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Saltz: A Moratorium On Projectors Please!

“By now, almost everyone would agree that the traditional Warhol-Richter-Walter Benjamin defense of the use of photography in painting, the “Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction” argument, and the chatter about “interrogating representation” or “investigating the problem of the photograph,” isn’t just dated, it’s shtick. We all know that photography is a remarkable and remarkably complex way of seeing and picturing the world; that the space between the photograph, the photographer, and the thing photographed is incredibly rich; that the graphic field of the photograph is often scintillatingly alive, specific, and very post-Renaissance; and that reproducing photographs in paintings once represented a significant repudiation of dearly held beliefs.” But…

Hazlewood: If Bach Was A Beatle, Vivaldi Was A Rolling Stone

Former punk-rocker Charles Hazlewood is the BBC’s new “face of classical music,” and he takes a particularly populist approach to his shows: “There is a terrible conservatism, like a cancer, right in the heartlands of music-making, a tremendous resistance to change, an absolute horror of the idea that more people might connect with music. That infuriates me more than I can say. The very idea that people are too stupid to get their heads round what a fugue is is beyond me. I think it’s total bollocks and it drives me mad.”

Ballet Pacifica Lives

Southern California’s Ballet Pacifica isn’t dead after all. The company is going to present a new story ballet and is looking for a new artistic dirctor. “This is the first news about the future of the 42-year-old chamber-size ballet troupe since late January, when Christina Lyon, a former dancer with American Ballet Theatre, resigned as artistic director. Lyon had been in the job only seven weeks. Her departure came just days after the board canceled Ballet Pacifica’s spring repertory season and its respected Pacifica Choreographic Project.”

Are The Music Charts Obsolete?

Music producers are fascinated with the demographic shift in music sales. Instead of kids driving the charts, it’s older fans with money to buy CDs. But “the problem is that the whole concept of the charts may have become outdated, certainly as a measurement of units of music consumed. A large and ever growing proportion of young people simply no longer go into record shops, or even listen to the radio, but that does not mean they are not interested in music.”

Dance Music – The Challenge

The dance music industry gathered in Miami Beach this past week for the annual Winter Music Conference. “New technologies and the Internet were identified by panelists throughout the conference as key in various aspects of dance music’s future. According to Forrester Research, the online music market will soar from about 3 percent of sales currently to about 30 percent by 2007.”

Tanenhaus Named NY Times Book Review Editor

Sam Tanenhaus has been named editor of the New York Times Book Review. “Before joining Vanity Fair in 1999, Tanenhaus was an assistant editor for the Times’ Op-Ed pages. He was a Pulitzer Prize finalist in 1998 for his biography “Whittaker Chambers” (Random House), about a key figure in the Alger Hiss spy trial. The book won the Los Angeles Times Book Prize for biography. Tanenhaus has a master’s degree in English literature from Yale University.”

More On Voigt – An Exceptional Case?

Soprano Deborah Voigt’s sacking by Covent Garden because she was too big for the costume designed for the production is an example of misplaced priorities. “Voigt’s case is exceptional: it’s hard to think of another singer who was dumped for not having the right looks. What is noticeable is that European companies are giving stage directors an increasingly active role in casting. In some cases, it’s the only way to attract a top-flight director. Visual realism is becoming as important as the right voice type.”

Retirement = Big Changes At CBC

The retirement of a longtime senior exec at Canada’s CBC signals major rethinking of the public broadcaster’s programming. “The news of Harold Redekopp’s departure, expected later this year, has given rise to a groundswell of talk that a major shakeup is in the works at the public broadcaster – one that will affect a number of key executive positions as well as many facets of its programming, from arts and entertainment to news and current affairs.”

Transforming Chicago’s Urban Living Room

Chicago is transforming Grant Park, at the center of downtown, into what mayor Richard Daley calls “one of the finest recreational and cultural spaces of any city in the world.” When it opens next summer, the “re-christened Millennium Park will feature a 125-tonne steel sculpture by Anish Kapoor, a 220-foot-long video-fountain by Catalan artist Jaume Plensa, a gleaming metallic bandshell by Frank Gehry, and a garden by landscapist Kathryn Gustafson, who won the Princess Diana Memorial competition for Hyde Park.”