Blog

Ned Rorem At 80

“I love it when people talk about my music and I hate it when they don’t, but I never know quite what they’re talking about. When people analyze my music in a formal way – not by what it means in a Wallace Stevens-ish way but by what it is made of in a technical way – I say to myself, ‘Oh gee, did I do that? I guess I did’.”

Recordings And Porn – A Reason To Object?

The recording industry seems to be hitching its objections to file-trading to the porn industry. “It said that peer-to-peer file-sharing – the technology used by Internet sites like Kazaa and Morpheus – was bad not only because citizens could share music without paying for it, but also because it was used to swap pornographic images. One odd thing here: If you tweak that sentiment just a little bit, it becomes: We join our friends the child pornographers in deploring file-sharing of protected works of art.”

Remnick’s New Yorker: As Ever, Standing Apart

The New Yorker may be the most storied magazine in American history. More than two dozen books have been written about its history, and “over the years, no magazine has succeeded as consistently in maintaining a sense of originality. True, other publications can boast a higher circulation than the New Yorker’s 958,000. And many have greater reach on Main Street and Wall Street, not to mention at 1600 Pennsylvania Ave. But how many have a mystique for publishing memorable writing?” Under new editor David Remnick, the magazine seems to be once again reinventing itself, with Remnick insisting that he didn’t sign on to be a “museum steward.” But with so much protective fervor surrounding New Yorker’s past, Remnick may have a difficult route to the future.

A Low-Key Kind Of Publishing House

Patricia Johnston runs the Afton Historical Society Press, a tiny publishing house in a little town outside St. Paul, Minnesota. You’ve probably never heard of the company. After all, Johnston puts out an average of four to six titles per year, and isn’t really all that interested in advertising, or making sales calls, or actually marketing her product much at all. Nonetheless, the business has flourished, with word of mouth being apparently enough to sell the consistently high-quality books that Afton puts out, and many see the company as a textbook example of how an independent publisher can survive in the world of increasingly corporate bookselling.

A Good, Solid TIFF

This year’s Toronto International Film Festival seems to have hit on all cylinders, a welcome change from the last couple of years, when TIFF was necessarily overshadowed by world events. Several Toronto critics were duly impressed by the mood of this year’s fest, in addition to praising the high quality of this year’s entries. Joanna Schneller may have summed up TIFF’s year: “It was a good, solid year for the festival. There hasn’t been that one great breakout film, but there are also fewer stinkers.”

Boston’s New Arts Neighborhood

Any native Bostonian can tell you that the South End is not exactly the glamorous section of town. But a newly revitalized neighborhood in Southie, long populated by local artists and recently discovered by gallery owners, is proving once again that art can change the image and culture of even the most run-down areas. “The gallery boomlet has occurred despite the sputtering economy of the last two years, thanks to the housing market, which has been white hot in the neighborhood, drawing artists and people who want to put art on their new walls.”

Musicians Have Bigger Brains

“Mozart increases mental mass. Scientists revealed yesterday that members of a British symphony orchestra had more little grey cells than ordinary people in a part of the brain known as Broca’s area… [A researcher] examined the brains of musicians under the age of 50 and found that they had added to their grey matter. Then she looked at non-musicians under the 50, and found an age-related decline. Where musicians still played fortissimo, non-musicians were beginning a diminuendo.”

No Breakthroughs In Charlotte Strike

A federal mediator has stepped in, and talks are going on around the clock, but there is still no end in sight for the Charlotte Symphony musicians’ strike. This weekend’s season-opening concerts have been cancelled, and no one involved in the talks seems to think a breakthrough is near. At issue is the orchestra’s desire to cut back the number of paid weeks per year for which it contracts its musicians, in order to make up a $645,000 deficit. The musicians claim that the deficit, the orchestra’s first in seven years, is an aberration, and that no salary cuts should be necessary. Musicians in the Charlotte Symphony currently make $31,200 per year. The proposed cut would knock them back to $28,860.

Montreal Symphony Lacking Leadership?

The Montreal Symphony Orchestra opened its season this week without a music director (Charles Dutoit, who departed the post in a huff just shy of his 25th anniversary last year, has yet to be replaced,) and Arthur Kaptainis says that the lack of leadership and direction at the MSO is beginning to be alarming. The concert had the orchestra pushed to the very back of the stage to accomodate one short work in which a pair of dancers were featured, and the entire program had the effect of implying that the musicians were the least important part of the show. “The directors of the MSO (many present for an opening-night bash) should remember that it is possible to accumulate an artistic deficit.”