Tonalist composer Frederick Stocken talks about life in the looking-back lane. The young British composer values tonality and tunality, but finds it difficult to escape his anarchist image. – The Idler
Blog
SINGER X IN Y RECITAL
After Metropolitan Opera soprano Deborah Voigt cancelled her performance with the Y Music Society (which presents only one singer each season on its Carnegie Music Hall recital series) untested soprano Isabel Bayrakdarian filled in to take her place. The 25-year-old Canadian “is much in the news, in fact, as she will make her New York operatic debut this week in a concert version of Herold’s rarely-heard ‘Zampa.'” – Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
“DESTINATION” ARTS PROGRAMMING
BBC2 has clustered arts programming on Sunday nights. How is it? “After 150 minutes of Proust mocked and Picasso beatified, I felt like the schoolboy who asks his father where the Pyramids are and is told to ask his mother because she puts the things away.” – New Statesman 03/27/00
TRASH REVISITED
- The Andy Warhol-era film “Trash,” which “epitomized what it meant to be hip,” has been resurrected, and with it the career of independent director Paul Morrissey who worked on several of Warhol’s films. – NPR 3/27/00 [Real audio file]
AMERICAN BEAUTY —
— big winner at Oscars. – New York Times 03/27/00
- OSCARS: All the winners, all the action. – Oscars.com
- SO MUCH FOR EXIT POLLING: The Wall Street Journal tried to see if it could predict the Academy Awards outcome by polling voters. How’d they do? – Sydney Morning Herald 03/27/00
TRAILER TESTING
Increasingly Hollywood is turning to testing to see how it should market its films. – BBC 03/27/00
MAN OF IRON
Polish director Andrzej Wajda will become the first Eastern European film director to receive a lifetime achievement award at this Sunday’s Academy Awards. During a five-decade career, with 44 films to his name – including his 1981 film “Man of Iron,” Wajda’s acclaimed personal show of support for the Solidarity movement – he has revitalized his nation’s film industry. “Last year, for the first time since the end of the communist era and the relaxation of import restrictions on American movies, Polish films logged better box office figures than foreign ones.” – Time (Europe) 03/27/00
DRABINSKY IN THE BLACK
Former Livent theater entrepreneur Garth Drabinsky has been hired by Conrad Black’s National Post newspaper to be “creative marketing consultant.” – CBC
DATING SYLVIA PLATH
Before her stormy marriage to poet Ted Hughes, Sylvia Plath was dating a Canadian student at Cambridge, who has long since disappeared. Whatever happened to this extra-literary-circle character “with a habitual slouch…an affable sheepish look, and a reputed…alcoholic”? – The Globe and Mail (Canada)
WE WEAR CLOTHES IN BOCA
Artist’s painting is removed by city employees in Florida because figures in the painting weren’t wearing clothes. – Fort Lauderdale Sun-Sentinel