“On top of the slow economy, live karaoke clubs are losing some of their bread-and-butter wannabe pop stars and off-duty office workers to living room video games and online streaming services. At the same time, karaoke record companies are struggling with sky-high licensing fees while the traditional karaoke CD market is being throttled by illegal online downloads.”
Tag: 03.26.10
Gehry’s Eisenhower Memorial Won’t Look Like A Gehry
“The memorial, which will be built on a four-acre parcel just south of the Mall near the National Air and Space Museum, will be a mix of traditional and contemporary elements, but none of them scream Frank Gehry.” While the design “was the most elaborate of three proposals submitted by Gehry … it stands to the side of Gehry’s popular curvilinear style.”
Baltimore Symphony Musicians Accept Another Pay Cut
“The players accepted a freeze for the 2010-11 season and a 16.6 percent reduction for the two seasons after that. By the 2012-2013 season, base pay for BSO members will be $67,600 – essentially the same as it was in 2001.”
Envisioning New York After Sea Levels Rise
An architecture show at MoMA “is a response to the effects that rising sea levels are expected to have on New York City and parts of New Jersey over the next 70 or so years, according to government studies. The solutions it proposes are impressively imaginative, ranging from spongelike sidewalks to housing projects suspended over water to transforming the Gowanus Canal into an oyster hatchery.”
B’way Revival Of ‘Lips Together, Teeth Apart’ Postponed After Star Walks Out
“The Broadway revival of Terrence McNally’s play Lips Together, Teeth Apart has been postponed for the spring season … The decision was made after the actress Megan Mullally quit the show this week because of frustration with the inexperience of a co-star, the comedian Patton Oswalt, whom she tried to have replaced.”
Stolen Henry Moore Sculpture Recovered In Toronto (Thanks, Canada!)
“Miriam Shiell Fine Art in Toronto reported that a small bronze by the English sculptor Henry Moore (1898-1996) it had agreed to inspect for possible sale had been stolen in 2001 from an unnamed New York gallery.”
From Under The Burmese Generals’ Thumb, Alternative Art Sneaks Out
“Art exhibitions, some featuring risky hidden political messages, open nearly every week in Yangon, Myanmar’s main city. Yangon has a festival of underground music, including punk bands, twice a year. Fans of the most popular musical genres, hip-hop and electronic dance music, wear low-slung baggy pants to regularly held concerts here.”
Lang Lang’s Haiti Benefit Raised $100K. How?
Last week The New York Times reported that the fundraising concert by the pianist and conductor Christoph Eschenbach at Carnegie Hall could net at most about $8,000. As it happened, the total box office take was around $160,000, and expenses were more than $180,000. Yet Lang Lang announced from the stage that the event had raised $100,000 “so far.” Where did that money come from?
In Search Of Confucius The Man
“Over the centuries, depending on the prevailing political winds, Confucius has been revered in his homeland as social visionary or despised as moral despot. In the West, his name …simply means ‘China’ to most people.” He is “an abstraction.” A new exhibit in New York helps match the idea of Confucius to the actual Kong Fuzi.
The 2010 Award For The World’s Weirdest Book Title
“Britain’s Bookseller trade magazine, which organizes the contest, said that Crocheting Adventures With Hyperbolic Planes received 42 percent of 4,553 votes cast by the public.” Runners-up included What Kind of Bean Is This Chihuahua? and Collectible Spoons of the Third Reich.