Category: issues

In Pakistan, dancing was banned for many years, and some clerics would like to do the same to music. A new festival is changing things. “For Lahore, the 10-day festival was a huge, at times startling cultural event. The music ranged from pop to classical but the finest show was the pure Sufi night. Festival president Faizaan Peerzada runs an event that aims to transform Pakistani life. By promoting Sufi music he hopes to ‘counter the extremism of the mullahs who use the mosques to spread ill-will against the west’.”

A string of provincial pearls – including Paducah, Ky.; Rising Sun, Ind.; Fergus Falls, Minn.; and Cumberland, Md. – are banking on the arts for economic revival. “The eruption of these rural culture capitals also means more Americans can find original art to view or buy on a weekend or day trip. In recent years, surveys by the Travel Industry of America have called arts- and culture-based travel a strong and growing segment.”

British comedians and satirists are struggling with the same problem that confronted American entertainers in the months after 9/11: how to acknowledge the terrorist elephant in the room without insulting anyone or bringing the mood down. For comedians, who frequently operate on the razor edge of good taste, anyway, the July train bombings in London are a delicate matter. If those comedians happen to be of Middle Eastern descent, well, then, the pressure is even more intense. Some comics are gingerly beginning to talk about the bombings, but “for all the effort at cheerful revenge, none of the dozens of acts addressing this year’s hot issue know quite what to say about it.”

“[Philadelphia’s] Kimmel Center for the Performing Arts has sued its internationally acclaimed architect in U.S. District Court, accusing Rafael Viñoly Architects of ‘deficient and defective design work’ and delays that boosted the project’s final cost. The lawsuit over construction of the arts center, designed to be one of the world’s great venues for orchestral music, does not seek a specific amount of damages, but it cites a loss of $23 million.” The center, completed in 2001 at a cost of $265 million, has struggled financially, and questions have been raised about the acoustics of its main concert hall, home to the Philadelphia Orchestra.

“A survey comparing mental health and the number of sexual partners among the general population, artists and schizophrenics found that artists are more likely to share key behavioural traits with schizophrenics, and that they have on average twice as many sexual partners as the rest of the population.”

The Edinburgh Festival is looking for a new director, but the search has been a lazy one so far. “Edinburgh stands out as the last bastion, the one place and time when Scotland can bask in the world’s attention and imagine itself briefly to be Athens. The festival is not what it was, the last couple of years under Brian McMaster featuring fewer world-class orchestras and opera companies and less incisive theatre; but these shortcomings have been masked by the vitality of peripheral festivals for books, film and television and, of course, the anarchic fringe.”

In another sign that Paul Allen’s Experience Music Project is an enterprise in search of a mission, EMP has announced it will be staging an Impressionist art show drawn from the artworks in Allen’s personal collection. Allen is said to have a significant collection, but Allen’s “private asset management company” won’t release details of the art that will be shown.

Unofficial names on the list taking buyouts include: movie reviewer Kevin Thomas, theater writer Don Shirley and Calendar writer Elaine Dutka…

As the Canadian government falls, Toronto arts groups are wondering about a promised funding plan to complete high-profile arts building projects. “Representatives of the six arts groups involved have been working for months on the top-up proposal. The $96 million of extra funding ($48 million from each of the two governments) would raise the total investment of the two governments in these projects to $328 million.”