Vancouver has become quite adept at creating win-win situations for developers and arts groups, with the city making a push to increase its cultural visibility, even as it fills a need for new housing in the urban core. “In exchange for increased density for their buildings the developers are paired with non-profits that need new public facilities. The developer gets more condos or more offices to sell; the non-profit groups, 13 to date, get free use of programming space built specifically to their needs.”
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Rembrandt Etching Saved From The Trash
A small Rembrandt etching was found in some junk due to be thrown out in the garbage. “The small image of two beggars was discovered among items at the Emmaus charity shop in Carlton, near Bedford.”
World Idol – Will It All Sound American?
There is to be a “World Idol” music competition. One wonders what it will be like though, based on the “Australian Idol” experience. The “biggest problem with Australian Idol: all those talented young people performing as if they were country and western singers straight off a Qantas jet from Nashville. Even Beatles songs were Americanised. Sacrilege! In the context of the debate over the proposed free-trade agreement with the US, in which Australia may have to sacrifice its right to set local content quotas on TV for such things as Australian drama, it really grated.”
No Hard Times At Spoleto
It’s not a good time for the arts in America, with budget cuts, looming deficits, and dwindling audiences seemingly national problems. But somehow, the Spoleto USA festival, based in South Carolina, keeps chugging healthily along, balancing its books and keeping its considerable audience happy with innovative presentations and high-quality music. “Last year’s festival set a box-office record, with ticket sales totaling slightly more than $2.5 million. The festival recently concluded a $26 million fund-raising drive that, among other things, increased its endowment fund from $600,000 to $7 million.” Among the highlights being planned for next year’s Spoleto: a full performance of an 18-hour opera from 16th-century China.
Sell ‘Em The Hockey, Then Hit ‘Em With Arts
A local arts advocacy group in Calgary is marketing a ticket package designed to get sports fans to the symphony. “The $70 package includes a ticket to a regular season Calgary Flames hockey game as well as tickets to two arts and culture events, including performances by local theatre troupes, a jazz dance ensemble or the the Calgary Philharmonic.” Sports and arts are not generally considered to have much audience in common, but some on the Calgary arts scene see the package as important audience-building.
Cutting The Music In Australia
The Adelaide Symphony Orchestra is laying off staff and will shortly be dismissing five members of the orchestra itself, in a desperate effort to get its books in balance. The ASO’s problems are not unfamiliar to other Australian orchestras: since orchestras went to a system of private funding, known as “corporatisation,” nearly every orchestra involved has struggled financially.
Israel’s Conductor
“The association of the Israel Philharmonic with Zubin Mehta is going into its fifth decade and the symbiosis between the two is closer than ever. Mehta’s English is peppered with Hebrew and Yiddish; the food at orchestra outings is peppered with the fiendishly hot chiles that Mehta is famously fond of.” The IPO, which has a reputation of being one of the most argumentative collections of musicians anywhere on Earth, genuinely loves this man who, more than any other conductor alive, has crafted his own identity within the national identity of Israel.
Amazon Gets Into The Cataloging Business
“The British Library and online retailer Amazon are helping the public to source and buy rare antique books. The library’s catalogue of published works is now on the Amazon website, meaning it has details of more than 2.5m books on the site. Some 1.7m of these books are pre-1970 volumes, not previously available… [However,] the British Library stressed it was only the catalogue records that would be made available, not the archived collection.”
Nielsen Tries To Explain Ratings Drop
Why have younger viewers switched off the TV this fall? The ratings are down. So down, in fact, that network execs have begun blaming Nielsen, the ratings company. Now Nielsen has produced a report attempting to explain the dropoff. “The report from Nielsen, which has stoutly defended its data since the complaints from the networks began, found that changes in Nielsen’s methodology that started as long as a year and a half ago are partly – but not wholly – to blame for the decline in viewership of network series among men ages 18 to 34.”
Why Are There So Few Women Directors?
“In 2001 only 15 of the 250 top-grossing films were made by women. The reasons for this are mystifying. People suggest that women are less good at the kind of hustling needed to get a movie off the ground; perhaps it is related to the way filmmaking requires an obsessive dedication over a period of years; maybe female directors take time out to have children – and a year off is equivalent to death in the industry.”