The deposed conductor of the Kitchener-Waterloo Symphony is hoping that a citizens group will find a way to pressure the orchestra to rehire him. “Speaking yesterday from his home in Berlin, Martin Fischer-Dieskau said it’s his ambition to ‘be able to say what’s happened has been only an interruption in the orchestra’s inexorable way to greater achievement. But I can’t, at least not for the time being.”
Tag: 01.13.04
Missouri Raids Trust Fund To Pay For Arts
“Missouri appropriated about $3.9 million last fiscal year for arts agencies in the state. This year, the general revenue appropriation was zero. The government dipped into a cultural trust fund to pick up much of the slack. Still, many arts organizations are cutting back and wondering what the future holds.”
Painter Attacks Contemporary Art(ists)
Sir Kyffin Williams, one of the UK’s leading painters, attacks contemporary art and artists. “Speaking at the opening of the Oriel Gwyngyll gallery in Llanfairpwll, north Wales, on Monday night, he blamed the art establishment, including the arts councils and competitions like the Turner Prize and the Welsh-funded Artes Mundi. “Nobody ever likes the work in the Turner Prize. Conceptual installation art is worthless and people don’t want it. Galleries are desperately trying to find young artists who can draw – even in places like Cardiff and London’.”
The Ring Of Sweet Money
The fastest growing segment of the music business? Ring tones for phones. “Sales of mobile-phone ring tones, those tiny song recordings programmed into millions of cell phones around the world, jumped 40 percent in the past year to $3.5 billion, according to a study released Tuesday. The worldwide sale of ring tones, which started as a marketing gimmick for music labels and mobile phone companies, is roughly equivalent to 10 percent of the $32.2 billion global music market.”
What In The World?
What, exactly, is world music, asks Andrew Taylor, and “does it help us to assign categories that cannot be defined? Of course, most would answer that ‘world music’ is non-European music, or compositions, cultural expressions, and performances from cultures other than the traditional performing arts fare. It’s music from the Middle East, China, Africa, Israel, Nepal, and so on. And we categorize it because it makes it easier to talk about it, program it, and present it to an audience – we can have a ‘world music’ series and everyone will know what we mean. The problem is, such categories seem to cause more problems than they solve – both from a business and aesthetic perspective.”
Indians Protest Rushdie Visit
A crowd of muslims protested in Bombay Monday to protest Salman Rushdie’s visit to India. “The protesters, including Muslim clerics and scholars, shouted slogans such as “Hang Salman Rushdie”, “Kill Salman Rushdie” and “Expel Salman from India now”.”
No Child Left Behind Music
There seems to be a relationship between learning music and excelling in other subjects. So “if a school is not teaching music as intensively and zealously as it’s teaching math and science, then it’s not teaching math and science. The decline in music education is a big part of the problem in math and science education.”
Digital Improves Recording Company Outlook
After a couple of years when music sales were down, 2003 was something of a turnaround. “More than 19.2 million digital tracks were sold online in the past six months, according to Nielsen Soundscan, helping to narrow the music industry’s losses last year. Overall, North American music sales were down 0.8 percent last year compared with 2002, while album sales, which includes cassettes and other formats, were down 3.6 percent, according to Nielsen Soundscan.”
WTC: Barren Memorial
Inga Saffron writes that the World Trade Center memorial is a major misstep. “Launched a bare two years after terrorists pulverized the twin towers – which were themselves a compendium of dehumanizing architectural features – the competition demanded that architects distill meaning from that historic event while the rest of us are still reeling. The result is a design so generic and so sanitized that it drains the site of its sound and fury, signifying nothing.”
Neil Simon Sets The Stage
“Despite Neil Simon’s stellar reputation as one of America’s funniest writers, he’s never won an Oscar and hasn’t had a bona fide big-screen hit since 1988’s ‘Biloxi Blues. ‘What they want today are action-oriented and futuristic stories. I write about families and relationships.’ There was a time when that was good enough.”