Blog

XM Passes 4 Million Subscribers

Satellite radio seems to be gaining a toehold in the US. XM says it has passed the 4 million subscriber mark and was on track to hit its goal of 5.5 million subscribers by the end of the year. “XM said it added 1 million subscribers since late December. XM’s rival in the satellite radio business, the New York-based Sirius Satellite Radio Inc., reported last month that it had 1.4 million subscribers and expected to have 2.7 million by the end of the year.”

The Musician With No Memory

“In his former life, Clive Wearing was a music producer for the BBC and the choirmaster of the renowned London Sinfonietta ensemble — but all that has been deleted out of his memory. Life before the illness has left few traces. Garden variety amnesia — people forget about their past lives — is not terribly uncommon. But forgetting on a continuous basis; that is very rare indeed. To Clive Wearing, the world is an ongoing riddle. He looks around and sees an unfamiliar room. Frequently, strangers stand in front of him and claim to be nurses. They claim that he has been living here for many years. All Wearing knows is: He has just woken up from a deep haze. For 20 years Clive Wearing has been continuously waking up.”

Ex-Seattle Symphony Concertmaster Settles With SSO, Stand-mate

The ex-concertmaster of the Seattle Symphony has settled with his ex-stand partner over comments he made on his blog. “I regret having posted statements that were interpreted as being about my former stand partner, now the acting concertmaster of the Seattle Symphony Orchestra. It is my understanding that some people have come to misapprehend my remarks which were intended to be humorous.”

Freni: A Diva At 70

The Metropolitan Opera holds a celebration of Mirella Freni’s 40 years singing there. “At 70, Ms. Freni was reminding audiences that she would be by far the most interesting singer at her own gala. Not that the Met wasn’t offering some of its best to join her onstage; the program inadvertently seemed to confess that today’s stars are fewer and lesser than those who surrounded the honoree when she was in her prime a generation ago.”

Why Academic Historians Need To learn How To Write Better

A new David McCullough history of the American revolution is due out, and academic historians are stewing. “Instead of grumbling over the public’s middlebrow book buying tastes, the best thing academic historians can do is to try to offer them something better. A number of our own practices lead us away from engaging the public as we should. I’ve seen students entering graduate school aspiring to write like Arthur Schlesinger, only to be shunted into producing pinched, monographic studies. I’ve seen conferences full of brilliant minds unable to find an interesting presentation to attend that isn’t literally read off the page in a soporific drone. We write too much for each other—and, as we do, a public hungry for good history walks into Barnes & Noble and gets handed vapid mythmaking that uninformed critics ratify as “magisterial” or “definitive.”

An American In Venice

Ed Ruscha is representing the United States at this year’s Venice Biennale. “One thing this Venice Biennale thing has done is to make me focus on being an American. You can’t help it. They make the rules and they have these nationalistic entries from each country. That does focus you on your origins. So I am feeling the fact that I am an American in Venice. I feel good about that. I take it from a particularly American perspective.”

Chicago Lyric A Hit In The Ledger

Chicago Lyric Opera had one of its strongest sweasons artistically. And it also managed to balance its budget for the 17th time in 18 years. “The season’s budget was $58.2 million. Ticket sales brought in $30,035,108, while the annual fund-raising drive reached a record $21.5 million. The company also reached its goal of adding $50 million in pledges to its endowment fund, which currently stands at about $50 million.”