“The West End doesn’t allow you to try because tickets are £55. Then you have to take a taxi and pay the baby-sitter, and there is no change out of £200. ‘If we charge £10, or on our public dress rehearsals, £1 – you might not like it, but at least you can afford to come back next week. Nonetheless, theatre attendance is on the increase.”
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Vanity Fare
Why do people buy books? To look good. A new survey reports that “driven partly by pressure from incessant literary prize shortlists, more than one in three consumers in London and the south-east admit having bought a book ‘solely to look intelligent’, the YouGov survey says.”
Sing A Duet After You’re Dead?
Nothing unusual about releasing an album by an artist after he or she is dead. But here’s a new low – a “duet” by two stars, mixed after they’ve both died. “Both Marley and Notorious BIG were used to pushing the musical envelope while alive, but this effort would still have surprised them. I know I scratched my head wondering why anyone would risk the reputations of two of the industry’s most influential artists for this ghoulish effort. The guilty parties, of course, are the late artists’ estates…”
National Gallery’s “Madonna” Was Expensive If It’s Not Raphael
Two years ago, London’s National Gallery bought “The Madonna of the Pinks” for £22 million, including £11.5 million in public money. “James Beck, a professor at Columbia University, New York, a tireless critic of the attribution, has just completed a book in which he claims that the Northumberland Madonna cannot be by Raphael.”
Critics Bash Munch Museum For Board Game
Critics are attacking Oslo’s Munch Museum for selling a board game based on the theft of the museum’s most famous painting – The Scream. “In principle I find it a bit in bad taste to make a game out of the theft of The Scream. My initial reaction is to disapprove of an initiative that helps trivialise a national and international drama while the painting is still missing.”
NW Chamber Orchestra Director Steps Down
David Pocock is leaving as artistic director of Seattle Northwest Chamber Orchestra. “Pocock, who has worked with the orchestra since 2003, came from the Colburn School of Performing Arts in Los Angeles, where he served as the dean. Pocock has accepted the position of director of institutional sales with Sherman Clay Pianos.”
Swedish Ambassadors
Traveling orchestras are ambassadors for their art. The Royal Stockholm Philharmonic played Carnegie Hall this week, and this is what we learned: “First, Stockholm, not widely known as a music center, has a legitimate orchestra to serve its needs, and people should know more about it. Second, Sweden, and Scandinavia in general, produces composers the world should hear more of and doesn’t.”
Cuban: Studios Have To Change How They Deliver Movies
Mark Cuban believes that Hollywood’s distribution system requires radical change. “He wants to do away with artificial windows so that consumers can buy a movie ‘how they want it, when they want it, where they want it.’ He argues that movies should be made available simultaneously on cable television, DVD, and in movie theaters, letting consumers decide whether they prefer to see it at home (even if it means paying a premium for a new release) or in the theater. This is not mere theory.”
A Go For $326-Million Kansas City Performing Arts Center
Arts backers in Kansas City say they’re going ahead with plans to build a $326-million performing arts center designed by Moshe Safdie. The project has been in the planning since spring 2002. “The board of the center has approved groundbreaking for fall 2006 contingent upon reaching an interim funding goal of $45 million prior to Feb.1, 2006. The plan calls for two 1,600-seat halls, one for symphonic music, the other for opera and ballet. Backers have raised $228.5 million so far, leaving them $97.5 million short of their goal.”
British Film Industry Is Ailing
“A report commissioned by the U.K. Film Council this month found that industry jobs dropped 20 percent last year and predicted that investment would fall to $570 million in 2005, down 70 percent from last year. More movies shot elsewhere would have a devastating effect on a sector that contributes about $5.5 billion annually to British gross domestic product, the report added. Tourism officials are also worried. They estimate that around one-fifth of the 28 million people who come to Britain each year do so after seeing the country depicted on screen.”