Blog

Rare Jazz Great Recordings Never Heard In US Found In Library Of Congress

“The U.S. Library of Congress says it has uncovered long-forgotten recordings by some of the superstars of American jazz -Thelonious Monk, John Coltrane, Ray Charles and the Dizzy Gillespie Orchestra. Recorded in 1957, the tapes have never before been heard in the United States. The Voice of America recorded the music at a Carnegie Hall concert in New York City for broadcast to the rest of the world.”

Hide! The Art Cows May Be Coming To Edinburgh

The art cows could be coming to Edinburgh, home to some pretty great art of its own. “There is no question that they [the cows] have been popular, attracting tourists and generating a buzz. So I’m sure you are wondering what grumpy cow would dismiss a herd that brightens up our streets and gives money to good causes. My problem with this exhibit is that it is one of many banal but inoffensive displays littering our public spaces.”

Saul Bellow On Getting Close To Art:

The “trained sensibility,” he says, is unavailable “unless you take certain masterpieces into yourself as if they were communion wafers…. If you don’t give literature a decisive part to play in your existence, then you haven’t got anything but a show of culture. It has no reality whatever. It’s an acceptable challenge to internalize all of these great things, all of this marvelous poetry. When you’ve done that, you’ve been shaped from within by these books and these writers.”

Tomorrow’s TV Writers? From Today’s Theatre

“Back in the golden days of Hollywood, studio executives would often scour the theatres of New York and Chicago, searching relentlessly for talented new playwrights to bring out West to join their studio’s creative staff of writers. In that spirit Fox has teamed up with New York’s Naked Angels Theatre Company to produce Naked TV, an innovative project that mirrors those historic days in its attempts to discover and develop new writers for television.”

Report: Thousands Of Small Publishers Add Up

A new report says that there are thousands of small publishers in America “earning between $1 million and $50 million on their own, but adding up to an estimated $11 billion market. Traditional studies released by the study group, the Association of American Publishers and others assume that the solid majority of book sales comes from the larger organizations, with the top 50 making at least $20 billion out of a $28 billion market. Wednesday’s report, titled “Under the Radar,” asserts that the industry is both larger and less concentrated than previously believed.”

Bellevue Art Museum To Reopen

The Bellevue Art Museum in a Seattle suburb plans to reopen in June as a crafts museum. When the museum abruptly closed in September 2003, the “museum was running out of money and faced low attendance after moving to a new $23 million building downtown in 2001. Some of the problems were attributed to lackluster exhibits, a cold, unwelcoming feeling inside the building, an unclear mission and poor management.”

Pompidou Picasso Recovered

A Picasso painting stolen last year from the Pompidou, has been recovered. “Following a tip-off, police traced the painting – worth 2.5m euros (£1.7m) – to a house in Paris where the painting was hidden behind a wardrobe. Cubist painting Nature Morte a la Charlotte, completed in 1924, was reported missing in May last year from a restoration workshop.”

Study: Video Games Beats Music

A new study says that men are now spending more on video games than they do on music. “The survey by Nielsen Entertainment shows that DVDs are the number one purchase for men each month. It also found that games are starting to attract significant numbers of players beyond the core target market of males aged eight to 34.”