The Baltimore appointment may mark the first time Marin Alsop will have full control of a major American orchestra, but she’s no stranger to the prestigious podiums of the world, and musicians from some of the world’s best ensembles are going out of their way to support her in the wake of the Baltimore controversy. This past weekend, a violinist in the London Symphony stood at the end of a rehearsal to praise her and wish her well in her new job, prompting hearty applause from the entire LSO. Everywhere, the hope seems to be that Alsop’s famous charisma will win over the Baltimore musicians who tried to stop her appointment as a protest over what they viewed as an aborted music director search process.
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The 49th Parallel Blues
The U.S.-Canada border is the longest undefended national border in the world, and the two countries have always prided themselves on the friendliest of relationships and the ease of crossing between them. But since 9/11, security measures have resulted in an ever-growing mountain of paperwork for any artist or musician looking to cross the border for a performance. The hassles are now so extensive that many venues near the border will no longer book acts from the other side, for fear that the performers won’t be able to get official permission in time for the show.
American TV Nets Walk A Careful Line
American TV networks are scrambling to scrub their content of material that might get them in trouble with the FCC. “Congress is threatening to increase sharply fines for airing indecent material, and some politicians want to regulate cable and satellite TV for indecency for the first time. Over 80% of American homes subscribe either to cable or satellite TV, but only broadcast television, which is technically free, is subject to indecency regulation. The media industry fears that new rules could damage its business model.”
China Prefers Suggestive To Dissenting
Chinese media is getting racier. “The explosion of suggestive images is partly a reflection of changes in Chinese society — many sociologists say China is in the midst of a sweeping sexual revolution — and partly due to market reforms. In 2003, the Chinese government introduced far-reaching regulations that require many newspapers and magazines to try to turn a profit. Television is undergoing a similar, though more gradual, transformation. Xinhua remains state-owned, but it competes for hits with NASDAQ-traded Internet portals Sina and Sohu, which publish their share of racy content. They have less of a profit motive, but they must be looking at their visitor stats.”
Our Lives As A Media Event
“Almost everything comes to us through some media prism, which, in turn, colours not just our view of this life, but our own self-definition. We are products of immense, often inchoate, media indoctrination. Moreover, the very pattern of life we take for granted, our normality, is hectic, digital and new, quite different in kind from that of even recent generations. You know where you were when Kennedy or Di died or the Twin Towers came toppling down. But does anybody, except those few who were there, on the spot, remember Pearl Harbor? Our lives, as recently as the first half of the 20th century, were different in kind: isolated, unchanging, experiencing great events at a sluggardly distance.”
Constructing The Virtual Mind
“Until very recently, artificial-intelligence researchers believed that modeling the mind was simply a matter of simulating rational cognition, an activity that was seen to be epitomized by strategical games such as chess and go — but over the past decade, computer scientists have come to understand that a virtual mind needs a virtual psychology. To “think” requires not just an ability to carry through a chain of logical inferences; it also requires a mental environment, or psychic context, in which such rationalizations can be given meaning.”
Negative Reconstruction (Should We Resist?)
“Exotic ballets may have been massively popular in their day – “The Pharaoh’s Daughter” was performed more than 100 times during Petipa’s lifetime. But when they die, shouldn’t we take that as a sign? “The Pharaoh’s Daughter” was buried in 1928. The Soviets must have been embarrassed by its celebration of grandeur built on the backs of slaves. Shouldn’t we be, too? Or, as with Shakespeare’s “The Merchant of Venice,” does a vein of gold pulse beneath the dumb surface? This is a huge question for our major classical ballet companies, which have the resources to consider reconstructions, “imaginative” or otherwise.”
The Censorship Debacle – Why A California Protest Fails
Attempts at censorship almost always backfire, as protests against an anti-Bush painting in the California Department of Justice will show. “Throughout human history, great art has been political, or inspired by an artist’s political experience. Unless you want museums and public buildings to be sanitized, boring and free of any real art, you have to tolerate works that are sometimes offensive. The other alternative is to create a government committee to approve all public art. Orwell had a name for this. He called it the Ministry of Truth.”
Salzburg Festival Opens With Comments On Terrorism
“Austrian President Heinz Fischer warned against the dangers of European values being ‘bombed away’ on Sunday at the opening ceremonies of the Salzburg Festival, the world-famous musical and drama event dedicated to art as a universal value. Touching on the terror attacks over the last few weeks in London and Egypt, Fischer said that a Europe recovering from an earlier horror — the Nazi regime of Adolf Hitler — was ill prepared for the new threat that targets innocents everywhere.”
Bush Stars As ‘Idiot’ In Faulkner Parody
“A scathing parody that likens President Bush to the ‘idiot’ in William Faulkner’s novel ‘The Sound and the Fury’ has won this year’s Faulkner write-alike contest — and touched off a literary spat. Organizers of the Faux Faulkner competition are accusing Hemispheres, the United Airlines magazine that has sponsored the contest for six years, of playing politics by not putting Sam Apple’s ‘The Administration and the Fury’ in its print edition — only on its Web site.” Hemispheres’ editor says politics had nothing to do with the decision.