Your iPod Could Soon Sound Like A Concert Hall

The technology required to reproduce music through a set of speakers has come a long way in the past 80 years, and in recent years it has shrunk down to the point that you can get very decent sound out of a music player the size of a credit card. However, there’s one aspect of audible sound that has never been able to adapt to the needs of the portable generation of music players: bass sound. The subwoofer has always been a big unwieldy thing, and it has always been essential to truly high-quality sound reproduction. But a new breakthrough promises to change all that, offering true bass resonance in a tiny tube.

Have The Arts Become An Afterthought At Ground Zero?

In the immediate wake of the 9/11 attacks, New York officials talked of rebuilding Ground Zero as not only a business center, but a thriving downtown neighborhood filled with cultural offerings. In the years since then, nearly all the arts groups that planned to move to the site have been shunted aside due to politics and developer infighting, and now, with the dissolution of the Lower Manhattan Development Corporation, the city’s arts supporters fear that cultural plans for the site will be scrapped altogether.

God Forbid They Ever Declare A Sweeps Month

Nielsen, the company behind TV ratings, has come to the stage, pioneering a new strategy to allow theatre companies to assess the impact of their presentations on the paying public. “Using Hollywood-style data mining techniques and the Internet to contact hundreds of thousands of theatergoers, Live Theatrical Events is changing the way shows are marketing themselves, on and off Broadway.”

Perseus To Buy Consortium

“Perseus Books Group, one of the largest independent publishers of general-interest books, is expected to announce today that it has acquired Consortium, a St. Paul-based provider of sales, marketing, distribution and bill collecting services to 100 small independent publishers across the country.” The acquisition is expected to improve Perseus’s ability to market itself and widely distribute its product.

Laguna Beach Revives The ‘Living Painting’

“Is the tableau vivant passé? Not for the 155,000 fans who flock to this beachside town each summer for the pageant. For them, the two-month extravaganza — a $4.1 million production that includes sets and lighting for nearly 40 art pieces on eight staging areas with live narration and orchestra — weaves a magic that is a welcome palliative to the freneticism of modern-day entertainment… The pageant sells out all of its 61 shows and generates about $1.8 million for local arts programs, exhibitions and scholarships.”

Joyce’s Long-Forgotten Play Gets A Viewing

James Joyce only wrote a single play in his lifetime, and it was a critical disaster. Inspired by the work of Ibsen, Joyce created Exiles, “a work freighted with jealousy and the ogre of betrayal… His efforts to have it produced were Herculean and sometimes ludicrous… The tension surrounding the first night had something of the mystique of a séance, [and] the play was immediately withdrawn.” Exiles is currently being revived in London.

Mapplethorpe Redux

Robert Mapplethorpe is best remembered for photos that were calculated to shock: who can forget the famous bullwhip photo? But there was so much more to Mapplethorpe’s work, and a new exhibit in the UK aims to highlight the softer side of the controversial photographer. “He helped create a look as well as commenting on it. Or perhaps it wasn’t so much a look as an atmosphere: cool, dark, edgy, dangerously sexy, horrifically hip, hard and brittle.”

Money Isn’t Everything, But It’s Awfully Nice When You Have Some

As it prepares to move into its new home in Miami’s Carnival Center, Miami City Ballet has landed the largest corporate gift in its history, courtesy of New York-based U.S. Trust. The exact amount of the donation was not disclosed, but the announcement sends a signal that the company is more or less fully recovered from the financial troubles it was experiencing a few years ago.

NYC Ballet Unveils New Programming Strategy

“In what it calls an effort to reach new audiences, the New York City Ballet has revamped the way it presents performances, creating 10 fixed programs with themes and catchy titles that will rotate over the course of its winter season… The new model does not mean a narrower repertory, however. The company will present 38 separate ballets, roughly the same number as in previous seasons.”

Guthrie Picks Interim Manager

Minneapolis’s Guthrie Theater has named David Galligan interim managing director, beginning in mid-August. Galligan, who recently stepped down from the CEO post at the Ordway Center (St. Paul’s main performing arts venue,) will not be a candidate for a permanent job at the Guthrie, but agreed to help steer the company through the transition to its new home on the Mississippi River.