As conductors go, Raymond Leppard is a realist, and he is eager to spread the gospel of performance within an appropriate scale to smaller orchestras across America. For instance, why would an orchestra with 65 musicians ever attempt to mount performances of Mahler symphonies and Strauss tone poems intended for orchestras of 100, when there is an endless supply of music (Mozart, Haydn, etc.) specifically intended for the smaller-sized ensemble? And while new music is all well and good in theory, Leppard stresses that “when you’re so busy chasing notes in a 20th-century score, you can’t pay attention to your neighbors.”
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Canada’s Musical Salon
The old European idea of the intellectual salon has combined with the modern concept of marketing to the multitasking generation to create a wildly successful concert series in Toronto. The Off Centre Music Series, which celebrates its 10th anniversary this year, offers prelude concerts, guest lecturers, social interaction, top-notch pastries, and of course, the main event, presented less as a formal concert than as a gathering of friends around a common love of music.
Reaching Out In A Big (And Highly Visible) Way
It’s a major year for the arts in Minnesota’s Twin Cities, and not a bad year for construction companies, either. The Guthrie Theater is putting the finishing touches on a massive new riverfront home designed by architect Jean Nouvel, and major expansion projects are well underway at the Walker Art Center, the Children’s Theatre Company, and the Minneapolis Institute of the Arts. “Most of the institutions are expanding their missions or reaching for new audiences with their new facilities. And all are trying to redefine what it means to be a home for the arts.”
Letting The Music Speak For Itself
The Delaware Symphony is not an ensemble most people would think of as cutting edge, but a new marketing technique is being pioneered in Wilmington which larger orchestras probably should have thought of years ago. “Instead of the traditional orchestra pamphlet simply listing programs and prices, which is often geared toward listeners who already know what they want, the Delaware Symphony’s “Guidebook” takes potential ticket buyers gently by the ear and leads them through the season’s repertoire.” The season brochure is accompanied by a 30-minute CD which features musical samples, and the orchestra’s music director talking about the music.
Back To Booker Basics
“The Booker Prize, currently under fire for concentrating on fashionable and quirky writers, will this week attempt to regain its reputation for high seriousness with the launch of the ‘super Booker’, a worldwide search for the living greats of fiction. While the winners of the main prize, due to be announced next week, must come from Britain or the Commonwealth, the new £60,000 competition will be open to all comers.” The top contenders for the first ‘Super Booker’, which will be given not for any individual book but for a lifetime of literary achievement, are V.S. Naipaul, Margaret Atwood, Gabriel Garcia Marquez, and John Updike.
Assessing The Frankfurt Code
At the Frankfurt Book Fair, where cigar smoke hangs heavy in the hotel lobby and no one would think of passing an evening without getting blind drunk, trends are emerging, visible to anyone willing to throw himself fully into the spirit of the thing. Trend #1: Every book released this year must have the word “code” in the title if it expects to have any kind of commercial success. Trend #2: Shrill, ultra-partisan rants masquerading as intellectual treatises are selling like hotcakes to a polarized society eager to make themselves feel better about the world by reading political pablum with which they already agree.
BritFilm Finally Off The Ropes
British film has long been a source of derisive humor for many in the UK, with local productions underfunded, underproduced, and overwhelmed by Hollywood’s seemingly endless resources. “Yet unlikely as it may seem, there is currently an unfashionably buoyant air about contemporary British film-making – if not within the industry, then at least as far as audiences are concerned.”
Can Satellite Radio Train Us To Pay For It?
Howard Stern’s jump from traditional radio to satellite service Sirius could mark the moment when subscription radio becomes as indispensable to most consumers as cable TV. Or, it could relegate Stern to the fringes of pop culture and have little effect on over-the-air broadcasters. The truth is, no one knows whether Sirius’s gamble will pay off. “The challenge is to train the audience to pay for what they want to hear, uninterrupted by commercials, in the same way HBO trained us to pay for what we want to see, uninterrupted.”
Will Early Starts And Silent Films Put Butts In The Seats?
The Chicago Symphony Orchestra is hoping to fit itself into the busy lives of modern professionals with a new series of concerts aimed at multitasking, sleep-deprived workaholics. The concerts will begin quite early in the evening, and will run no more than 90 minutes, with no intermission. Gone will be the traditional orchestral formalwear, and a host will guide the audience through the program. Another new series will focus on film music, with the CSO providing live accompaniment to a Charlie Chaplin film projected above the stage. It’s all about attracting that elusive new audience that has become the Holy Grail for every American orchestra.
A Brief History Of Supertitles
They’re ubiquitous now, but operatic supertitles are actually only 20 years old, and it’s easy to forget how such a simple invention changed the face of the entire form. Toronto’s Canadian Opera Company was the first to try the idea back in 1983, and the practice spread quickly despite the objections of purists, making even the completely uninitiated able to follow the often convoluted plots unfolding on stage. But a technology that most operagoers take for granted now is far more complicated and accident-prone than most of us realize, and it was only fairly recently that supertitles entered the computer age.