“How does feminist art of the 1970s hold up? Does it seem historically significant or merely transiently faddish?” Feminist artists’ “demands for parity, for an end to being patronized, and for acknowledgment that art should accommodate a distinctly female consciousness made headlines at the time.”
Blog
Cuba – Capital Of Jazz
“Cuba is producing musicians of Herculean technique, many of whom have applied their intensive classical training to the art of jazz – and thus have come to tower over their counterparts around the world. The last two generations have yielded larger-than-life jazz players whose mastery of their instruments and exalted level of musicianship enables them to conquer audiences wherever jazz is played. Exactly why Cuban jazz musicians sound consistently brilliant may be a mystery to the outside world, but in Havana it is no secret…”
Today Vs. Yesterday – Are Symphony Orchestras Better?
Are today’s symphony orchestras better or worse than the orchestras of yesterday? The technical level of the players is better, but is the way they play together superior? The Boston Globe asked five prominent conductors to make comparisons.
The 50s Boring? Really?
The 1950s were boring. Dull. Nothing happened. Nothing changed. The mythology about the 50s is that it was a decade “so constricting that the ’60s had to come along to blow things up.” And yet – look at the art that was created then. “The ’50s produced an amazing body of art, one that we revisit time and again not for kitsch or nostalgia, but for the sense of excitement it conveys.”
Wanted: Someplace You Can Hear
Atlanta has an active arts scene. But the city is practically barren of good performance spaces. Those theatres and concert halls that do exist are acoustically dead. But a new arts center at Emory University holds out some promise the city might get its first real concert space, writes Pierre Ruhe.
Even Threat Of Jail For Music Pirates Doesn’t Satisfy Recording Industry
Last week the European Commission issued a draft directive to try to discourage music file traders. The directive “called for counterfeiters to be jailed and their bank accounts frozen.” Evidently even the threat of jail isn’t enough for the big recording companies. “The International Federation of the Phonographic Industry said the measures failed to introduce ‘urgently needed measures to hold back the epidemic of counterfeiting’.”
Have Images Of Atrocities Ceased To Register On Us?
Back in the 1930 Virginia Woolf believed that just seeing pictures of the atrocities of war would provoke a strong reaction against the waging of war. Susan Sontag wonders if that ios the case today in our media-soaked world. “Photographs of an atrocity may give rise to opposing responses: a call for peace; a cry for revenge; or simply the bemused awareness, continually restocked by photographic information, that terrible things happen.”
Hollywood’s New Plots – Government Get The Bad Guys
It wasn’t so long ago that Hollywood’s favorite movie was the little guy against the bureucrat – the rogue CIA, the power-hungry FBI, even a misbehaving Congress or White House. But that’s all changed. “Big and small screens are awash in portrayals of honorable officials struggling to hold back a menacing tide. “The old, tired and hackneyed representation of us as a bunch of rogue operatives, with everything dark and gloomy and sensational, that doesn’t wash any more.”
A New “Self-Tuning” “Microtonal” Piano?
A British composer claims to have “revolutionised” the design of the piano. The instrument has until now relied on “only 88 notes from their 88 keys. This limitation has made the piano’s ‘fixed tuning’ unable to cope with the differing scales of Persian, Chinese and Indian music. Mr Smith’s device could open up whole new markets for the instrument in places where it has previously been seen as an expensive piece of western furniture. The innovation threatens to make professional piano tuning defunct, since players will be able to perform ‘user-friendly’ corrections to their instrument themselves, possibly while they are playing.”
Nunn’s Parting Shot – A £2.5 Million Gift
Outgoing National Theatre director Trevor Nunn has made a surprise gift to the London theatres – £2.5 million. Nunn was severely criticized during his tenure when it was learned that he was making as much as £25,000 a week from the West End transfer of his award-winning revival of My Fair Lady. “But in a move that will silence his detractors, Nunn has given the theatre £208,000 this year as a first instalment of a legacy to support new work, with £2.3m more coming over the next two years. All the money he has earned from the transfer of ‘My Fair Lady’, as well as ‘Oklahoma!’, which is now on Broadway, will go back into the National’s coffers.”