“The Olympic Games are returning to Greece. And Santiago Calatrava, a Spanish genius of Parnassian accomplishments, has redesigned a sports complex that now embodies the tensile strength of athletes in their glory… Some engineers criticize Calatrava because prominent features of his buildings are structurally inessential. They serve purely expressive purposes. Architects, meanwhile, fault his work for appearing to be stuck in the 20th century. But the appeal of Calatrava’s work, if you are susceptible to it, lies in its hybrid quality. Rather than fusing architecture and engineering, the designs arise from the struggle between them.”
Tag: 07.18.04
Costello’s Ballet Score – Deeply Boring
Alex Ross concedes that Costello’s score shows evidence of technical skill. But he was deeply bored: “After half an hour, I did something I’ve never done in twelve years of reviewing concerts in New York: I got out a book and started to read. There was nothing for my brain to grasp on to — I felt like I was clawing the air and falling.”
Looking For The Line
As U.S. TV and radio broadcasters continue to tread an unusually cautious route through the latest “obscenity” minefield laid out by politicians and the FCC, the impact such crackdowns can have on popular culture is beginning to be assessed. No big media company wants to be made an example of for crossing the Puritanical line being toed by FCC chairman Michael Powell, but at the same time, no one seems to be terribly clear where that line is.
It Looks Good, But The Sound Needs Work
The on-stage acoustic of Frank Gehry’s new Jay Pritzker Pavilion in downtown Chicago is a vast improvement over anything the Grant Park Orchestra has known before. Musicians can hear each other, and the overall quality of sound on the stage is something previously thought to be impossible on an outdoor stage. But for the audience, the acoustic “remains a work in progress. Indeed, the quality, depth and presence of sound still varies dramatically from place to place; ironically, the sonics are best at the back of the seating area and on the first half of the lawn.”
Millennium Park Makes Its Debut
One of the most controversial civic art projects in recent U.S. history opened to the public this weekend, and Blair Kamin was bowled over. “Remember the dusty pit that sat for decades amid the beaux-arts splendor of Grant Park, Chicago’s front yard? Well, it’s gone, turned into a joyful park that’s sprinkled with smile-inducing sculpture and mind-bending ‘wow-chitecture.’ This is the miracle of Millennium Park, the $475 million fusion of old-fashioned world’s fair and newfangled cultural spectacle that opened Friday. Yes, there have been huge cost overruns and delays, and they have resulted in some less than ideal park spaces. But get real: Did anyone ever ask Eiffel whether he busted the bud-get on his tower? The park is found ground — a no place that is suddenly a someplace.”
Daley’s Park, For Better Or For Worse
Millennium Park will be many to things to many people, but to Chicago mayor Richard M. Daley, it will be his legacy. “When Mr. Daley took office 15 years ago, the site, north of the Art Institute and east of Michigan Avenue, contained old railroad tracks and gravel parking lots.” Mr. Daley’s vision for a useful public space became the biggest civic art project in the city’s history, and depending on whom you ask, it is either a testament to the skill and vision of the designers and fundraisers who brought it together, or an overpriced boondoggle spearheaded by a mayor who cut the public out of the process.
Gehry Does It Again
The centerpiece of Millennium Park is the new Gehry-designed Jay Pritzker Pavilion, which will serve as the new 11,000-seat home to Chicago’s Grant Park Orchestra. “Even in a city renowned for its big moves, Gehry’s project makes for an extraordinary structural drama. And the stage on which that drama occurs — a new 24.5-acre park at the foot of the downtown skyline — plays perfectly to the architect’s strengths, allowing his explosively sculptural forms all the room they need to preen, as they were not free to do in his dazzling, but more tightly confined, Walt Disney Concert Hall in downtown Los Angeles.”
Sights On Celebrating Singer
Celebration of the 100th birthday of Isaac Bashevis Singer has proven controversial. “While many consider him one of the best Jewish writers of all time, others in the Yiddish literary world see him as melodramatic, profane, and even unworthy of the Nobel Prize he received in 1978.”
The Poetry Police
The secretive operators of the website Foetry (www.foetry.com), a self-described “American poetry watchdog,” are out to clean up poetry. They promise, from behind a cloak of anonymity, to uncover scandals among the publishers of contemporary poetry, dishing dirt on “fraudulent `contests,”‘ as their homepage has it, “tracking the sycophants,” “naming the names,” and generally cleaning house.