The MusicPad Pro Plus is a five-pound tablet computer that displays music scores. “The $1,200 device, with a 12-inch liquid-crystal-display touchscreen, is the first of a class of computers that enable musicians to store music and edit it onscreen. Soon it will also allow them to communicate with one another over wireless networks. In much the way that portable digital audio players have changed the way people consume tunes, tablets like the MusicPad are changing the way musicians use sheet music, which is so compact that it can be digitally stockpiled far more cost-effectively than MP3 audio files.”
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Breaking Up One Of The World’s Great Museums
“Now almost forgotten, the Musée Napoléon briefly contained almost all the works of art then most praised and valued by European connoisseurs at the turn of the 19th Century. All this loot had been removed from its owners by right of conquest. ‘The fate of products of genius,’ as an official declaration on the subject put it, ‘is to belong to the people who shine successively on earth by arms and by wisdom, and to follow always the wagons of the victors.’ Furthermore, obviously, Paris — being the most advanced spot on the globe — was the natural home of the world’s finest works of art.” Then, in 1815, the Musée was broken up and its treasures dispersed…
Conan Doyle Papers Sold
“A trove of Arthur Conan Doyle’s letters, papers and manuscripts, which gathered dust for more than 25 years in a lawyer’s office while its future was debated, was sold on Wednesday for $1.7 million, according to Christie’s, which handled the sale. Numerous items were bought by Bernard Quaritch, a specialist bookseller in London who may have been acting on behalf of unidentified clients.”
Arts Consumers – Buying The Expectation
“There’s a simple truth about marketing arts and culture,” writes Andrew Taylor. “Audiences don’t buy arts and cultural events. They can’t. The experience doesn’t exist until well after they’ve made their purchase decision. Instead, when they are deciding to give their money or time, audiences are ‘buying’ an expectation, an assumption, a hazy feeling of what that experience might hold. Since audiences can’t buy the cultural event, why do so many arts organizations spend all of their energy selling it?…”
Religion – The Cultural Dividing Line Of Politics?
The majority of Americans who attend religious services regularly vote Republican. The majority of Americans who don’t attend religious services vote Democrat. “For more than a century, our culture has been divided on the question of whether individual moral actors may justly be held responsible for their deeds. Marx and Freud rocked the 19th century faith in moral responsibility and freedom of will, arguing that human beings are unknowingly in the grip of, respectively, powerful economic and psychosexual forces. Later analysts would discover other latent structures in society that supposedly determine our moral choices. Today, the ideological struggles of liberals and conservatives mirror the clash initiated by Marxists and Freudians with 19th century individualism.”
A New BAM For Washington?
Washington DC’s Shakespeare Theatre has “just broken ground on its own performing-arts facility – the Harman Centre for the Arts, for completion in 2007. It would be absurd to say that the centre – which will consist of a new 800-seat theatre, the Sidney Harman, as well as The Shakespeare Theatre’s current home, the 450-seat Lansburgh – will rival the Kennedy’s concert hall, opera house and smaller theatres in grandeur. It will nonetheless provide America’s capital with another first-class performing arts destination, much as in New York, BAM complements the Lincoln Centre.”
Remembering Balanchine (and Remembering And Remembering…)
Robert Gottleib is feeling weary of New York City Ballet’s Balanchine tribute. “There’s been so much spin and so much P.R. that it’s hard to remember just what it is we’re celebrating. But once you’ve blown out the party candles, what do you have? More of the recent unpredictable, uneven level of performance that was unthinkable during the 35 years when Balanchine commanded the company.”
Fugard: Theatre Matters
Athol Fugard represents the “conscience of his country.” “I still believe theatre’s amazing. It doesn’t command the size audience that the movies do, or television, but I still think that somehow it’s at the matrix of a society in a way that I don’t think film and television ever are, certainly not television. Except of course when you get [a show] preceded by a stage production–something like Angels in America. And I think the impact of Angels in America on American society is going to be working itself out for many, many years to come.”
NEA Awards $58 Million In Grants
“The endowment announced this week the distribution of $57,958,600 to not-for-profit national, regional, state, and local organizations across the country, funding projects in the categories of arts on radio and television, folk arts infrastructure, heritage and preservation, learning in the arts, and state and regional partnerships. The NEA’s budget for the year is $122.5 million.”
Moore’s 9/11 To Win Cannes Grand Prize?
Could Michael Moore’s Farenheit 9/11 win Cannes’s big prize? “Trade paper Screen International ranked Moore’s documentary Fahrenheit 9/11 as a leading contender, based on the views of critics from around the world. The controversial film received a 15-minute standing ovation when it was screened at the festival on Monday. The last documentary to win the Palme d’Or was The World Of Silence in 1956.”