Broadway might have fended off the virtual orchestra, but what about traveling Broadway shows? Sure there’s a pit and it’s got 10-15 musicians working away. But the electronic juice is liberally applied. “It’s rare that you don’t see a pit orchestra with two if not three synthesizer players, because there’s just a whole world of string parts, percussion parts (supplied by the synthesizers).”
Tag: 03.16.03
What Are We Gonna Do? Cleveland Theatre Struggles With Its Schedule
Cleveland Play House said it would announce next season’s lineup of plays this Monday. Trouble is, the company began this season with a $3.5 million deficit, and its last two productions haven’t done well. And…well…it hasn’t exactly figured out what plays will be on next year’s lineup. When you start putting play X with play Y and balance it with how many tickets you need to sell, but then you want to accomplish this artistically but can only afford that much risk and…well… there’ll be a season…
Cleveland County May Propose Arts Tax Levy Vote
The economy might be down, but Cleveland-area politicians are talking about putting a new tax of the arts on a Novermber ballot, hoping to raise $14 million to $18 million per year for the arts. “I think it’s definitely time that we have to put our money where our mouth is with this particular industry. We’re trying to team up the arts-levy request with another popular issue. We thought a combination request would be an easier sell.”
Still Trouble Ahead For The Good Ship Broadway
The Broadway musicians strike may be over, but Broadway is facing a number of other headaches. Like more trouble over broadcasting the Tony Awards. And those pesky “theatre restoration” fees theatres have been tacking on to the cast of tickets – turns out the fees are “a violation of New York’s Arts and Cultural Affairs Law 25.29.”
Wake Up… Now How Did You Do That?
A new book examines the properties of human consciousness. “Scientists tend to concentrate on the locations, mechanisms and functions of consciousness. Philosophers, meanwhile, worry away at problems that used to be very old but, thanks to neuroscience, are now very new again. What has the mind to do with the brain? Is it true, as Descartes argued, that if I think, therefore I am? If so, what precisely does the thinking?”
Lessons I learned From the Broadway Musicians Strike
So what are the lessons from last week’s Broadway musicians strike? Frank Rizzo has made a list. At the top is respect for the stagehands union. The stagehands work and musicians lose. The stagehands walk and there’s no show. Say it again – the stagehands rule. Other lessons: people inherently like musicians, but distrust producers…
TV – Down And Out On Staurday Night
What happened to Saturday night television? Saturday night used to be the premiere night of the TV week, the most important night. But “it’s been TV’s most ignored and neglected night for years, the video equivalent of a landfill. Saturday now is where TV series go to live out their last useful seasons, or where they escape from to thrive on another night. Saturday night television has become so degraded that it no longer sustains a single original sitcom.”
DVDs Rule – They Earn More Than VHS Or Theatres
“Money measures success in Hollywood, and industry figures show just how successful the DVD format has become in its six-year history. People spent nearly $20.3 billion last year to buy or rent movies to watch at home. DVD accounted for 57 percent of that total or $11.6 billion, compared with $9.3 billion in theatrical ticket sales, according to various financial analyses. Money also means power, and DVD has become a major creative force in Hollywood, changing how movies are made by giving filmmakers a new and vast canvas on which to work.”
Live And Online – Exploring The Museum Before You Get There
“For museum aficionados, the Internet can be a serendipitous joy but it can also be a tease. A number of sites provide directories that can reveal museums you’d never think of while putting together a travel itinerary, but which can end up as the cornerstone of a trip. This is particularly true of the sites with directories of domestic museums. But for travelers who speak only English, the Web is not as generous a place.”
By Arrangement Only – Music In Other Guises
Making arrangements of composers’ music was a flourishing business up until the early 20th Century. But more recently the arrangement “is widely regarded as second-class music. At best it is tolerated, at worst disdained.” What happened? “For the last 80 years, musicology has been increasingly successful in pressing the case for the urtext: an authentic performing edition in which, purportedly, the composer’s original thought is perfectly preserved, every note is sacrosanct and the ‘sonic surface’ of the music is reproduced exactly as the composer envisaged it. A musical performance, by this view, should amount to the re-creation of a bit of history.”