“Have you heard the one about the magazine that has been promoting arts and culture in Northern Ireland for more than 30 years but no longer gets a grant from the Arts Council of… er, Northern Ireland? This is not the beginning of some in-house south Belfast joke but sums up the current predicament of Fortnight magazine, the arts, culture and politics review that has been covering life in the Troubles-torn north of Ireland since the early 1970s.”
Tag: 03.27.05
Fonteyn & Nureyev: The Untold Chapter
The onstage chemistry shared by Margot Fonteyn and Rudolf Nureyev was unlike anything the dance world had seen before, and the magic they created together has, arguably, never been equaled. But a new biography and its soon-to-be-made companion film assert that they weren’t only partners onstage. But wait, you ask, wasn’t Nureyev gay? Well… yes. Sort of. But maybe not always.
How To Listen… Without A Roadmap
“Your average newbie may not be sure why he or she should want to sit through a 30-minute symphony 200 years old, and the field devotes a lot of energy to trying to explain the reasons. Its methods include program notes, preconcert lectures and, increasingly, thematic programs that set out to illuminate the wonders of Beethoven or Charles Ives or Nordic music (whatever that is). But all of this runs counter to the way more and more people listen to music today. Witness the popularity of features like the iPod Shuffle, which yanks music out of context by randomly combining tracks into a musical stew. It’s not about the idea; it’s all about the sound.”
Playing Through The Pain
“Until recently, musicians didn’t talk about their ailments — especially professionals, who feared losing their livelihood. Doctors weren’t trained to deal with these specialties, but that’s changing; clinics have sprung up. A recent survey of orchestra musicians found that 76 percent had suffered at least one playing-related injury serious enough to keep them from working for a period of time. An ear specialist in Texas, after screening Houston Symphony Orchestra members, found permanent hearing loss in some violinists’ left ears, the left being the side exposed to continual sonic blasts from the rest of the orchestra. A 2001 survey revealed that 80 percent of female keyboard players ages 10 to 20 have a muscle-skeletal problem, although no one knows why it’s worse for women.”
Billy Taylor Comes Back
Jazz pianist Billy Taylor seemed to resist the passing of time like the ageless standards he’s always loved to play. But in December 2001, he awoke one morning unable to blink. He has been working his way back ever since, recovering from the stroke that affected the right side of his body, including the right hand that once danced across the keys like Astaire.”
How To Give The Right Wing A Really Bad Name
Kansas-based preacher Fred Phelps, an ultra-right-wing activist best known for parading with his followers at the funerals of victims of AIDS and gay bashings while shouting through a megaphone and waving signs reading “God Hates Fags,” is taking on a Colorado Springs arts center that has accepted funding from a gay/lesbian action group. The reverend’s merry band says that the arts center has signed on to promote “the radical homosexual agenda” by accepting the money. The reality of the situation, unsurprisingly, bears little resemblance to the Phelps interpretation, but that isn’t deterring protest organizers in their crusade to wipe out the “sodomite juggernaut” that is apparently running rampant in Colorado Springs.
Return of the Chicago Ring
Nine years after staging Wagner’s complete Ring Cycle to international acclaim, Chicago Lyric Opera is reviving the production this week, and the team in charge of the staging is enjoying a rare opportunity in the opera world: the chance to review what does and doesn’t work about a particular production, and actually make the show better. “The performances are musical marathons, the final three operas running for more than 5 hours including intermissions. But Lyric has the benefit of having already performed it as a complete cycle three times, and many of the staff members and orchestral musicians who made that 1996 “Ring” so successful are still with the company.”
Pulling Strings
Puppetry has not traditionally been one of the more respected theatrical forms (witness the hapless practitioner in the hit movie, Being John Malkovich), but in recent years it has begun to emerge from a fifty-year malaise in which puppeteers were relegated to entertaining young children who presumably didn’t know any better. “In the era of special effects and computer-generated imagery, it is unabashedly low-tech. And it’s an art form that stubbornly refuses to die.”
Opera’s Answer To Trekkies
“Some 10,500 Wagner lovers from 50 states and 27 foreign countries, along with a sizable contingent of international press, are making the pilgrimage to Chicago to catch the four-opera, 16-hour epic. Lyric is hawking Ring T-shirts, caps and socks in its lobby boutique to fan the flames of their enthusiasm. Such encouragement hardly seems necessary. Wagnerians are famously obsessive in their devotion to this marathon masterpiece, perhaps even more so than the Hobbit-ear-wearing Tolkienites who have made a cottage industry out of a certain other ‘Ring’.”
The Artist Who Became New York
It’s not so much that Edward Hopper was a product of the city he loved. It’s more that Hopper’s paintings of New York took on such a life of their own that it is almost impossible to conjure up a mental picture of the Big Apple without at least a little bit of Hopper in it. “Nearly four decades after his death, and many decades after he created some of his most evocative works, Hopper sites and Hopper moments can still be found everywhere in this city of steel bridges, concrete walls, asphalt roadways, old warehouses, empty roofs, brick buildings and small rooms.”