yesterday announced they have entered into an artistic and marketing collaboration beginning in the 2006-07 season. But they are not merging, a move that has been tried in the past… A merger has been rumored since Pittsburgh Opera announced that its production next season of The Magic Flute will be directed by Opera Theater’s head, Jonathan Eaton.”
DaVinci Defense: You Can’t Be Robbed Of What Isn’t Yours
As the copyright infringement case against DaVinci Code author Dan Brown continues in London, it has become clear that Brown’s defense team plans to argue that the ideas the plaintiffs claim were stolen from them are so general that their use does not constitute a violation. Brown does acknowledge that he added some elements to the novel after reading The Holy Blood & The Holy Grail, but says that the ideas were not original to that book’s authors anyway.