Terry Teachout has mixed first impressions of Carnegie’s Zankel Hall. “I’m sure it’s obvious that Zankel Hall didn’t make as favorable an impression on me as I’d hoped, but I long ago learned that first impressions of a new auditorium can be deceptive. What seems problematic on first hearing often proves less so later on (and vice versa).”
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Harrison Birtwistle, Establishment Composer?
Harrison Birtwistle is one of the UK’s leading composers. “I can’t get into all that stuff about communication. That’s what so many younger composers are doing now, and to me it seems retrogressive. It’s all rhetoric and no form. For me, music is all about making a real form, otherwise all you’re doing is making a substitute, adding another piece into a world that is already filled with pieces very like it. You have to have a vision.”
Another London Opera Company
London is getting a third opera house. The impresario Raymond Gubbay, the commercial arch-rival and a bitter critic of subsidised opera, is to mount year-round productions at the Savoy Theatre. He will begin in April with two guaranteed crowd pleasers, Mozart’s The Marriage of Figaro and Rossini’s Barber of Seville.”
Billionaire Disputes Greek Statue
One of Europe’s leading art collectors bought a Greek statue said to have been carved between 1878 and 1843 BC. But a few years later, François Pinault, the head of Christie’s and Gucci, has some doubts, and now believes it is a modern copy.
US Considers Ban On Iraqi Artifacts
The US Congress is considering legislation prohibiting the import of Iraqi artifacts unless accompanied by proof they were exported legally before UN and US sanctions. “The proposals would authorise US Customs to seize undocumented materials and return them to Iraq.”
DC Dance – Awards Among Friends
Washington DC’s annual dance awards, “the local dance field’s three-year-old answer to the theater’s Helen Hayes Awards and the Washington Area Music Awards cannot yet be seen as anything other than a nice pat on the back among friends. For one thing, the dance groups in this town are so varied in size, budget, quality, visibility and numerous other factors that it seems unwise and unfair to lump them all together in categories such as outstanding group performance and outstanding overall production. How can the bulk of the troupes – shoestring operations composed of dancers who rehearse during time off from their day jobs – hope to prevail when lined up against the Washington Ballet, with its $5 million budget, ready rehearsal space, time-tested repertoire and large stable of splendidly trained, full-time dancers?”
Robert Redford On Art
Robert Redford gives the annual Nancy Hanks Lecture at the Kennedy Center Tuesday night. Redford “the iconoclast, the Hollywood director who founded the Sundance Institute to raise new generations of filmmakers outside the corrupting influence of the studios and commerce, has the most sweetly arcane ideas about art and artists. He believes, for instance, that art is good for the soul, that it can keep kids off the streets, and that it can correct the ill drift of society. He knows Hollywood puts money before art, but is consoled by the fact that without art they can’t make money. He’s also impatient with efforts to silence artists, with the ridicule heaped upon those who express political views when they should know that such talk is better left to highly paid, professional, partisan political pundits.”
Barnes & Noble Closes Down Its E-book Business
BarnesandNoble.com was one of the biggest boosters of e-books. But the company has shut down its e-book division. “BN.com’s decision comes at a time when e-book sales are reported to be steadily growing, the number of retail outlets for e-books is increasing and a host of new reading devices are entering the market. It was BN.com, in collaboration with Microsoft, that led the push to sell e-books when it launched an e-book superstore in 2000.”
Another Try At Reinventing The Chicago Theatre
The “storied but troubled” 3,800-seat Chicago Theater has been the scene of many failed attempts to make it profitable. A new deal would transform the theatre into a “center for the performing arts active 200 nights a year.”
Art Of The Pitch – It’s Still About A Good Idea
The Toronto Film Festival holds a movie pitch competition, in which filmmakers present pitches for movies they’d like to make. Some of the presentations are incredibly elaborate. But this year’s winner had a more modest pitch. Demian Resnick “didn’t wear a costume, as did two filmmakers who wore gaudy prom dresses while pitching a project about growing up in the 1980s. And Resnick didn’t have any pre-filmed scenes, like a filmmaker from Vancouver used in pitching her idea for a comedy vehicle for former SCTV star Dave Thomas and his brother Ian. Instead, Resnick just stood under a spotlight and earnestly read his cards.”