New software can make anyone sound like a (good) singer. “The software, which is due to be released to consumers in January, allows users to cast their own (or anyone else’s) songs in a disembodied but exceedingly life-like concert-quality voice. Just as a synthesizer might be programmed to play a series of notes like a violin one time and then like a tuba the next, a computer equipped with Vocaloid will be able to “sing” whatever combination of notes and words a user feeds it. The first generation of the software will be available for $200. But its arrival raises the prospect of a time when anyone with a laptop will be able to repurpose any singer’s voice or even bring long-gone virtuosos back to life.”
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San Antonio: Turnover at the Top
“After two years at the helm of the financially troubled San Antonio Symphony, Executive Director Steven Brosvik is stepping down. Brosvik, 38, pledged to enhance the symphony’s image and boost fund raising when he took the job in March 2001 and began work that summer. But many potential donors didn’t open their pocketbooks during Brosvik’s tenure. This year, the orchestra cut its season short and declared bankruptcy.” There is speculation that Brosvik’s resignation may have been part of a quid pro quo for the SAS’s musicians, who recently signed a contract which officially cancelled the 2003-04 season and gutted their future salaries and benefits.
A Congressman’s Dream
Congressman John Lewis (D-Georgia) began talking to his colleagues in 1986 about the need for a national museum of African-American culture. Most of the time, his exhortations were met with condescending smiles, stony silence, or even outright hostility from such famous Congressional bigots as Jesse Helms. But Lewis persevered, and last week, his dream was finally realized, as both houses of Congress approved the creation of the National Museum of African American History and Culture.
Making A Place For French Opera
French operas are not like other operas. Where German and Italian operas feature endless melodrama and tragic heros who die unspeakable deaths, French composers have traditionally preferred lighter plots and happier endings. (Ambroise Thomas even composed an operatic Hamlet in which the title character survives to become King of Denmark.) So it’s no surprise that North American companies, steeped in the Italian and Germanic traditions, have traditionally avoided French opera. But in Quebec, where the two leading opera companies in the province are led by the same man, French conductor Bernard Labadie, a distinctly French flavor is beginning to take hold.
Dale Peck: Extreme Book Reviewing
Dale Peck is a human hatchet disguised as a literary critic. He’s unequivocal: “Novels and memoirs are on a wrong course. They are either inward-gazing, solipsistic and impotent or unconscious and rarefied, written by recidivist realists who pretend the twentieth century didn’t happen.” And America’s other book critics? “They are back-scratchers, afraid for their own careers – novelists reviewing their friends’ works. It is very dishonest.”
Tupac, Dead or Alive?
It’s been 7 years since hip-hop icon Tupac Shakur was gunned down in Las Vegas, but legions of fans and hip-hop scholars still refuse to believe that he ever actually died. After all, since the shooting, “seven posthumous albums have been released – more than when he was alive… His funeral, if there was one, didn’t make the news. We never saw a casket. There was no public memorial.” All the doubt has only solidified Shakur’s place as one of American music’s most influential figures. “If LL Cool J is hip-hop’s balladeer and Public Enemy its enduring conscience, Shakur maintains his status as a supreme urban griot whose gritty, observant rhymes illuminate the plight of disenfranchised black males.”
Banned DH Lawrence Paintings Go On View
“In June 1929 a squad of embarrassed policemen raided the Warren gallery in London, and seized 13 paintings by DH Lawrence. They were spared from being burned on condition that they were never exhibited in Britain again.” Guess what – here they are…
J.M. Coetzee & the Fictional Lecture
Nobel Prize winner J.M. Coetzee does not like giving lectures. In fact, for the most part, he declines all such invitations. But when he was asked to present the prestigious Robert B. Silvers lecture in New York, he relented, and agreed to participate in order to honor Silver, the founder of the New York Review of Books. Still, a conventional lecture would simply have been too much to expect from Coetzee, and the South African author did not disappoint, eschewing observations on craft and style in favor of the creation of a new work of fiction to read to his audience.
Armchair Quarterbacking the WTC Finalists
As the process of selecting the architect who will design and build the memorial to the victims of 9/11 progresses, other architects are weighing in on the finalists. Some say all the designs are too complex, while others complain that minimalism is too dominant across the board. “Many of the architects had practical questions: What happens to all those water features in case of drought? Can such vast spaces underground be free of columns? How many people can cross a narrow bridge at one time?”
Free Museums – So Successful, We’re Broke
Millions of new visitors have been streaming into the UK’s museums since admission fees were abolished two years ago. So the free admission policy has been a big success, right? Maybe not. Museums are broke. They don’t get enough money to pay for operations. “Times are indeed so hard for our national museums – who have never had so many visitors – that they are being forced to go cap in hand to pay for bog-standard two-ply tissue.” Yes, that’s toilet paper…