A national “piping expert” in Scotland is accusing the Edinburgh Festival of forcing attendees to endure substandard bagpiping buskers in the name of tradition. “[Roddy McLeod] said most of the performers who lined the capital’s streets during August were ‘shockingly bad’ players. Many could not tune their instruments properly and did scant justice to their musical potential, he added.” Festival organizers agree that their pipers are not exactly ready for a Saturday night at the Sydney Opera House, but insist that they are merely upholding centuries of Scottish tradition.
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The Biggest Donor
W. Jerome Frautschi is a man of his word, and it’s a good thing for the city of Madison that he is. When Frautschi offered to pay the full cost of constructing Madison’s Overture Center for the Arts, that cost was projected to be $50 million. Instead, the final price tag was $205 million, and Frautschi’s gift is now believed to be the largest amount ever given to a single arts organization by a single donor.
Star-Cross’d Soviet Strangeness
An old Soviet imagining of Prokofiev’s ballet version of Romeo & Juliet, as realized by Korea’s Universal Ballet and choreographer Oleg Vinogradov, is an interesting historical exercise, but not much of an artistic one, says Tobi Tobias. “If the dancing seems to have no impulse, no drive, no phrasing, it’s because the choreography doesn’t demand such things—indeed, appears to have no idea they exist. And the dancers haven’t been encouraged to make up for the deficiency. The music keeps issuing urgent reminders on the subject, but no one, apart from the audience, hears them.”
Schwarzenegger Snubs The Arts, Again
The state of California, which houses more than 10% of the population of the U.S., has a State Arts Council with a budget of only $1 million, the lowest per capita level of arts funding (by far) in the nation. And last week, Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger used his line-item veto to remove an additional million dollars of arts funding approved by the state legislature. The cuts have left California arts leaders in despair, with one civic leader saying that the disappointment “was not about that million dollars, it was about what it represented.”
Feed An Artist: Travel California
California’s State Arts Council may be destitute at the moment, but not everyone in the Golden State has forgotten about the arts. An unexpected windfall is on the horizon, in the form of contributions from the sales of a fast-selling California travel book created especially to generate revenue for the Arts Council.
The Controversy That Just Won’t Die
The old debate over who wrote the plays attributed to William Shakespeare is the theatrical controversy that seems only to grow in intensity with every passing year. But a new seminar at the UK’s recreation of the Bard’s own Globe Theater has upped the ante once again “with the introduction of the first woman suspect — Mary Sidney Herbert, Countess of Pembroke.”
Rockers For… Well, Against Bush, Anyway
“Provided the planet survives long enough for us to observe these muddled times from a safe distance, music historians might someday credit George W. Bush’s presidency with giving rock ‘n’ roll activism its biggest boost since the Vietnam War… it was big news last week when heartland hero Bruce Springsteen — one of those performers who’s always come across as political without being overtly so — stepped into the coming U.S. election fray by announcing he would join such disparate types as R.E.M., John Fogerty, Pearl Jam, Dave Matthews, Death Cab for Cutie, Bonnie Raitt, Jurassic 5 and Babyface in a series of anti-Bush concerts to be held in American ‘swing states’ this coming October.”
Exporting Art, On The Government’s Dime
Washington choreographer Dana Tai Soon Burgess has spent his summer in Peru, touring with his own company and working with the country’s own national troupe. “What made Burgess’s Peru trip possible was the State Department’s American Cultural Specialists program. The program, which sent 66 artists abroad last year, promotes cross-cultural exchange through the arts… [The] program is one contemporary example of the federally sponsored international tour, a practice that was at its height during the Cold War period and has always functioned with a combination of public and private funding.”
Whatever Happened To The Nasty, Churlish, 90s Man?
“Once upon a time Sexist Lad ruled the radio. He was the ‘slob with a gob’, baiting his employers and flirting remorselessly with female guests before reducing them to tears.” In fact, Alpha Males might have been the official UK Broadcast Symbol of the 1990s. But as it turns out, that kind of caveman mystique wears thin fairly quickly, and the new generation of radio stars tend to be either women, or a noticably less aggressive breed of “regular guy.”
Is The Fringe Edinburgh’s Main Festival?
The direcctor of one of Edinburgh’s most high-profile venues says that the city’s Fringe Festival should be designated the main Edinburgh Festival. This is “the latest round in a lengthy pitched battle between the fringe and the official festival; the relationship between the two seems marked by mutual incomprehension and a distinct lack of cross-festival collaboration or cooperative programming. And whereas the international festival receives £2.5m in public money, the fact that the fringe gets just £65,000 has always rankled.”