In Italy, big-time architects are being hired to design churches (like in the old days, remember?). “It is premature to say that Renzo Piano’s spidery dome or Richard Meier’s three sweeping concrete sails and glass facade will push Roman Catholic architecture into a period comparable to the glory days when churches were stylistic showcases for masters like Francesco Borromini and Lorenzo Bernini. But some church officials are hoping that a return to architectural splendor will help put people in the pews.”
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High Sax (130 Times)
Salvatore Sciarrino is premiering a piece for 130 saxophones in Edinburgh. Sciarrino, 57, is “Italy’s most prominent contemporary composer, a man obsessed with the limits of sound, with creating pieces in a mysterious region where music, silence, and noise meet. He’s written works that transform instrumental ensembles into gigantic aviaries by making flutes and violins sound like nightingales and swans, and piano pieces that are so quiet they would be drowned out by the merest foot-shuffle in the audience. It sounds like a world of avant-garde extremism, but there’s a sensuality to Sciarrino’s music that makes it uniquely seductive.”
Botswana Bestseller
The huge success of novels featuring a Botswanan private detective has catapulted their Scottish publisher into the major league. “With sales topping five million in English, Precious Ramotswe is fast becoming to Alexander McCall Smith what Harry Potter is to JK Rowling and Inspector Rebus is to Ian Rankin.”
Edinburgh Jazz – Europe’s Best?
“A record-breaking 25,000 tickets were bought for performances by top musicians, firmly cementing the event’s reputation as one of Europe’s leading jazz music festivals. The increase in ticket sales marked a rise of almost 2,000 over those snapped up in 2003. This translated to a record-breaking turnover of a half a million pounds for the event, now Britain’s largest and most prestigious jazz festival.”
Doin’ Da Vinci Widdout Da Code… (Not)
It’s easy to see the allure of books such as the Da Vinci Code. But it is fiction, and “the problem with this ad hoc iconography is that readers of The Da Vinci Code may come to believe that by accepting the conventionally flimsy premises of a thriller plot, they have learned something about Leonardo and his art…”
John The Baptist’s Cave Found?
“A quarter of a million pottery shards from small jugs, an underground pool, a foot-washing stone and wall carvings unearthed in a large cave west of Jerusalem could be the first archaeological evidence for the existence of St. John the Baptist, according to a forthcoming book.”
Artist Tows Bus With His Toe
As a protest an artist has pulled a London bus 30 meters with his big toe. “Mark McGowan, 38, dragged the 7.5 tonne vehicle on Wednesday in Camberwell, south London. The stunt was in protest against bus lanes and mayor Ken Livingstone’s ‘ridiculous traffic strategy’.” Last year McGowan pushed a nut seven miles down raods with his nose to protest student debt.
Ireland’s No Atlantis
The Irish National Museum dismisses claims in a new book that Ireland is the mythic city of Atlantis. An archaeologist has “linked Newgrange passage tomb and the Hill of Tara with ancient remnants of the mythical Atlantis- first described by Greek thinker Plato. But National Museum director Dr Patrick Wallace said today that there was no archaeological basis to associate Ireland with the utopian land.”
The Classics Will Set You Free?
On the campus of Brown University in a program called ArtsLit, a teacher named Kurt Wootton is using reading and performance of classic texts to teach literacy to local teenagers from struggling schools. “Like immigrants of earlier generations – the Italian stonecutter tuning his radio to opera, the Irish stevedore reciting Yeats in a tavern, the Jewish tailor viewing a Yiddish production of ‘King Lear’ – Mr. Wootton sees high culture not as the oppressor of the lowly but as an agent of their liberation.”
Fighting To Keep Stone Henge From The Cars
Preservationists are opposing a plan to put a car tunnel under Stone Henge. “For them, the proposals prove the government cares more about motorists than preserving the integrity of a centuries old landmark. ‘Stonehenge has been there 5,000 years and the car was only invented 100 years ago. To cater to something that’s been there for such a short time is patently absurd’.”