The Canadian film industry has come in for plenty of criticism for its habit of luring Hollywood productions northward with lower production costs and a wide variety of natural locations in which to shoot, and the number of US productions made in Canada has dropped as a result. But after a couple of down years, the nation’s biggest film production center, Vancouver, appears to be making a comeback.
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Washington Opera’s New Digs
Washington Opera moves into tiny Constitution Hall while its home at the Kennedy Center is renovated. “Longtime concertgoers have been shaking their heads. An opera house? With that tiny stage? In that vast, cavernous diffusion of bluish space? An opera house. It was not only home to the National Symphony Orchestra for that ensemble’s first 40 years, but it has been the site of countless recitals by the great, the near-great and the long-forgotten, both before and after the Kennedy Center opened in 1971.”
Morant Collection Goes To Banff
The Whyte Museum in Banff, Alberta, “is thrilled by the generous donation it has received of one of Canada’s most prized photographic collections. Thousands of personal photos taken by world-famous photographer Nicholas Morant, who died in 1999, were recently donated by Morant’s widow, Margaret E. Morant, to the prestigious museum in the Canadian Rockies… The ‘generous gift’ includes 23,000 photographs and three metres of textual material. There are also sound recordings and hundreds of items related to Morant’s photographic equipment, including virtually all of his cameras.”
Big Times In A Small Town
In Annapolis, Maryland, a drama is unfolding surrounding the local symphony orchestra, and while the ensemble may be small, the intrigue is worthy of a much larger organization. It all began when Annapolis music director Leslie Dunner’s contract was not renewed last fall, sparking protests from the orchestra’s musicians, and shock from donors and concertgoers. At the time, the board cited declining ticket sales as the reason for the change. Speculation has been growing that there may have been other, darker reasons for the dismissal.
Ma Bell, Now On Your TV!
Cable television rates are skyrocketing around the US, as service providers continue to be consolidated into a few, gigantic companies. What used to be an industry of diverse local monopolies is becoming an uncontrollable corporate behemoth with the authority to raise rates, yank channels, and gouge consumers at will, says Monica Collins. “The average household cable bill has climbed to $70 a month for television that used to be free.” And while countless lawmakers have called for Congressional hearings on the way the cable industry conducts itself, that public airing of gripes never seems to happen.
There’s A Reason – We Just Won’t Say What It Is
The board of the Annapolis Symphony Orchestra still won’t reveal the “true reasons” behind the board’s dismissal of ASO music director Leslie Dunner. At a board meeting last night, Dunner ducked out early, and president Bud Billups wasn’t talking about what he called “a personnel matter.”
US Government Demanded Borrowing Records From 545 Libraries Last Year
The American Patriot Act allows the US government to require public libraries to hand over patrons’ book-borrowing and Internet-surfing records to investigate terrorist leads. “It also prohibits library staff from publicizing law enforcement requests for such materials.” A study of 906 libraries by the Library Research Center at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign finds “that in the year following the Sept. 11 attacks, federal and local law enforcement agents visited at least 545 libraries to inquire after patrons’ records.” And were records turned over? About half the bibraries complied with the orders.
Exploring The Architecture Of Music
“Since music is the only one of the arts that is designed for the ears rather than the eyes, we sometimes tend to forget that it is part of the corporeal world, since our sense of reality is so eye-driven. However, all sound must emanate from somewhere, which makes the notion of space in music the most down-to-earth of all of the components that go into the making of music. Thinking of music without acknowledging its spatial possibilities is sort of like the study of plane geometry. You can learn a lot of formulas and neat shapes, but the real world is 3D!”
Getting Around The Idea Of Chekhov
“Unavailable to account for himself, Anton Chekhov has become the invention of his admirers, who may variously prefer him tentative or exuberant, skittish or implacable, walking as delicately as a girl or tough as old boots. Some get excited about the new Chekhov, now that those old-maidish Soviets have got their hands off him to reveal new warts on the familiar face; all this does to others is to prompt a smile. For what, I think, could be more natural for a man with delicate physical difficulties in a barbarous age than to complain daily to his sister about water closets? What more obvious for a consumptive whose euphoria turned erotic at inconvenient times than occasionally to turn down some discreet alley in a Siberian town? Thank God for the loss of sanctity.”
Pacific Northwest Ballet Makes Cuts
Facing a $500,000 deficit, Seattle’s Pacific Northwest Ballet has made some cuts. “The majority of cuts will be made by a two-week unpaid leave for administrative staff; the cancellation of two performances for each of the company’s mixed bills in March and April, and the postponement of a new work by Kent Stowell, PNB co-artistic director and principal choreographer, in April.”