Being a young conductor is no great shakes, what with everyone from critics to musicians to the public just waiting to pass judgment on your every move. So how do you manage to create great art, keep your orchestra happy, please the experts, and promote yourself all at the same time? Well, you could start by winning the Leeds Conductors Competition…
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Really, Really Bad Timing
“[UK] bookselling giant Waterstone’s yesterday pulled advertising for a new novel about suicide bombers creating mayhem in London. The book, called Incendiary, was published on Thursday, the day all-too real bombs hit London. Pictures promoting the novel show plumes of smoke curling above London’s skyline. The wording reads ‘a massive terrorist attack … launches this unique, twisted powerhouse of a novel’. Waterstone’s has removed all advertising for the book from today’s newspapers – except for the Guardian’s Guide, which went to press before the advert could be pulled.”
Maybe Their Movies Don’t Suck
Hollywood may be having a rough year, but the French Canadian film industry is raking in the dough. “While box-office receipts across the continent were down more than 8 per cent in the first half of 2005 compared with a year earlier, they fell less than 3 per cent in Canada’s French-speaking heartland. There’s nothing bewitching about the trend. While this year’s crop of Hollywood films is leaving Quebeckers just as indifferent as other North Americans, homegrown movies continue to build their audience, making the province’s film industry the envy of its English-Canadian counterpart.”
Is It Art? Or Is It Just Stupid?
What are we to make of an artist who crafts a bar of soap from fat liposuctioned out of the Italian prime minister, sells it to a collector for $18,000, then claims that his work has no political overtones? “There is something vexing about Gianni Motti and his bar of soap. It could be a neat contemporary commentary on politics, the media, image-consciousness and postmodern portraiture – and therefore worthy of its plexiglass pedestal. Or it could just be a tasteless, overpriced idea that dissolves in seconds, like soap in a hot bath.”
America’s Poet
It’s been 150 years since Walt Whitman published Leaves of Grass, widely considered to be America’s greatest contribution to the world of poetry. Over the years, sales of the opus have stayed strong as Whitman’s legend has grown, and scholars and public alike have come to view Leaves as something of a definitive poetic statement on American life.
Austin S.O. Ticket Sales Go Through The Roof
Orchestras across America are struggling to fill their concert halls, but in the indie-rock capital of Austin, Texas, residents are apparently devoted to music of all kinds, filling the local symphony’s concerts to such an impressive capacity that some concerts even attracted ticket scalpers. In fact, the Austin Symphony registered a 43% ticket sales increase in 2004-05 over the previous season, a dramatic rise the ensemble attributes to programming decisions and strong community support.
Pop Sales Take A Dive
Orchestras aren’t the only ones with ticket woes: attendance at popular music performances in North America dropped 12% in the first half of 2005, despite lower average ticket prices. Revenue generated by the concerts – mainly touring rock, pop, and hip-hop shows – fell more than 17%.
Swed: Tindall’s Tales Miss The Point
Blair Tindall’s now-infamous stories of sexual favors traded for career advancement in New York’s freelance scene are less troubling than her characterization of the music business as a whole, writes Mark Swed. “Classical music doesn’t mean much to the average American’s life, and she condemns the major orchestras, opera companies and performing arts centers for acting as if it does. They can’t sustain their high budgets, and they get by, in part, by taking advantage of the little guy, the musician… There are serious inequities in the system and a lot of jerks who manipulate musicians and the public for their own profit. But there are musicians who engage in the world in a meaningful way — and not just the Rattles, Tilson Thomases and Salonens — who get out and make music that matters, who change lives.”
Branching Out In La-La Land
There aren’t a lot of career options for classically trained musicians – for most, either you win an orchestra job or two, or you don’t, in which case you spend your life freelancing and teaching to make ends meet. But in Los Angeles, a paradigm shift is underway, in the form of “a small but growing and spirited subculture of young, classically trained female L.A. musicians who have skirted the symphony audition path to play ‘alternative’ musical genres and enjoy eclectic entertainment-industry work now that the Hollywood studios are no longer boys’ clubs… The impressive range of styles they play provides them with a level of excitement and performance satisfaction that more traditional musicians cannot claim — and they wouldn’t have it any other way.”
Arizona Opera Stays In The Black
Arizona Opera has balanced its budget for the second straight year, despite a difficult season that required serious cutbacks to keep the company in the black. The group, which performs in both Phoenix and Tucson, had a $5.5 million budget in 2004-05, but was forced to improvise for venues when Phoenix’s Symphony Hall closed for renovations.