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Looking For Composers With Heart

“American composers have long maintained an impersonal veneer.” For much of the 20th Century they oozed technique – lots of grey matter spilled all over the pages of their scores. But “with compositional masks falling in recent years, there comes a crisis of style: What’s the musical language of the 21st-century heart?”

Produce This! Famously Fired Actor Returns To Broadway

It’s been eight months since actor Henry Goodman wqas fired after taking over Nathan Lane’s role in “The Producers.” “One minute, I was in the shower singing, thinking, `I just played to 60,000 people in a month, nobody’s asked for their money back, this thing is cooking. I knew I was different from Nathan, but I didn’t know difference was a sackable offense.” Now, after months of soul-searching, he’s back on Broadway in a big way…

CD Sales Slide During Holidays

“In the five weeks since mid-November, when the record labels began their biggest holiday blitz in recent memory, compact disc sales were down 12.9 percent compared to the period in 2001, according to data from Nielsen SoundScan, which tracks music sales.” This despite some high-profile releases by some of music’s biggest stars.

WTC – An Argument With Reality

So what if ideas for structures on the World Trade Center site seem impractical. “It’s only because members of the public have taken the trouble to argue with reality that the official process of reimagining ground zero has taken a turn for the better. What we’re learning, at this stage, is how to put the shoe on the other foot.”

Imagining The Manhattan Skyline

Some of the ideas for rebuilding on the World Trade Center site come straight from fantasy. “At least four of them propose to build the tallest building in the world. And the designs are not only tall. Towers tilt and dance at weird angles as they rise. Often they’re linked by bridges in the sky, in the best tradition of your favorite Flash Gordon comic book. This isn’t exactly avant-garde architecture.” So what’s real?

Ground Zero Solution

Blair Kamin believes that one of the seven proposals for the World Trade Center site stands above the others. “Libeskind’s plan for the former World Trade Center site at once offers a deeply moving memorial to those who died in the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, and a joyous but dignified celebration of New York’s street life and skyline.”

WTC – Why Not Dream?

“If the architects have exceeded the design study’s requirements, we should be grateful. They’ve helped to expose a major defect of the entire design process thus far: the attempt to contain architecture within such restrictive boundaries that it cannot perform its legitimate poetic function.”