Unions at the Scottish Opera have done an unusual thing – they’ve drafted their own budget for the financially sick company. “The unions believe the current management’s plans for the future of the company will lead to extensive job cuts and its eventual dismantling.
Instead, the union proposes a halt on the large scale operas that play at the Theatre Royal in Glasgow and the Festival Theatre in Edinburgh, for the next two years.”
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Top Victorians
What are the top ten Victorian novels? Philip Davis has made a list…
New Music For Amateurs (As A Lifestyle)
So much high-end contemporary music of the past century is so difficult, you need to be highly skilled to perform it. But shouldn’t there be more new music for amateurs? “We need to look at new ways of keeping musical culture going, and composers need to think more broadly about how their music is performed, and who is performing it.”
Cohen: Can Anyone Tell Me Why Edwards Had To Go?
National Public Radio’s decision to bump Morning Edition host Bob Edwards from the chair he has occupied for the show’s entire 25-year run is meeting with astonishment and anger from NPR listeners. Richard Cohen, for one, is incredulous that NPR would lower itself to the ratings-obsessed, buzzword-intensive level of TV news. “The telling sign was not just that he was axed as the program’s host but that no one can tell you why. At NPR, clearly the most erudite of the networks, various officials descended into the juvenile babble of TV executives, empty words spilling out of their mouths, as if they were determined to fill airtime yet say nothing.”
When In Doubt, Blame The Bureaucrats
“The Toronto film and television industry yesterday assailed the Toronto Transit Commission for making it so difficult to get approval to film in the city’s subway system that the city loses business to more film-friendly competitors… The basic complaint from the industry is that the TTC takes much longer than other transit agencies to approve and organize filming in the subway, most of which takes place at an unused TTC station below the Bay-Bloor station.”
Martin’s Arts Budget Doesn’t Impress
Canadian Prime Minister Paul Martin may have thought he would get some accolades from the arts sector after his budget calling for the restoration of millions of dollars to the nation’s Television Fund, but it isn’t happening. In fact, outside of the TV industry, the Liberal government’s budget is being called a disappointment by nearly every arts advocate within earshot of a reporter. The arts world has been wary of the Martin government ever since the PM appointed a sports specialist as his heritage minister, and while the new budget doesn’t make any cuts to the cultural budget, the lack of any significant increases seems to have confirmed many artists’ suspicion that the arts aren’t a priority with Martin.
Being Prepared, Or Just Being Bigoted?
Miami’s Community Relations Board is asking that the city’s police department turn over all its records of a controversial program which monitors and investigates local rappers and other members of the hip-hop community. The department acknowledged earlier this month that it has been specifically keeping tabs on rappers, leading to charges of institutional racism. The police claim that it makes good sense to keep files on artists who make their living rapping about violence, crime, and hatred of law enforcement.
Fear Vs. Free Expression
When college writing instructor Jan Richman first read the horrifying tale of sexual violence and murder that one of her students handed in last fall, she was taken aback by its gruesome detail and terrifyingly unsympathetic tone. But being a teacher, she chose to address the story in literary terms with her class, and to use it as a way to discuss the difference between gratuitous repulsiveness and violent imagery in the service of literature. But “before the week was out, the student was expelled and sent home, the instructor was fighting for her job, and many students and faculty were left wondering about issues of artistic and academic freedom in the post-Columbine era of heightened fear over student safety.”
Poet Wanted. For What, We’re Not Sure.
Canada needs a new national poet laureate. Yawn. So who doesn’t? These days, it seems like every city, county, province, state, and regional confederation of boroughs has its own poet tasked with… well, what exactly are poet laureates supposed to do, anyway? The requirement that an official poet spend her/his time composing odes to the glory/beauty/strength of whatever geographical area is providing the employment are long gone, but the old restrictions have never really been replaced with new ones. Consequently, Canada’s next poet laureate can more or less write her/his own rule book – that is, if anyone wants the job.
The Final Word (Yeah, Right) On Shostakovich
“Deep in the silos of the American midwest, a Cold War missile is being readied for launch. From the University of Indiana Press at Bloomington, advance copies are being mailed out this week of what is academically warranted to be ‘the definitive statement on the Shostakovich controversy’.” Norman Lebrecht is sick to death of this whole debate, and in particular, has had just about enough of the “counter-revisionist academics” who persist in their delusion that Shostakovich was nothing more than a cowed stooge for Stalin and the Communist Party. “Evidence of his moral courage and political disgust is so overwhelming that it is hard to imagine how even an ivory-towered musicologist could pretend otherwise.”