“The scourge of live bands, the illegal bootleg concert recording, will soon become a money spinner for the live music industry when a Sydney company offers patrons the opportunity to buy a CD of a show within five minutes of the finale.”
Blog
Industry: Aussie CD Copy Rules Change Will Be Bad
“Proposed changes to legislation allowing consumers to copy CDs for personal use, and to impose a levy on blank CDs for distribution to songwriters, would create an inefficient and unfair system, says the Australian Record Industry Association.”
Oakland Ballet Can Breathe Easier
“Oakland Ballet may never be entirely out of the financial woods, but at least the company has met its $500,000 ‘Keep Us Dancing’ goal to, well, keep the company dancing… The company, founded in 1965, will take the coming year off from performing in order to reorganize and prepare for the 40th anniversary season.”
Should San Francisco Be Looking Past MTT?
Michael Tilson Thomas is nearing his tenth season as music director of the San Francisco Symphony, and the partnership shows no signs of fatigue. Under MTT, as he’s known throughout the industry, the symphony has flourished musically and become the media darling of American orchestras. So what now? Joshua Kosman thinks its time to start looking for Tilson Thomas’s successor. Seriously.
SFMOMA Rethinks Definition of ‘Modern Art’
The San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (SFMOMA) didn’t just reorganize its permanent collection this spring – it decided to ask some fundamental questions about what can truly be said to constitute ‘modern art’ in the 21st century. “The museum has decided to work more carefully with the permanent collection… ‘partly as a philosophical corrective, to wean the public and the museum from an unrealistic diet of blockbuster shows.'”
More Controversy At Bayreuth
“Rehearsals for the eagerly anticipated new production of Richard Wagner’s final opera Parsifal at this year’s legendary Bayreuth Festival resumed yesterday after iconoclastic theatre director Christoph Schlingensief re-appeared for work following a few days absence. Schlingensief had plunged preparations for the prestigious annual summer music festival… into disarray on the weekend by calling in sick following a row with the composer’s grandson and festival chief Wolfgang Wagner.”
A (Dale) Peck Of Petty Epithets
Why is critic Dale Peck so mean? “Peck is hardly the first writer to enlist a congenial cultural form in the effort to repair injuries and redeem losses: Transforming such experiences and emotions into other idioms and forms is part of what makes culture emotionally resonant. But when a writer bends existing genres to suit such purposes, the critical question—and perhaps a larger question for criticism itself—is this: At what point does transformation fail, leaving a writer mired in psychodrama and family repetition?”
Sniping Surrounds ‘Music Manifesto’
The UK government’s new “music manifesto,” which aims to put a renewed emphasis on music education in Britain, is being assailed by several high-profile musicians who say that it offers little in the way of substantive change, and by minority Conservative politicians who declared the document to be “of Wagnerian length with more hot air than the wind section of the London Philharmonic.” When asked for his own vision of how to improve music education, the Tory shadow arts minister suggested that schools should bring back regular hymn singing.
Seattle Arts Groups Back In Balance
“Although the past two years were economically difficult for Seattle arts groups, including the biggest and richest, the proverbial corner seems to have been turned for some. Pacific Northwest Ballet not only balanced its $16.3 million budget this fiscal year but eliminated its 2-year-old $1.2 million accumulated deficit and restored its cash reserve fund of $580,000… The Seattle Symphony Orchestra ‘expects’ to balance its $20.9 million budget, and Seattle Opera is ‘cautiously optimistic’ that it will do the same with a budget of $20.7 million.”
Concert Companion Taking Off
The much-hyped “Concert Companion,” a PDA-sized device which allows concertgoers to follow a written commentary to symphonic works live in the concert hall, is becoming the gotta-have-it item for major American orchestras. With successful trials in New York and Pittsburgh now complete, other orchestras are lining up for the chance to try out the device on their audiences. In fact, it may be hard for the supplier to keep up with demand, not so much for the hardware, but for the specialized commentary (written, up to this point, by ArtsJournal blogger Greg Sandow) which must be composed for each featured work.