A new “music manifesto” being promoted by the British government in conjunction with a collection of industry groups proposes a major expansion of cultural education in the UK, including a program which would provide free or cut-price musical instruments to schoolchildren. The plan is being seen as “an admission that while the focus on numeracy and literacy in primary schools has been necessary to raise standards, it is too narrow.”
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Youth, Enthusiasm, and Unfathomable Wealth
Arielle Tepper is one of Broadway’s youngest impresarios, “armed with the romantic notions of a stage-door Annie, the energy of youth and, not incidentally, a considerable fortune derived from the real estate empire of her maternal grandfather, Philip Levin, who died in 1971, the year before Ms. Tepper was born. In 2001, Ms. Tepper inherited a third of the family real estate portfolio, which Crain’s New York recently estimated at $1 billion. Ms. Tepper has used part of her share to make herself into an eager new player in the treacherous world of theatrical producing.”
The Do-It-Yourself Album
“Record labels are still vital for many musicians. They get the CD in the bins; they advertise it; they put up the money to produce it in the first place.” But for established artists who are sick of the huge revenue chunk swallowed up by traditional labels, a new do-it-yourself method is emerging, and many artists are willing to put up their own money for production costs in return for having direct control of a web-based distribution network that brings in more eventual revenue.
The Orchestral Wage Gap
Are conductors and executives bankrupting American orchestras? Blair Tindall sees a basic conflict between the skyrocketing salaries of those at the top, and the cries of institutional poverty which have led to stagnating musician salaries and increasingly bitter fights between labor and management. It’s true that, of 20 orchestras which settled new musician contracts in the last year, 19 included wage cuts. Still, most musicians don’t seem to be bothered by the high salaries of their bosses, just so long as the conductors and CEOs appear to be earning their pay. But with the industry widely perceived to be in trouble and salaries continuing to climb, those at the top may soon find themselves under fire.
Heating Up Summer in New York
For orchestras like the Boston Symphony, which have revered summer homes like Tanglewood, the long hot months are a celebration of easy revenue and casual concertgoing. But for the New York Philharmonic, which has no regular summer destination, what’s needed to get its home audience into the hall during the second season is constant innovation and, um, snappy slogans? “Welcome to Summertime Classics, the fun new festival of smile-inducing classics performed live for you by your New York Philharmonic, in a lively, colourful and refreshingly casual setting. It’s classics for your favourite sneakers, not your glass slippers.”
Will Cleveland Lose Its FM Overdose?
The Cleveland-based experimental dance troupe known as Sub-Atomic Frequency Modulation Overdose (SAFMOD) is facing a very uncertain future, as company veterans scramble to keep its tradition alive. “Founding artistic director Young Park and managing director Ezra Houser shocked their colleagues last spring by revealing their plans to leave Cleveland at the end of the summer and resettle in Toronto.” The couple gave SAFMOD time to find replacements for them, but its been slow going, and time is running out.
New Boss, Same Old Line
When Jack Valenti steps down as president of the Motion Picture Association of America later this summer, he will hand the reins to former Congressman and Secretary of Agriculture Dan Glickman, a darkhorse candidate chosen for his Washington influence rather than his connection to Hollywood. But don’t expect the MPAA’s party line to change: according to Glickman, his top three priorities will be “piracy, piracy, piracy.”
U.S. Album Sales Jump
“Album sales in the United States for the first half of 2004 are 7 percent ahead of last year’s midway point, putting the recording industry on track to end a three-year slump, according to the Nielsen SoundScan retail tracking service. Sales in the first six months of this year totaled 305.7 million units, compared with 285.9 million from January through June 2003.”
Claim The Slur, Or Bury It?
A new documentary purports to examine one of the most delicate debates in American race relations: who, if anyone, should be able to say the word “nigger,” and what do the various taboos surrounding the word tell us about our society? “To some degree the filmmakers are using the debate over language as an emblem for a host of uncomfortable racial issues that are pushed to the side, in Hollywood as in other parts of American society.”
Is The Saatchi Empire Crumbling?
Charles Saatchi has never exactly been a favorite with critics. The insanely rich collector has been panned for his lack of discriminating taste, excoriated for inflating prices all over the art world, and even criticized for the architecture of his new London gallery. But the myth of Saatchi, who was once viewed as a mysterious but powerful force in art, may have finally come crashing down in the aftermath of the fire which destroyed more than 100 works in his prized collection. The public reaction to the catastrophe was brutal, the loss “celebrated as a hilarious and deserved comeuppance for Saatchi and his bloated, overpraised, overpaid protegés.”