The $200,000 Grawemeyer Prize is one of the top awards for composers. “The 2004 winner is the Korean composer Unsuk Chin – the third woman to take the Grawemeyer. Like the rest of us, composers come in all shapes and sizes, but Chin isn’t quite what you’d expect a modern composer to look like: she’s petite, delicate, almost weightlessly graceful, with the kind of sultry, heavy-lidded eyes that you see on James Bond’s sexier villains.”
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Toronto Symphony Musicians Win 11 Percent Pay Raise
Breaking from a trend in the rest of the orchestra industry, the Toronto Symphony has given its musicians an 11 percent pay raise. “Andrew Shaw, TSO president and chief executive officer, described the increase as “moderate and prudent,” citing a surge in sales that is expected to swell annual attendance by at least 50,000 seats over the level reached two years ago.”
Mel Brooks – Of Comedy And Music
Mel Brooks has a musical ear. “Brooks writes the lyric and melody, leaving harmony and orchestration to others. He is too much a Broadway guy to be deemed an original composer, but he has an unerring ear for speech rhythms that translate into melody, a gift shared with the likes of Schubert, Janacek and Noel Coward. The comedy comes from close acquaintance with human frailty. The youngest of four boys, his father died when he was two and his mother raised the family sewing sashes for swimsuit straps and sequins onto frocks.”
Canada Reads More (This Time On TV Too)
Canada Reads is a Survivor-style program where books are argued over before one is voted off the list by celebrities at the end of each show. This year’s Canada Reads is being played out on TV, radio and in schools. Why? “In 2002, the program’s first year, sales for Michael Ondaatje’s In the Skin of a Lion, first published in 1988, reached 80,000, pushing it to the top of bestseller lists. Last year’s winner, Next Episode, also reappeared on bestseller lists, selling an additional 18,500 copies, while figures for the runner-up ran between 15,000 and 20,000.”
Canadian Recording Companies Hunt Down Downloaders
“Last week, the Canadian Recording Industry Association went to court to force Internet service providers to surrender the names and phone numbers of 29 people suspected of uploading music for illegal digital dissemination.”
In RoadTrip: Of Acoustics And One’s Place In An Orchestra
Sam Bergman on tour with the Minnesota Orchestra in Frankfurt: “When our principal, Tom Turner, had a family emergency and had to miss the first week of the trip, I was vaulted up to third chair in order to fill in the gap. This was fine with me, since you can hear nearly the whole orchestra from the third chair, but when Tom returned to us last night in Frankfurt, I was sent back to the fifth stand, which is something like being moved from first base to left field and then being asked to call the balls and strikes.”
Libeskind To Design Prague Dali Museum
Architect Daniel Libeskind has accepted a commission to design a new museum in Prague dedicated to the work of Salvador Dali. “The museum, estimated to cost $15.7 million, is to display between 1,000 and 1,500 of Dali’s works on loan from collections in Spain, France and Germany. The museum also will include a contemporary art exhibition hall, a restaurant, apartments for visiting artists and a theater.”
Where Music Is Just Music – Isn’t It?
Alex Ross ponders the attractions and liabilities of encounters with classical music. “The strange thing about the music in America today is that large numbers of people seem aware of it, curious about it, even mildly knowledgeable about it, but they do not go to concerts. The people who try to market orchestras have a name for these annoying phantoms: they are ‘culturally aware non-attenders,’ to quote a recent article in the magazine Symphony. I know the type; most of my friends are case studies.”
EMI Blocks Beatles Remix From Being Sold
Recording giant EMI is preventing a remix that includes songs from the Beatles’ White Album from being sold. “DJ Danger Mouse created The Grey Album using Jay-Z’s vocals and beats made by sampling music on The White Album. EMI, which releases Beatles records, has served cease and desist orders to the DJ and record shops stocking it.”
The Slide Of The Playbox Theatre
“Why has Melbourne’s Playbox, which was founded in 1976, seen such a slide in its fortunes recently? There are lots of theories – from inappropriate programming to poor production values, soaring ticket prices to careless marketing. These are real problems, but they are not the origin of the dilemma, only symptoms of it. The answer lies far deeper. Mainstream theatre has, lately, been swamped by competing interests.”