James Bennett, II: “First, we looked at the technology and market realizations that set crossover up for a late 1980s-90s boom. Then we explored how that bubble burst. But crossover today isn’t dead — it’s just assumed a new form, as it’s done throughout its long history. Now, it’s less opera-pop and more chamber covers of popular music. And if recent pre-COVID concerts are any indicator, concerts centered around popular film and television scores might be selling out for years to come. At least if you’re Hans Zimmer.” – WQXR (New York City)
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Public Radio Ratings Plunge
Broadcast ratings for nearly all of NPR’s radio shows took a steep dive in major markets this spring, as the coronavirus pandemic kept many Americans from commuting to work and school. The network’s shows lost roughly a quarter of their audience between the second quarter of 2019 and the same months in 2020. – NPR
The Trump Organization And Insurance Companies Kept This Film Off U.S. Screens For Four Years. Now It’s Finally Coming Out
Documentarian Anthony Baxter writes about how his 2016 film You’ve Been Trumped Too — which shows how the seizure of land for and the construction of Trump’s Scottish golf resort affected nearby residents, including one farm family whose water supply has been cut off ever since — was suppressed by legal threats from the Trump Organization and the exorbitant premiums demanded by companies for providing errors-and-omissions insurance. – The Guardian
Even Country Music Is Facing A Reckoning These Days
“How does a genre in love with routine respond to a moment in which everyone’s lives have been disrupted?… Country fetishizes the day-after-day realities of homes, highways, and beer halls. There are exceptions, but typically it’s a genre in which work and family and place all are held up as things that must be defended. … As a slew of recent scandals and scuffles have demonstrated, however, not even Nashville can maintain the status quo anymore.” – The Atlantic
France Begins Process Of Returning Looted Artworks To Benin
“The government examined the first draft of a law … which legislates that specific items known to have been looted must be returned permanently to their places of origin within one year. … The objects the law would see deaccessioned from French collections include 26 objects taken from the royal palace of Abomey in 1892, which are currently held at the Musée du Quai Branly-Jacques Chirac.” (There is also a historically important sword that would be returned to Senegal.) – Artnet
One Of Off-Broadway’s Top Theatres Announces A Season With Artists But Without Plays
“In place of what most theatergoers have come to regard as a ‘season,’ the New York Theatre Workshop — the birthplace of Rent [and Slave Play], among other landmarks — is offering what you might call a 2020-21 un-season. A programmatic embodiment of the possible, fueled by the percolating brains of more than two dozen playwrights, directors, actors and performance artists.” Peter Marks explains how it will work. – The Washington Post
‘Everything Is Up For Change, And Will Change’: New Wave Of Bosses May Finally Make Publishing More Diverse
“Over the last year, deaths, retirements and executive reshuffling have made way for new leaders, more diverse and often more commercial than their predecessors, as well as people who have never worked in publishing before. Those appointments stand to fundamentally change the industry, and the books it puts out into the world.” – The New York Times
China Starts Reopening Movie Theaters (For The Second Time)
“China will begin reopening cinemas in ‘low-risk regions’ from July 20, the China Film Administration announced Thursday, ending nearly six months of closures that left thousands of theaters bankrupt. … When a small portion of cinemas reopened briefly in March, business was dismal. Venues were unable to attract much of a crowd by offering stale local titles that most people had already seen. Fresh content will now be crucial to getting people through the door.” – Variety
London’s Southbank Centre Will Lay Off Up To Two-Thirds Of Its Staff
“The job losses are expected to affect all areas of the organisation, which comprises venues including the Hayward Gallery and Royal Festival Hall, as well as being home to eight orchestras, the National Poetry Library and the Arts Council Collection. The [Centre] has furloughed the majority of its 600 employees, and in May predicted it could face a £5.1m deficit for the 2020-21 financial year.” – The Guardian
How The LA Phil Is Moving Forward
“Whatever we do right now,” Gustavo Dudamel said, “has to have an impact not only in the time we are living but also to help us achieve what we can do in the next years. That’s why we were not rushing to do a thousand things, to do this or that. We went to the heart of what transformations we need to make and what we think can work.” – Los Angeles Times