London’s National Theatre was nominated for ten Evening Standard theatre awards, and won three.
Blog
A New “Chants Laureate” For Football
Football chants are a staple of any game. But art they art? Apparently so. Next year a sponsor has put up money for a £10,000-a-year “chants laureate” to be chosen from stadium crowds. “His or her role will be to rove round matches and ‘compose chants observing key moments within the season’. The search to recruit the new bard is to be led by five judges headed by the poet laureate Andrew Motion, who is paid a mere £5,000 in his 335-year-old post for composing verses for the royal family.”
The Art Of Marketing (Yes, It Is An Art)
“The position of marketing in the arts is not and never has been a sufficiently high priority. There is an old saying that if a show is successful, it is great art; if it fails, it is bad marketing. To market the arts means you have to accept that it is a product like everything else – obviously not something that sits well with some artists.”
TV: The Year Of The Flop
“For the first time in the 55-year history of prime-time television, no single new network series can be called a hit. Already – only two months into the season – some analysts are characterizing 2003-2004 as The Year of the Flop.”
In Touch With Genius
“Until recently, much of what we knew about savants came from the observations of clinicians like Treffert and neurologist Oliver Sacks, author of An Anthropologist on Mars and The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat. Now researchers are probing the savant mind from the inside, using tools like gene mapping and PET scans. As these two paths of investigation converge, many of our long-held notions about the limits of human potential are being overturned.”
Young Designs – Youth Reigns For WTC Memorial
There were 5000 anonymous entries competing to design the memorial for 911 at the World Trade Center site. Many have been surprised that the five finalists are younger artists instead of older established names…
Boosey And Hawkes Sold
“Music publishers Boosey and Hawkes, home to the estates of Stravinsky, Britten, Strauss, Prokofiev and Rachmaninov, is to be bought by the venture capitalists HgCapital – meaning it will remain independent, at least for now.”
Some Object To Taiwanese Guggenheim
Some resistance to building a new Guggenheim is surfacing in Taiwan. “Those who object are mostly worried about a cultural invasion and the danger of an American cultural hegemony taking root.”
New Museum Of World Literary Heritage
A new museum of world literary heritage has opened in Switzerland. The new museum contains “manuscripts and volumes ranging from an Egyptian Book of the Dead through Shakespeare folios to a first edition of Karl Marx’s Communist Manifesto.”
Symphony-Sur-Jumbotron
Pop concerts have employed jumbo video screens at performances for years. This year the Vancouver Symphony is trying them out – “four remote-controlled video cameras strategically positioned in the hall, used to “simulcast” performances on screens measuring 2.2 by 2.7 metres, to the left and right of the stage.”