Where are the new anti-war songs? “We’re in an age now when the record companies groom you not to say anything that [ticks] anybody off. The debate over activism and music is growing louder, with Friday’s furor over Dixie Chicks singer Natalie Maines’ remarks on President Bush. Earlier this week, she told a London concert audience she’s ‘ashamed’ that Mr. Bush is a Texan, but late Friday she apologized after some radio stations decided to boycott the Chicks’ music.”
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Live And Online – Exploring The Museum Before You Get There
“For museum aficionados, the Internet can be a serendipitous joy but it can also be a tease. A number of sites provide directories that can reveal museums you’d never think of while putting together a travel itinerary, but which can end up as the cornerstone of a trip. This is particularly true of the sites with directories of domestic museums. But for travelers who speak only English, the Web is not as generous a place.”
By Arrangement Only – Music In Other Guises
Making arrangements of composers’ music was a flourishing business up until the early 20th Century. But more recently the arrangement “is widely regarded as second-class music. At best it is tolerated, at worst disdained.” What happened? “For the last 80 years, musicology has been increasingly successful in pressing the case for the urtext: an authentic performing edition in which, purportedly, the composer’s original thought is perfectly preserved, every note is sacrosanct and the ‘sonic surface’ of the music is reproduced exactly as the composer envisaged it. A musical performance, by this view, should amount to the re-creation of a bit of history.”
Suzan-Lori Parks – Confidence To Find Your Own Way
Playwright Suzan-Lori Parks’ career is rolling at high speed. Last year she became the first African-American woman to win the Pulitzer Prize for drama for ‘Topdog/Underdog.’ On May 6, Random House will publish her first novel, ‘Getting Mother’s Body,’ about a family’s quest to dig up the jewelry supposedly buried in the grave of one of its members. The first printing is 100,000 copies.” And her new play? Her new play has a name that ensures no mainstream paper will ever publish the title.
The Making Of John Adams
Composer John Adams, at 56, “is now old enough that the major works of his youth and early maturity are coming into focus as bright, certain lights from a confused and confusing time.” Lincoln Center is showcasing Adams with a festival – its first devoted to a living composer. “There will be concerts, films and ballets in four auditoriums as well as the first New York performances of Mr. Adams’s most recent dramatic score, the ebullient Christmas opera-oratorio ‘El Niño,’ at the Brooklyn Academy of Music. Forget about Mostly Mozart: this is Absolutely and Adamantly Adams. The festival should help listeners recognize what makes Mr. Adams’s music so special — and what made it so special right from the first.”
Spectator Sport – Surveiling This Year’s Vennice Biennale
This summer’s Vennice Biennale carries the subtitle of “The dictatorship of the spectator.” So what does it mean? “Is it that the spectator is the artist’s enemy, distanced by a different viewpoint? How important is the spectator anyway at the Biennale? Apparently not enough. One of the stated aims of this year’s show is to increase the number of visitors, which usually nose-dives after the initial crush of the opening week. The last Biennale attracted 243,498 in six months, 30,000 of whom were press who visited in the first three days.”
Real Dance On Virtual Music
Often live music is a preferable accompaniment for dance. But “most dance performances have no live accompaniment. For years, the not-for-profit dance industry has endured a battle between artistic ideals and financial practicality. The dance world has long been dealing with the same issues that were part of the recent Broadway strike. Budgets make recorded music a necessity.”
Chicago Symphony – Looking For Leadership
With American orchestras struggling to stay open and solve their finances, even big orchestras such as the Chicago Symphony are having to re-evaluate their positions. “Our moment of fiscal truth is fast approaching. There is a new labor contract to be negotiated next year, and many are expecting a dogfight. Whoever succeeds Henry Fogel as president and CEO of the CSO Association must satisfy the board’s mandate to trim costs while satisfying musicians that he or she is maintaining the CSO’s competitive edge among the Big Five U.S. orchestras. All this will place an unusually heavy burden on the CSO’s next top administrator.”
Next Year In Terra? Chicago Museum Embroiled In Turmoil Again
A few years ago trustees of Chicago’s Terra Museum, frustrated by what they perceived as the city’s lack of support, decided to move the m useum to New York. After a battle, a compromise settlement was reached in June 2001, “required that the Terra Foundation and a significant portion of the museum’s collection stay in the Chicago area for at least 50 years. It also called for the resignations of all board members and the installation of replacements last September.” But now Judith Terra, widow of museum founder Daniel Terra, “filed an appeal last month maintaining that some former board members were bullied into supporting a deal to settle the museum’s future.”
Virtually Yours – Shadow Over Broadway
Broadway’s making music again. But “most musicians employed by Broadway musicals thought the union settled too quickly, for too little. Producers felt demonized, and argue they weren’t trying to kill off live music on Broadway, even though Broadway tours in particular rely increasingly on virtual-orchestra ‘enhancement’ of increasingly tiny pit bands.” One thing’s sure – the virtual orchestra isn’t going away. “Ten years from now, they probably are going to be able to put us out of work.”