The owners of Boston’s commercial classical radio station, WCRB, are putting the station up for sale, but say they will require any buyer to maintain the station’s classical format on at least a digital side-channel accessible to listeners with high-definition receivers. That isn’t terribly reassuring to some listeners, since HD radios are almost entirely unknown in the U.S., and some in the industry question whether the format requirement actually carries any legal weight. Boston has two other stations that broadcast classical music, but WCRB is the only full-time classical station.
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Stone Making 9/11 Pic
Controversial filmmaker Oliver Stone has begun work on a major film focusing on the 9/11 terrorist attacks on New York. But contrary to his reputation, Stone appears to be going out of his way to insure that the final product doesn’t strike anyone who lived through the tragedy as insensitive or sensationalist…
Yale Music School Scores $100 Mil, Eliminates Tuition
The Yale University School of Music is poised to join Philadelphia’s famed Curtis Institute in offering tuition-free enrollment to its students, following the announcement of new gifts to the school totalling $100 million. “Yale said it would also put the money toward increasing faculty, student and ensemble exchanges with foreign conservatories and toward Internet broadcasts of its events. The free tuition begins next school year and includes current students.”
Simon & Schuster Ed-in-Chief Quits
“Michael V. Korda will step down at the end of the year as editor in chief of Simon & Schuster’s trade books imprint, a post he has held since 1968, the company said yesterday. He will remain as editor in chief emeritus, editing the books of about a half dozen writers, including David McCullough, Larry McMurtry and Mary Higgins Clark.” The move appears to be entirely voluntary on Mr. Korda’s part.
China’s New Literary Star Stays In The Shadows
China’s most successful novel in years, which is shortly to be published in the U.S., is called Wolf Totem, and serves as a surprisingly sharp allegorical critique of Chinese culture even as it celebrates aspects of the country’s long and colorful past. But perhaps the most fascinating thing about the novel is that its author has chosen to remain entirely anonymous, even in the wake of the book’s stunning success, and that he has, up to this point, succeeded.
File Trading Goes Legit
“The old-school peer-to-peer network iMesh has left the murky world of illegal file swapping behind with the launch of a new service that enables users to share up to 2 million tracks from the four major record labels. The New York-based company is charging its 5 million users an a la carte fee of 99 cents to purchase a track, or $6.95 per month to gain unlimited access to the catalog… The company has built Microsoft Digital Rights Management technology into its software, allowing users to see a complete list of tracks available on the Gnutella network. However, they can only download tracks that they are willing to pay for, or that are not copyright protected.”
Christie’s Has A Solid First Week, Breaks Toulouse-Lautrec Record
“A painting by Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec has been sold for $22.4m in New York, breaking the world sales record for the artist’s work. His 1886 work La Blanchisseuse shows a female laundry worker gazing out of a window. It beat the 1997 record of $14.5m for one of his works. Christie’s annual autumn art auction also sold Picasso’s Sylvette on a Green Armchair for $8m. But Henri Matisse’s Marguerites failed to reach its $10m asking price. A pair of Monet paintings also remained unsold, drawing no bids beyond $3.2m after pre-sale estimates of up to $6m. Christie’s two-week Impressionist and modern art sale took a total of $160.9m in its first week.”
France Steps Up To Help New Orleans Culture
“Benefit concerts to help jazz musicians in New Orleans hit by Hurricane Katrina are to take place in France. Local musicians will also be sponsored to play club dates in Paris. An exhibition of loaned French works at the New Orleans Museum of Art is among the other cultural initiatives being lined up by officials to help the city.”
Management Shuffle In NY, Chicago, and LA
“Artistic administrator” is not exactly a glamorous title, but most major orchestras would have trouble functioning without one. So it was a notable event this week when three of the top US orchestras announced what amounted to an administrative carousel. “Chad Smith, the artistic administrator of the New York Philharmonic, will become vice president for artistic planning of the Los Angeles Philharmonic… Matías Tarnopolsky, currently senior director of artistic planning at the Chicago Symphony, will replace Smith in New York. Smith returns to the L.A. Philharmonic less than a year after he left the orchestra for New York.”
For Poets – A Question Of Audience?
If you’re a poet, would you prefer “a beautifully produced physical book, with the guarantee that it would find two thousand engaged readers?” Or “no physical book, but the guarantee that, through various means of publication—anthologies, newspapers, magazines, the Internet, and so on—the poems would find an audience of twenty thousand engaged readers?”