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Big Ambitions For New Culture Mag

A new magazine on culture out of Los Angeles has attracted some high profile writers – among them Douglas Rushkoff, Kristine McKenna, Spike Jonze – despite not being able to pay high-profile fees. The magazine is called Arthur, and it’s distributed free with a print run of 40,000 “Arthur’s success in gathering talent comes in part from a promise that writers will be lightly edited, and that underground artists and controversial subjects will be championed. ‘I know all this stuff sounds pompous. But there is no money here. This is an activist magazine. I have a clear idea of what’s wrong with this culture and this world. This is the stuff I’m interested in, this is the work that’s gratifying to me’.”

Hollywood Offers Money For Piracy Snitches

The Motion Picture Association of America is offering rewards to informats on DVD piracy in Asia. The “MPA estimates that pirated DVDs cost Hollywood $3 billion in lost revenue in 2002, and $646 million in Asia.” The MPA declines to say how much informants will be offered, that “rewards would be significant and dependent on the quality of information provided. ‘If we need more money we’ll get it. Money isn’t the issue’.”

Danielpour, Morrison Team Up For Opera

Poet Toni Morrison and composer Richard Danielpour have been commissioned to write a new opera by the Opera Company of Philadelphia, Detroit’s Michigan Opera Theater and the Cincinnati Opera. Working title for the piece is “Margaret Garner”, “the name of a pre-Civil War Kentucky slave. Forced to be the mistress of a plantation owner, Garner escaped with her children, but, when captured, attempted to murder them and herself rather than return to slavery.” The premiere will be February 2006.

“Brilliant” Art Collection To Be Split Up

The Potamkin collection of American art, “one of the best of its kind in private hands,” is being split up after the death of Vivian and Meyer “Pat” Potamkin’s collection. The collection includes an “estimated several hundred paintings, sculptures, and works on paper” and most will be sold at auction by the couple’s heirs. “The Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, which was widely expected to be the major recipient, gets just a small portion, but it is the choicest and most valuable – eight paintings, one pastel drawing and a sculpture, which are estimated to be worth from $18 million to $22 million.”

Stifling Creativity – Control Concern

“How does an economy best promote innovation? Do patents and copyrights nurture or stifle it? Have we gone too far in protecting intellectual property? In a paper that has gained wide attention (and caught serious flak) for challenging the conventional wisdom, economists Michele Boldrin and David K. Levine answer the final question with a resounding yes. Copyrights, patents, and similar government-granted rights serve only to reinforce monopoly control, with its attendant damages of inefficiently high prices, low quantities, and stifled future innovation, they write.”

Missing Diva Still Missing

It’s been a week since soprano Sumi Jo abruptly up and left Australia, abandoning a performance of “Lucia” for Opera Australia without a word. No one at the company has yet heard from her. “Even Jo’s manager, Tony Russo, hasn’t had a phone call explaining her actions. ‘I haven’t spoken to her yet. She took everyone by surprise. I still don’t know what came to pass but she’s not a canceller’.”

Houston Symphony Standoff

The Houston Symphony and its musicians are locked in a contract dispute that threatens the future of the orchestra. The orchestra is carrying a big deficit, and management proposes cuts in musicians and musician salaries. The musicians, not surprisingly, have a different idea. How did the situation deteriorate to the point of work stoppages and accusations?

Ted Perry: Music With A Conscience

Ted Perry was a singular voice in the music business. He founded and ran Hyperion as a small recording label and “modest as it was, Hyperion became a marque of musical conscience, a reproach at the preposterous Classical Brits to the fixed smiles of the bottom-liners and their forgettable novelties. ‘When I first knew him, he was driving a minicab at nights to pay the musicians he recorded by day. The gleam in his eye was an urge to share good music with anyone who might love it – chaps like himself, without social pretensions or academic qualifications, whose grey horizons could be tinted by an exposure to aural glories.”