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Melting The New Music Permafrost

Contemporary music remains a tough sell in most concert halls, so when flutist Claire Chase decided to found her own ensemble specializing in the stuff, she knew she’d better be ready to take her performances outside traditional “classical” spaces. Three years later, Chase’s Chicago-based International Contemporary Ensemble (ICE) is a bona fide cult hit, performing everywhere from chamber music venues to seedy dive bars, and thriving on a combination of youthful energy (nearly all the Icicles, as members of the group are known, are under 30) and serious artistry.

Could Hollywood Benefit From Illegal File-Sharing?

Even as Hollywood ramps up its attempts to shut down BitTorrent, the high-volume peer-to-peer file sharing system that is allowing users worldwide to illegally download and share movies and television shows, some in the industry see serious upside to the technology. Specifically, BitTorrent has created cult followings for many foreign TV shows that would otherwise have almost no chance of getting any notice from America’s market-driven broadcast industry. Besides, say supporters, Hollywood already uses peer-to-peer networks to create buzz about their latest products, so the lawsuits and pronouncements of doom are ringing fairly hollow.

New Digital Distribution Law Stalls In House

“A key lawmaker has complicated the movie industry’s push for a law to restrict consumers’ ability to redistribute digital TV content over peer-to-peer networks and the internet at large. Rep. Joe Barton (R-Texas), chairman of the House Commerce Committee, has indicated that he opposes inserting a broadcast flag measure in his newly introduced digital TV bill, which would set a 2008 hard deadline for broadcasters to give back their analog spectrum.”

Preserving The Pods

Since the explosion of the Internet more than a decade ago, archiving the history of the new medium has become one of the biggest challenges for those inclined to try it – web sites come and go with alarming frequency, and today’s revolutionary site could be tomorrow’s passé pile of HTML code. Now, with podcasts the latest technology to burst onto the trend-heavy tech scene, one man has made it his mission to archive as much of the online amateur radio as he can get his hands on. Not that he’d actually bother listening to the vast majority of it, you understand…

Turner Shortlist Takes A Turn For The Traditional

For the last several years, a casual observer could have been forgiven for thinking that the overarching mission of Britain’s Turner Prize was to antagonize art lovers and the general public as much as humanly possible, while simultaneously propping up the careers of artists who fit nicely into the “shock and awe” category. But this year’s Turner shortlist appears to be going in quite a different direction, and includes a painter specializing in traditional still life and landscape work. The shortlist ought to go a long way towards placating the prize’s harshest critics, who have accused Turner organizers of ignoring many serious young artists in favor of conceptually-based flavors of the month.

D.C. Planning Huge Shakespeare Fest

“Come January 2007, all of Washington will seem a stage and its leading cultural institutions players in an ambitious six-month citywide festival devoted entirely to the works and influence of William Shakespeare. More than 20 local, national and international organizations are scheduled to participate in the venture, called ‘Shakespeare In Washington,’ which will take place in various venues, including theater, dance, music and visual-art institutions from January through June 2007.”

End Of A ‘Championship’ Era In Detroit

Most music directors who last more than ten years with a single orchestra don’t wind up leaving under the happiest of circumstances (Seiji Ozawa in Boston and Charles Dutoit in Montreal come to mind,) but as Neeme Järvi prepares to depart the Detroit Symphony after 15 years at the helm, there seems to be no question that the DSO and its home city have been witness to one of the great musical partnerships of the era. “The Estonian-born conductor and this mid-American orchestra have evolved into a championship team. They have changed together, flowered together, triumphed together. Especially over the last half-dozen seasons, they have turned what once were highlights into a lofty new standard of excellence at Orchestra Hall.”

Phoenix Gets A Deal Done, With Minimal Fuss

The musicians of the Phoenix Symphony have a new contract which will go a long way towards restoring much of what they lost the last time around the negotiating cycle. Back in 2002, the Phoenix players took a 14% pay cut in order to help stabilize the organization’s finances. The new 6-year deal calls for raises of 4%, 4%, and 5%, spread over the length of the contract. “In stark contrast to past negotiations characterized by walkout threats and busted deadlines, most details of the new contract were agreed upon before formal negotiations with the union began in April.”

Bringing In The Best

The well-known firm Artec has been chosen by the Quebec government to manage the acoustical design of the proposed new concert hall for l’Orchestre Symphonique de Montreal, and is already proposing that the hall be half again as big as originally planned. “The concert hall would be a public-private partnership, meaning a private consortium would build and operate the structure and Quebec would pay the tab over time.” The OSM has been seeking a new home for years, and despte being mired in an ongoing musicians’ strike, the organization has been enthusiastically partnering with the provincial government in drawing up the plans. Artec has won praise for its designs of concert halls in Dallas, Birmingham, England and Lucerne, Switzerland.