“In a week when it was repeated that cassettes will no longer be sold because CDs have so secured the market, the predator that will soon swallow the compact disc flashes its teeth again. On Monday, Coca-Cola launchesmycokemusic.com, a legalised music download website for Britain, imitating Apple’s iTunes online record-shop, which itself plans a spin-off here.”
Blog
Return the Elgin Marbles? To What?
It’s a romantic notion, the idea that the Parthenon Marbles could be returned to the Acropolis, writes Richard Dorment. “Credulous, idealistic or simply out of touch with reality, many are romantics smitten with the idea that the marbles can somehow be “returned” to the Parthenon, which is in fact a total ruin. Not perhaps realising that half of the Parthenon sculptures have been lost for ever, and that surviving sections are now in 10 museums in eight countries, they imagine that, if only Britain would co-operate with Greece, the frieze could somehow be reconstructed.” They are wrong.
Self Over Music
“Why do so many pianists these days insist on emphasizing their own personalities over that of the music they play? “Once a pianist, however technically gifted, forgets that he or she is the servant of the music, then any aspiration to greatness is in vain.”
LA Opera Expands With Room To Grow
Now that the Los Angeles Philharmonic has moved across the street to Disney Hall, LA Opera is expanding its season. A $48 million budget will finance a season of “premieres, revivals and stars.”
BritArt In Teheran
The British Council is on a cultural offensive in Iran. The Brits are putting together a show of art. “Contentious works, including a Hirst sculpture incorporating a human skeleton never exhibited before, will go on show in Tehran next month, just after elections that have already caused bitter tensions between Islamic hard-liners and liberals. Other works were held back by the British Council, however, including body casts by Antony Gormley and a wheelchair with knives by Mona Hatoum.”
Report: Pope Keeps Thumbs Horizontal Over Gibson Movie
The Vatican officially denies reports that the Pope endorses Mel Gibson’s new movie. However, “one prominent Roman Catholic official close to the Vatican, speaking on the condition of anonymity, said he had reason to believe that the pope probably did make the remark about the film. ‘But I think there’s some bad feeling at the Vatican that the comment was used the way it was. It’s all a little soap-operatic’.”
The CBC’s Hippest Project
“Don’t be alarmed if you hadn’t previously heard of CBC Radio 3. Most CBC executives themselves don’t even understand the on-line revolution happening right under their noses. CBC Radio 3 is more than just music. ‘We’re trying to develop new forms of storytelling and develop a web presence that incorporates audio, video and text. No media company in North America is doing anything like this’.”
The Danes Come To America
The director of the Royal Danish Ballet has a mission leading up to the 200th birthday celebrations of August Bournonville in 2005: “to make ballets vivid to the contemporary viewer who may not instinctively find them accessible and appealing.” The company is visiting America, and Tobi Tobias reports that progress is well along towards that goal…
Modern Media Sending Us To Hell?…Well…
“The modern media, at least according to the modern media, is our cultural Gin Alley — a virtual world that caters to our basest instincts, fuels a mass addiction to sex and violence, and blinds us to the big political and social picture. Before we conclude that we’re all going to hell in a cleverly marketed handbasket, though, it’s worth putting this cultural lament in historical perspective.”
London Art Fair Spruces Up
Where are the new collectors? “Finding them has proved more difficult in an age when collecting is less fashionable than it was and there are plenty of alternative ways of spending disposable income. But last week, London’s first major art fair of 2004 underwent a radical overhaul in an attempt to bring in new, younger buyers.”