Miles Davis has always sold well. But there are so many boxed sets that feature outtakes and performances not meant to be heard. What’s the point? “There’s something intimate, even creepy, about listening to the vast quantity of recordings on these boxes; many of the tracks are out-takes – never intended for the market. And they seem to have become more obsessive, more microscopic.”
Blog
What Happened To Schumann’s 150th?
Norman Lebrecht wonders why, amid “the universal mush of Mozart’s 250th birthday, few are bothering to contemplate the 150th anniversary of Schumann’s death, an event that changed the course of music.”
So We Should All Read The Classics In School? (What A Turn-Off)
Carol Sarler doesn’t read books. Really. She blames it on school. “We read the books, we were tested on them and we passed or failed accordingly. Reading books was, therefore, the stuff of school in exactly the same way as was trigonometry or chucking a javelin — and since leaving my esteemed seat of learning, I am as likely to curl up with Jane Austen for the fun of it as I am to flirt with a cosine or risk the wrong end of a spear.”
Bolcom’s Grammy Triple Delight
William Bolcom’s Songs of Innocence and of Experience won the Grammy Awards for best classical album, best choral performance, and best classical contemporary composition at the Grammys. Here’s a complete list of classical Grammy winners…
How Many Musicians Do You Really Need?
When the CEO of the Lousiville Orchestra paused in the middle of negotiating a new contract with the orchestra’s musicians last month to speculate publicly that the organization might shut down if serious changes did not occur, the musicians were stunned, and then furious. This week, they offered to take a wage freeze and benefit cuts and to submit the whole contract to mediation. But CEO Scott Provancher isn’t hopeful that mediation will accomplish anything, and he remains convinced that only a wholesale reduction in the number of full-time musicians in the orchestra can save the company from Chapter 7 bankruptcy.
D.C. Experimental Theatre Closes Up Shop
“[Washington, D.C.’s] Source Theatre Company, which provided a home for experimental plays and fledging artists for more than 28 years, has ceased operations and agreed to sell its building. Source had been struggling financially for several years and has received almost $1 million in public funds.”
Scrap It Before The Critics Get A Look At It
Minneapolis-based Theatre de la Jeune Lune, which won the 2005 Tony Award for best regional theatre in the U.S., has announced that it will cancel the final production of its 2005-06 season after deciding that the adaptation of “The Old Man Who Read Love Stories” would not be ready in time for its June debut. The company “is known for its unconventional approach to producing and programming. In 2004, the company canceled a week’s worth of performances of “The Ballroom” after opening in order to rework the show after disappointing critical and commercial reaction.”
McMichael Plucks Frick Director
“Thomas J. Smart, director of collections and exhibitions at [Pittsburgh’s] Frick Art & Historical Center since July 1999, will leave the museum to become executive director of The McMichael Canadian Art Collection in Toronto, Ontario… The McMichael collection includes First Nations and Inuit artworks and is the foremost venue in Canada for paintings by the Group of Seven, landscape artists who were active in the first half of the last century.”
When Movie Titles Attack
“We seem to have entered a golden era of woeful movie titles… Is `The Squid and the Whale’ the worst movie title of all time, or is it still a tie between `Chu Chu and the Philly Flash’ and `Children Shouldn’t Play With Dead Things’?” And can anyone remember the difference between a movie titled ‘A Lot Like Love,’ one called ‘Just Like Heaven,’ and that instant classic, ‘Just Friends’? And don’t even get us started on filmmakers who title their masterpiece with a sound effect…
Well, Duh. Girls Are Icky!
“A study of the most popular G-rated movies of the past 15 years has found that three-quarters of the characters are male, raising concerns that Hollywood is inadvertently telling children that women are less important than men.”