FCC chairman Michael Powell believes his rule changes on big media ownership will stand, despite growing opposition in Congress. “His opponents claim that the power of big media firms is rising. Mr Powell says the opposite. With the growth of cable, satellite and digital media, the number both of media outlets and of owners has increased almost everywhere in America. After the success of Mr Murdoch’s Fox, there are now four rivals instead of three even among the big TV networks. ‘We have facts,’ claims Mr Powell. ‘They have none’.”
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WTC – Rebuilding By Culture?
Cultural groups are vying to relocate to downtown New York at the site of the World Trade Center. “Why are established uptown entities like New York City Opera and the 92nd Street Y now willing to consider a downtown location? Why are prominent theater people urging that a national theater be built there? The answer can be found in part in Bilbao and Barcelona, Spain, and Manchester, England, as well as in Los Angeles and Detroit. By giving new urgency to notions of transformation, the destruction that took place on Sept. 11, 2001, has brought home to downtown Manhattan the phenomenon of urban renewal through culture.”
Does America Need A New National Theatre?
A proposal for a new national theatre for the site of the World Trade Center has theatre people talking. “A sampling of theater observers and major theaters in the region suggests that while the idea of showcasing the nation’s best regional theater in New York is laudable, the creation of such a super-regional theater would be immensely complicated to fund, curate and execute. For those of us who have been around long enough, this is at least attempt six or seven to do something like this.”
Can You Do Without TV?
“A life unburdened by television is a life unbridled. Days grow longer, nights quieter. Time is no longer defined by blocks of hours but instead by ambitions. David Foster Wallace’s “Infinite Jest” seems possible. Never heard of it? Peel yourself from the tube and look it up. Square dancing, sky diving, Lamaze — the doors you assumed welded shut are now open. No pushing, friend — the line forms behind me. Of course, one doesn’t commit to such a dramatic life transformation, no matter how enriching, without certain sacrifices.”
Getting Angry At Vilar
Now that philanthropist Alberto Vilar is broke and unable to meet his pledge commitments to opera companies such as the Metropolitan, a surprising degree of anger towards him has surfaced. “Vilar thinks that the Met simply does not understand the American model of philanthropy, in which giving marches in step with the ups and downs of the financial markets. In strong markets, the wealthy give more; the quid pro quo is that when markets are weak, donors must be allowed to reschedule pledged payments until the markets rebound.”
A New Snapshot Of Diane Arbus
“During her lifetime, photographer Diane Arbus was lionized, but she was also lambasted for being exploitative. Her suicide in 1971 seemed to corroborate the caricature of her as a freaky ghoul.” In the first retrospective of her work since 1972 a “new portrait is emerging of one of the most powerful American artists of the 20th century, in the style that she favored. Uncropped.”
The Hague – A City Like A Painting
“Think of the enigmatic stillness that permeates the works of Vermeer, Gerrit Dou and Pieter de Hooch. You won’t find much of that amid the hubbub of Amsterdam. Yet along the Hague’s slightly dour purple brick pavements, and particularly in the marvellous Mauritshuis, you absorb it from the very ether.”
Music Without Flavor
These days, you can walk into a WalMart and buy a CD full of classical music carefully chosen to pair perfectly with your Sunday brunch. Or your Saturday night date. Or a quiet dinner with friends. “All of this would be funny were it not for the wasting disease it represents. Call it silence deprivation. One of the reasons music tastes less good for a lot of us these days is that it increasingly lacks beginnings and ends. It is the blank spaces that surround music that give it shape — allow it to breathe. Music not framed by the absence of music really isn’t music. Nor is music at dinner. Works of Brahms are not well served when they accompany pork chops. It is not fair to the pork chops either.”
Old Doesn’t Necessarily Equal Good
There was a time, not too long ago, when any building more than a few decades old was likely to be sneered at as a dinosaur. More than a few architectural gems fell prey to a hasty wrecking ball, and many cities around the world are worse off for the loss of culturally significant buildings which were momentarily considered eyesores. But now, the pendulum may have swung too far the other way in Britain, with the heritage movement becoming so powerful that any criticism of old buildings is considered heresy. Patrick Wright would like to see some sort of balance, some acknowledgement that there are still a few old dinosaurs out there that simply aren’t worth saving.
Period Performance Comes Of Age
The “authentic performance” movement was once viewed as a rebellious collection of obsessives, at once fascinating and annoying, but nothing that threatened to invade the larger world of classical performance. But these days, historically-informed performance is the norm for most ensembles, and while you don’t see a symphony orchestra tuning its instruments down to play Mozart, the days of hacking through 18th-century music as if it had been composed by Gustav Mahler are over. Meanwhile, the true period purists, such as the Toronto-based Tafelmusik, continue to soldier on, devoted to their idealistic view of music in context.