Booker prize-winner DBC Pierre was at a low point. Contemplating suicide. Then he discovered the Romantic classics. “I realised my feelings were being set to music. I froze, and heard every detail of my turmoil being painted in symphony. The music acknowledged tumult, contradiction, confusion, fear and the ultimate conquest of the dark plains of psyche and soul. It announced that misery was life’s default, and beckoned me to stay close to it, proposing conflict to be a sweet and human thing, a many-textured set of riddles that needed recourse to nothing but a working nervous system. The Romantics had found me. I took them full in the vein.”
Blog
Omnivore – A New Magazine For/Of Culture
Former New Yorker Magazine staffer Lawrence Weschler is trying to launch a new magazine called Omnivore: A Journal of Writing & Visual Culture. Weschler is “dissatisfied with current newsstand choices, contending that extended nonfiction reportage intended for general-interest magazines has atrophied amid ‘the increasingly peg-driven, niche-slotted, attention-squeezed, sound-bit media environment of recent years.’ In short, writers such as A.J. Liebling, John Hersey, and Joseph Mitchell would feel crunched for space today.”
Report: Nagano To Be Named Director Of Montreal Symphony
The Montreal newspaper Le Devoir reports that Kent Nagano will be named as the Montreal Symphony’s new music director, succeeding Charles Dutoit. The orchestra won’t comment and says it will anounce the choice in March.
Celebrating 25 Years Of Nagano At The Helm
Conductor Kent Nagano celebrates 25 years as director of the Berkeley Symphony. “He transformed it from a group that shunned tuxedoes and played in street clothes at unusual locations such as art museums into a sophisticated symphony known for performing challenging modern music. The fare has stretched from the works of Frank Zappa to an improvisational jazz trumpet concerto by Jeff Beal.”
A Music Downloading Fee? Big Music Doesn’t Like It
An idea to solve the music downloading problem? How about music fans paying ‘a small monthly fee – perhaps $5 – to share files with impunity, using whatever software they like. The money could be collected by a central organization and then distributed among those who own the rights to the songs, based on popularity. The idea has worked before. Broadcast radio stations paid a similar flat fee…” But the music industry has rejected the idea out of hand.
A Shakespeare Company By Any Other Name…
A Virginia Shakespeare company had a problem – people couldn’t figure out its name (what IS “Vpstart”, anyway?). So after struggling with it for a while (pity the poor marketing manager), the company has a new handle. “Most people couldn’t spell the old name, much less figure out what it is we do by seeing it. And that’s not helpful when you’re trying to attract a wider, regional audience.”
Bash Those Network Execs (It’s An Election Year!)
The US Congress takes up another round of media bashing today, with more hearings on “indecency” on the airwaves…At the least, the spectacle makes for great theatre.
Found In The Age Of Writing
There are very real differences between “being a ‘young writer’ and an ‘older writer’ and even an ‘old writer’. My conclusion is that old writers have the greatest advantage in that they can offend people at will without consideration to consequences. After all, it’s not like they’re in this business for a long career.” And younger writers? they have an advantage “because if there is one thing publishing takes to be successful it is TIME, usually just a bit more than you’re willing to give.”
Making It In The Jazz Club Biz
“Parisian jazz clubs have had historical and sentimental—and temporary—relevance since Dexter Gordon, Johnny Griffin, Bud Powell and the others played in those dank, smoky Left Bank caves not because it was romantic but because it was their only option. They deserved to be playing in Salle Pleyel. It’s much better for the deserving in the jazz business now, so it is ironic that more musicians with the clout to play prestigious halls are choosing to go back to multiple performances in smaller, more intimate clubs instead.”
Science – Unraveling Giorgione’s Mind
A group of nine Giorgione paintings have been examined with new scientific techniques reveal much about how the artist worked. “What has become clear with the infra-red discoveries is that Giorgione was a radical modernist when he drew. Giorgione doodled as he worked out compositions, just like 20th-century artists. But why did Giorgione, ‘the modernist’, paint such free and fanciful images only to delete them or adapt them into more restrained ones?