The classical music world has always liked to consider itself above such plebeian niceties as marketing or salesmanship. Still, artists like Lara St. John, who appeared on her first album cover wearing nothing but a violin held across her bare chest, force everyone to confront the fact that sex and physical beauty sell albums, whether you’re hawking Bach or rock. But for St. John, her lithe and alluring frame has been a double-edged sword. Yes, it got her noticed, but classical snobs have a habit of dumping everything that looks pretty into the much-derided “crossover” bin, and for St. John, a serious artist who plays serious music, that creates a distressing image gap.
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Who (Should) Own What
The laws that govern who owns ideas and creative products are being rewritten as big corporations struggle to shore up business models that are under attack in the digital age. So shouldn’t we be having a broad cultural debate about what the new world will look like?
Homebody/Kabul – The Play Of Our Time?
John Heilpern revisits Tony Kushner’s Homebody/Kabul and reaffirms his opinion that the play is the most important of our time. “Name me a better play of our time — for our time. Name me one that takes on the whole, wide, wonderful, fucked-up world.” Kushner has continued to tinker with the play since it debuted three years ago “but I believe he’s come as close as he can to a fully realized Homebody/Kabul, unless he wants to drive himself mad.”
Cuban Dance Defectors Win Jobs In Cincinnati
“Four of the five Cuban ballet dancers who defected in October during a 20-city tour of the United States are headed to jobs in Cincinnati this summer and fall. Cervilio Amador and Adiarys Almeida have been hired as soloists by the Cincinnati Ballet, a 31-member company with a $5 million operating budget. They are scheduled to dance the “Don Quixote” pas de deux on Oct. 8 and 9, almost a year to the day after they were to dance the same excerpt in Daytona Beach, Fla., as members of the Ballet Nacional de Cuba.”
Did NYC Deputy Mayor Intimidate Arts Leaders Over Donations?
Did a New York City deputy mayor call arts leaders and ask if they were donating money to the mayor’s opponent? “According to three sources, Deputy Mayor Patricia Harris rebuked the arts and cultural executives in recent months, and in one instance used a City Hall telephone to do so. Some arts officials said her calls had the effect of scaring [Mayor Bloomberg’s opponent’s] donors out of future contributions, and critics said she blurred the line between government and campaign politics.”
Pavarotti: 1.5 Billion In The Audience – Top That!
Lucian Pavarotti on tenors singing pop music: “Some say the word ‘pop’ is derogatory and means ‘not important’ – I do not accept that. If the word ‘classical’ is the word to mean ‘boring’, I do not accept that either. There is good and bad music. With one Three Tenors concert, we sang to one-and-a-half billion people. I don’t think Caruso sang to more than 100,000 people in his entire career.”
Mimi And Rodolfo In Trafalgar Square
The English National Opera will produce La Boheme this summer in the middle of Trafalgar Square. The production is expected to draw an audience of 8,000. Tens of thousands more are likely to spill over on to surrounding pavements, the steps of the National Gallery and any space near enough to catch the amplified sound. La Bohème is the first opera to be put on in the square, an event that will trump the impresario Raymond Gubbay’s recent success in staging the same work in the Albert Hall.”
What Was Lost In Saatchi Fire (And Do We Care?)
“Future generations are unlikely to mourn the lost masterpieces of the Saatchi Collection as we mourn the ancient manuscripts that perished when the library at Alexandria burned. But the point is, this generation never produced a great novelist, but it did create some striking works of art.”
Fired Destroyed Work Of A Generation
“One shudders to imagine what has been lost, and it is likely that major works by leading international as well as British artists will be included in the final tally. But one needs a bit of perspective here: this fire may not be comparable to a world heritage disaster like the flooding of Florence or the sacking of Rome or the grinding of Iraqi archeological sites into gravel by coalition tank-tracks. Unlike Lady Churchill’s burning of Graham Sutherland’s portrait of Winston, or the demolition of Buddhist statues by the Taliban, this, so far as we know, was an accident. Yet there is something horribly ironic in the likelihood that an out-of-control blaze at a nearby paint factory may have caused the damage.”
Terfel Wins Classical Bit Prize
“Welsh bass baritone Bryn Terfel won the prizes for best album and male artist at this year’s Classical Brit awards. Italian opera star Cecilia Bartoli was named best female artist at the event, held at London’s Royal Albert Hall. British conductor Sir Simon Rattle won orchestral album of the year for his recording of Beethoven’s Symphonies with the Vienna Philharmonic.”