According to a new study, young rock musicians are more liable to discourage drug use than encourage it. “The research, published by the University of Texas at Austin, explodes the conventional wisdom that popular music encourages teenagers to abuse drugs. The author, John Markert of Cumberland University, Tennessee, says that although there has always been a generally hostile attitude towards heroin and other hard drugs, teenage listeners today ‘are being exposed to more negative images of marijuana and LSD than older listeners’.”
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Pavarotti – High C’s At 68?
At 68, Luciano Pavarotti doesn’t always sound so good, writes Richard Dyer. “But he sounds amazingly steady and solid on the new album – it is hard to think of any previous tenor who could sound this good at Pavarotti’s age. Most of the songs are appealing, and Pavarotti lavishes his incomparable diction and emotional generosity on them, and his high C is still in working order.”
What Bernstein Might Have Done To Theatre
In 1957, Leonard Bernstein and Stephen Sondheim joined forces to write the music and lyrics for “West Side Story.” Sondheim, of course, went on to a brilliant career in musical theatre. But Bernstein turned his attentions predominantly to a classical music career. What might Bernstein’s influence have been if instead he had pursued theatre?
History – The Good And The Bad
A public art specialist working on a brochure for a historical walking tour for a town in Florida discovers some of the town’s racist history. Should he include it in the brochure? The town leaders aren’t so sure. “Glenn Weiss said he wants to clarify and showcase black history, not to ignite racial hostilities but to acknowledge an important part of the past.”
The Atwood Express
Margaret Atwood is Canada’s reigning literary institution, writes Philip Marchand. “Atwood’s place on so many book prize short lists is indicative of her unique position in Canadian letters. Especially since the deaths of Robertson Davies and Mordecai Richler, she has no rival as premier Canadian novelist. Atwood’s product clearly has wide appeal, and even those who have strong misgivings about her work, like me, must acknowledge that she has some powerful and exceptional gifts — literary gifts that are particularly suited to a writer of novels.”
America As Author Magnet
“That Argentine, or Australian, or Iranian, or Afghan author you have bought a ticket to hear is probably flying in from his or her home in the United States — the world’s most powerful author magnet. Not only does the place offer freedom to write, but it also offers an abundance of publishers, lots of creative writing programs where authors can find a day job, and a large literary marketplace.”
Remembering Anthony Tudor
Tudor was in the habit of questioning every move his dancers made. “You get people into a whole different mode of relating to the floor. It was quite grounded, his work. It’s really ground-breaking, somewhere between modern dance and ballet. And it had its own very specific technique. You have to break the habit of either a modern-dance or a classical-ballet approach. No, it’s this. And then you watch the dancers feel more and more and more constricted until they’re about ready to explode. Then all of a sudden, within that framework, you can tell the moment when somebody gets it. They start to either be themselves or be the character they’re trying to portray.”
Remembering Nikolais
Choreographer Alwin Nikolais was a multimedia pioneer. “He was a loner — he could not collaborate with anyone. He didn’t have the patience to explain what he wanted. He saw dance as a total entity, which meant he regarded sound, light, choreography and costume as part of the whole. In the beginning he called his work “total theater.” We now call it multimedia.”
Archiving For The Future
The National Archives reopens in Washington DC. “The Declaration and the Constitution and the Bill of Rights, the documents the Archives calls the Charters of Freedom, are back on display in the Rotunda of the Archives building after being away from public view 2 1/2 years. The building has been extensively renovated to make the documents more accessible to visitors, especially the handicapped, and the Charters have been re-encased after minute and painstaking conservation treatment. The entire project is estimated to have cost as much as $136 million.”
Director’s Cut To Profits
There’s an epidemic of “director’s cut” dvd’s being issued. “It’s hard not to detect a whiff of marketing ploy in all these bulked-up reissues. Far from rectifying the wrongs done to their work the first time round, it tends to look as if the directors just can’t leave well enough alone. Forman’s Amadeus feels 20 minutes longer without feeling noticeably different at all; Cameron’s revamped Abyss adds lots more of what doesn’t work in the film anyway and hardly any of what does; and the new stuff in Apocalypse Now Redux is at best a curiosity box, with the lengthy plantation sequence the obvious low point of the movie as it now stands.”