— but no one will rank it with his best work. It has been described as the architect’s rendering of one of the guitars Hendrix regularly smashed in performance, but it looks more like a pile of melted metal. – Boston Herald
Blog
NEVER TOO OLD TO DEBUT
Violinist Ida Haendel “is in her early seventies; her exact age is a matter of musicological confusion. As a child star in London before the Second World War, she sold out the biggest concert halls and never had need of the bijou Wigmore. In mid-life, she migrated to Canada. Now, playing as richly as ever, she is shunned by sexist orchestras that insist on female soloists (only females) being wrinkle-free. It is four years since she last played in Britain.” Now she makes her Wigmore debut. – The Telegraph (UK)
JUST ANOTHER DAY IN TENORVILLE
The care and feeding of the Three Tenors. “Ho-hum. No tempers flare; no chairs are thrown. Evidently, there has never been an instance when one tenor has screamed at the top of his Lloyd’s-of-London lungs, “Hold on, buddy. You sang Nessun dorma’ last time. It’s my turn.” – The Plain Dealer (Cleveland)
WHAT BECOMES A GREAT CITY?
“The world’s vibrant cultural cities have an intangible something else: the capacity to surprise, an impatience with habit and reverence.” They are places where the culture is in dialogue with itself, where creativity is encouraged ahead of pro forma rules. – The Globe and Mail (Canada)
- “MYTHS DIE HARD”: When Toronto, the commercial city, wants to affirm its cultural identity, it turns to Montreal, asking: “So, artist, what’s your secret?” From where I stand, the situation seems a little ironic. A Toronto adrift is bad for Toronto, period. Great cities, like artists, are laws unto themselves. It is not their role to behave like a nation’s shop window. – The Globe and Mail (Canada)
GIVING BEAUTY A BAD NAME
So what is beauty? “We have so many reasons for being suspicious of beauty. Beauty is elitist, divisive, it implies other things are ugly. Beauty in modern thought is tied to a notion of ‘correct’ aesthetic judgment whose founding text, Kant’s ‘Critique of Judgment,’ argued that the only true taste is one that is unaffected by the pressures of real life and hence free to recognise the beautiful. This may have been a good career guide for the ambitious cultural functionary in 18th-century Germany, but doesn’t seem to have much relevance for us now.” – The Guardian
DEFINING AUDIENCES
What is it that gets people interested in the arts? What makes them want to participate or attend arts events? A new Australian study goes in search of the answers. Hey – just how do you define what the arts are, anyway? Australians, it seems, are ready to provide the answers. – Sydney Morning Herald
IT’S SNOWING IN LONDON
Artist Andy Goldsworthy brought 13 five-foot-round snowballs to London to melt in the heat of the longest day of the year. So how will Londoners confront the balls? Will they choose to stand back and admire, or stage impromptu summer snowball fights before a day at school or the office? – London Evening Standard
GEHRY’S EMP BUILDING IS STARTLING —
— but no one will rank it with his best work. It has been described as the architect’s rendering of one of the guitars Hendrix regularly smashed in performance, but it looks more like a pile of melted metal. – Boston Herald
- “A $240 million monument built by a baby boomer with the means to make his adolescent dreams come true.” – Orange County Register (AP)
HE’S BACK
Theatre impresario Garth Drabinsky might be under indictment in the US and generally disgraced everywhere after bankrupting the Livent empire. But yesterday he rose from the dead to announce he’ll bring an Athol Fugard play to Toronto. – The Globe and Mail (Canada)
Despite the 16 felony counts of fraud and conspiracy waiting for him in the US, Drabinsky said he planned to produce more plays, including the big-budget musicals he specialized in at Livent. – New York Times
TIRED OF STARGAZING?
Critics had a field day with director Sam Mendes’s comment last week that British theater’s “reliance on Hollywood stars meant it was in peril of being held hostage by the lure of glamour,” since it was Mendes himself who had Nicole Kidman strip bare in “The Blue Room” last year and set off the current craze for celebrity casting (and stripping). But, if lagging ticket sales are any indication, British audiences finally are tiring of Hollywood stars taking center stage. – The Guardian