Harvard faculty-member and Beethoven expert “was a great-grandson of Ralph Waldo Emerson, combined a Yankee sense of duty with an un-Yankee-like personal warmth. A daily attendee at morning prayers at Harvard’s Appleton Chapel, Mr. Forbes was a trustee of the New England Conservatory and board member of the Pro Arte and the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum (the museum’s piano is dedicated in Mr. Forbes’s name).”
Tag: 01.13.06
Adolescent Behavior
“It has to be more than a coincidence that literary fiction is being flooded with books about adolescents. It’s been building for a while, from Michael Chabon’s Kavalier and Clay and Craig Thompson’s Blankets to last year’s Prep by Curtis Sittenfeld. But this year it seems to be out of control, with another book about another awkward pre-teen crossing my doorway every day or so.”
New York’s New Antiquities Theft Unit
Manhattan’s attorney general has appointed a special unit “dedicated to investigating and prosecuting antiquities theft and trafficking”. It will be headed by Matthew Bogdanos, “better known as the US Marine Corps Reserves colonel who led the investigation into the looting of the Baghdad Museum and helped recover more than 5,000 artefacts.”
Musicland Files Chapter 11
“Musicland Holding Corp., among the nation’s most prominent music retailers, filed for bankruptcy reorganization after years of losses and relentless competition from superstores such as Circuit City and its onetime owner Best Buy.” Musicland operates Sam Goody, Media Play, and Suncoast Movie stores across the country. “Musicland’s woes began a decade ago, as its mall stores saw its customers siphoned away by the rapid growth of big-box retailers where prices on music and movie releases often are $3 to $4 cheaper. The advent of downloading songs from the Internet further pressured in-store sales.”
California May Boost Arts Funding… A Bit
California, which perenially ranks last in the nation in per capita arts funding, is proposing to add $2 million per year to the state arts budget by promoting the sale of a new arts-themed license plate. Several other states offer such plates, which can be purchased for an additional fee by any driver, with all profits going to the state arts board. The influx of funds would raise California’s arts budget by more than 50%, but in a sign of just how meager that budget is, it would remain firmly in last place in per capita funding among the fifty states.
Has The Small Screen Eclipsed The Big One?
It’s finally happened. “The best American television is better today than the best American movies… Adequate is what movies, these days, are above all required to be: tasteful, familiar and safe. The schlock of the past has evolved into star-driven, heavily publicized, expensive mediocrities that carefully balance novelty and sameness… Television not only offers writers the chance to create nuanced characters but also to follow them on deeper journeys than any two-hour film could offer.”
Creative Embellishment Or Plain Old Lying?
The literary phenomenon known as “creative nonfiction” has caught on in recent years, especially among authors who are belatedly discovered to have made up parts of what were supposed to be factual books. As memoirs and other works of supposed non-fiction have risen to become the most profitable corner of the publishing industry, the line of acceptability in “sprucing up” dull old reality has been blurred. The problem may be that, unlike magazines and newspapers, publishers don’t spend a lot of time on fact-checking, and basically take an author’s word on the events related in a given manuscript.
Apple Under Fire On Privacy
Criticism is mounting over privacy concerns at Apple’s online iTunes music store. The iTunes site collects information on users in order to recommend tracks other than those already purchased, and Apple says that it doesn’t keep the information or use it for other purposes. “Privacy advocates complained that Apple had not done enough to warn people about the information that was being collected, nor what was being done with the collected data.”
Is The Real New Orleans Dead And Buried?
A new proposal from the blue-ribbon commission studying ways to rebuild New Orleans has suggested that any low-lying areas of the city which were inundated with floodwaters after the levees on Lake Ponchartrain failed should be abandoned, and Eugene Robinson says that you might as well begin writing the city’s obituary. The commission “envisions a city with lots of green space and a new light rail system; it sees revitalized schools and world-class medical research centers, all protected by invincible levees. It might be a nice place to live, but it won’t be the old New Orleans. In the old days, at a jazz funeral, the ‘second line’ of followers would sing and dance the departed to heaven. The music is still playing in New Orleans, but there’s nobody to form the second line.”
Nashville To Open Its New Hall With A Bit Of Down-Home Flair
When the Nashville Symphony opens its new $120 million concert hall this fall, the celebration will be clearly designed to draw in more than just your average fan of Beethoven and Brahms. In country music’s undisputed capital city, outreach is a must for a classical orchestra, and Nashville’s opening concert at the new Schermerhorn Symphony Center will feature, among other guests, jazz/bluegrass banjo legend Bela Fleck and crossover bassist extraordinaire Edgar Meyer. Conductor Leonard Slatkin will lead the gala, as the orchestra is between music directors following the death of longtime leader Kenneth Schermerhorn last year.