When you start your career as a French composer in the mid-twentieth century by openly dismissing Pierre Boulez and writing works that don’t contain a hint of serialism, you’re probably asking for a good swift kick from the establishment. Henri Dutilleux absorbed plenty of them, but somehow, he and his music refused to go away. “His oeuvre vies with that of Boulez to be the most accomplished body of French music in recent years, and yet is relatively neglected because of the 70-year-old [sic] Boulez’s greater clangour. But, like Elliott Carter, the 96-year-old US composer, Dutilleux is one of the indomitable forces of music, carrying on writing after all these years.”
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Boulez The Mellow? Think Again.
It’s almost impossible to write a profile of the suddenly-new-again Pierre Boulez without mentioning how the onetime enfant terrible of music has mellowed over the years. But while Boulez may no longer blast his contemporaries and openly dismiss composers whom the rest of the world loves, his opinions haven’t really changed all that much. For instance, Boulez still insists that Stravinsky’s neoclassic period is “totally artificial,” and that the composer didn’t really do anything interesting from the beginning of his neoclassicism to the day he “discovered” twelve-tone music.
Philly’s Very Own Italian Opera Conductor (No, Not That One)
Opera Company of Philadelphia may not exactly be La Scala, but that hasn’t stopped the company’s new young music director from thinking big. When Italian conductor Corrado Rovaris agreed to take the reins at OCP, he shook things up immediately, and has won praise for his willingness to push for what he believes are the highest artistic standards, and the free rein to achieve them. The effect has been immediate. “Many substantial opera companies rely only on visiting conductors and go for years without a music director to consistently build orchestral standards. It’s opera: Singers are the attraction… Besides raising musical standards, [Rovaris] is attracting singers whom the company couldn’t normally afford.”
Rock Away – American Radio Drops Rock Music
Rock music is falling off American radio airwaves. “In the last four months, radio executives have switched the formats of four modern-rock, or alternative, stations in big media markets, including WHFS in Washington-Baltimore area, WPLY in Philadelphia and the year-old KRQI in Seattle. Earlier this month WXRK in New York discarded most newer songs in favor of a playlist laden with rock stars from the 80’s and 90’s. Music executives say the lack of true stars today is partly the reason.”
Playwright To Critic: Get A Clue!
Playwright David Eldridge attacks critic Michael Billington’s complaint that contemporary plays are lacking in imagination and too tied to a 90-minute formula. “For the most part Billington’s thesis is shot through with an ignorance of the modern playwriting culture that is breathtaking for someone who goes to the theatre as much as he does, and belies a backward-looking agenda that bears as little relevance to a 21st-century theatre as John Major’s whimsical fantasy of re-creating the 1950s with warm beer and cricket on the village green.”
Bollywood’s Legit Financing In Peril
Bollywood, home to the world’s biggest movie industry has long had a shady connection to organized crime. But four years ago “top conglomerates run by India’s wealthiest families plunged into film financing when the Indian government declared Bollywood a bona fide industry. A series of flops and millions of lost dollars later, however, and the more respectable investors are running scared, leaving Bollywood’s hopes of putting its murky past behind in tatters.”
Researchers: TV Screen Clutter Impedes Understanding
“In the past few years, television stations have begun to reformat their screen presentations to include scrolling screens, sports scores, stock prices and current weather news. These visual elements are all designed to give viewers what they want when they want it. However, Kansas State University researchers say that it’s not working. ‘Our conclusion has been that if you want people to understand the news better, then get that stuff off the screen. Clean it up and get it off because it is simply making it more difficult for people to understand what the anchor is saying. We discovered that when you have all of this stuff on the screen, people tend to remember about 10 percent fewer facts than when you don’t have it on the screen.”
Nine Out Of Ten Want Mandatory Arts Ed In Schools
Nine of ten respondents to a survey in California believe that arts should be a mandatory subject in public schools. “Arts education has been on the decline in public schools for decades because funding has not kept pace with the rising cost of services. The emphasis on language and math instruction has made subjects such as music susceptible to reduction or elimination. Private fundraising has enabled restoration of programs in some, but not all, public schools.”
Proposed Virginia Performing Arts Center Hits A Speed Bump
“The Virginia Performing Arts Foundation is acknowledging for the first time that it won’t meet a July 1 deadline to raise $93 million for a performing-arts center in downtown Richmond. It’s also no longer hoping to open one of its key attractions – a music hall on East Broad Street – by the target date of 2007.”
Is Laocoon A Michelangelo Fake?
The Laocoon is an iconic piece oif art, an ancient wonder. But “an art historian is claiming that the ancient masterpiece – which fascinated not just Michelangelo but Blake, who engraved it, and Napoleon, who seized it – is not what it seems. She says it was carved by Michelangelo himself. Can this be possible and, if so, what would it mean?”