“Whatever else happens at the Athens Olympics this summer, one way or another the games are going to make Santiago Calatrava the most famous architect in the world, pushing aside Frank Gehry and Daniel Libeskind. If the Greeks get his extraordinary design for the main stadium finished on time, his blue glass dome will be the most spectacular setting for the games in three decades…”
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That Difficult Second Book – It’s Stacked Against You
“Apart from the justly renowned big guns, there are two kinds of writer at work in the English-speaking world today. First, there is the ‘writer’, who enjoys wide media coverage and is an expert manipulator of soundbite culture. The ‘writer’ has virtually no readership and keeps him or herself in play by the constant massaging of the literary media. Then there is that almost-forgotten figure: the writer, who stays at home, keeps regular hours, does the work, accumulates a readership and is virtually invisible.”
At The Chicago Symphony – What Next After Barenboim?
There is ambivalence about the Chicago Symphony’s Daniel Barenboim stepping down as music director. “Unsettling questions remain to be answered. By allowing Barenboim to walk out the door – a musician with a unique combination of intellectual curiosity, profoundly creative engagement with the process of making music and wide involvement with the world beyond the podium – the CSO has redefined, for better or worse, the role of music director.”
Walker Center Attendance Down 30 Percent
Attendance at the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis in the past two years was down more than 30 percent from a record 636,000 visitors in 2001. It’s a dismaying trend, but then, the Walker still outdraws other museums of similar size in other cities…
Alexander: Jerry Seinfeld Has Made $1 Billion In Residuals For “Seinfeld”
The stars of Seinfeld have made a deal that will allow the release of DVDs of the series. Jerry Seinfeld’s three costars had been complaining because they had been cut out of royalty payments for the series. “I’m not ashamed to talk numbers. I would say in the years that we’ve been in syndication, Julia, Michael and I have probably individually seen about a quarter of a million dollars out of residuals, whereas our brethren have seen hundreds of millions of dollars. Seinfeld has a profit of over a billion dollars.”
Monty Python’s Spamalot Headed To Chicago, Then Broadway
A musical is being made of Monty Python and the Holy Grail. The movie, a spoof of the legend of King Arthur, did have a few songs — most notably ‘The Camelot Song,’ which contained such famously dubious rhymes as ‘We’re Knights of the Round Table/We Dance Whene’r We’re Able,’ as well as the line that inspired the title of the musical spinoff: ‘We Eat Ham and Jam and Spam a Lot’.”
The Media “Indecency” Wars Heat Up
A Florida radio host is fired and his station might be fined $750,000 for “indecent” programming. Howard Stern’s show is pulled off the air by six Clear Channel stations. “Cultural conservatives have cheered the moves. But the Stern suspension arrived with little cost to Clear Channel: The often-raunchy show was being carried on just six of its 1,200 radio stations, all in mid-level markets. And some observers say the San Antonio, Texas, company’s moves are politically driven, in direct response to the anti-indecency rhetoric streaming from public officials.”
A String Quartet That Records Everything (And Sells It Too)
For about a year, the Borromeo String Quartet has been recording all its live preformances and making them available for sale over the internet. “We had done enough recording that I had started to learn about the techniques and some of the issues involved. I began to carry around a little suitcase of equipment, a mobile recording unit, to take down our concerts because I thought it was too bad that so many just vanish into thin air. If something went wonderfully, we love to study just how and why it happened. It is also important for us to study what didn’t go so well.”
Cezanne Theft In Australia – Really?
An art collector in New South Wales claims that “$67 million worth of art, including a previously unheralded painting by the French impressionist Paul Cezanne, worth $50 million, were stolen from his studio in the tiny town of Limpinwood. “Reports of the theft and in particular the Cezanne, supposedly painted in 1873 and titled Cezanne’s Son in a High Chair, were greeted with scepticism in the higher echelons of the Australian art world. The art historian and publisher Lou Klepac described it as like ‘finding a crocodile in the Antarctic’.”
The Da Vinci Blockbuster (uh…Shouldn’t That Be Leonardo?)
“The Da Vinci Code, by Dan Brown, has been on sale for nearly a year now, and—assuming no unexpected plot twists—it should become the fastest-selling adult fiction title ever by March 18, when its publication anniversary rolls around. Apologies to all the religious-thriller, art-history-driven reading groups out there, but, uh, how the hell did an unknown author writing on an obscure subject make publishing history?”