Margaret Atwood and newcomer Monica Ali head up the shortlist for this year’s Booker Prize. Martin Amis and JM Coetzee didn’t make the cut, but Zoe Heller, Damon Galgut and debut writers Clare Morrall and DBC Pierre did. Three of the nominations are for first novels. The winner is announced October 14.
Tag: 09.16.03
Jonathan Miller, Junkyard Director
Director Jonathan Miller has turned sculptor. He spends time in junkyards finding pieces of scrap to weld together. “When I get called an intellectual or a renaissance man or a polymath I think about how my parents would have been embarrassed to be called such vulgar things. they were middle-class, cultivated people – my mother was a very good novelist – to whom knowing about books and art and speaking languages was normal, as well as taking an interest in science and philosophy. They were just educated people who had a lot of interests. It’s normal. And so it is for me. I’m just normally sophisticated, like my dear old dad and my long-dead mother, but I’m increasingly ashamed of the vulgarity around me.”
La Scala Fight Ensnares Muti
A fight is brewing between La Scala director Riccardo Muti and the company’s general manager. “Mr Muti did not attend the official launch of the 2003-4 season, and on tour in Japan this week he was quoted as saying that La Scala was ‘at risk of decline’. The danger is that, unless Mr Muti gets what he wants, the great conductor will go elsewhere. Though still unspoken, it has been enough to sow alarm among the loggionisti, La Scala’s devotees, who sometimes queue all night for the cheap seats in the loggione, the equivalent of ‘the gods’.” Some see the flap as a power play with Italy’s volatile prime minister.
Havana Biennial Imperiled
“Troubles are mounting for the eighth Havana Biennial as Dutch sponsors pull the plug on funding, while visual artists in Miami and Costa Rica turn down invitations to participate in the international showcase opening Nov. 1. The Cuban government’s crackdowns earlier this year on dissidents and artists’ charges of censorship fueled the decisions.”
The Bugler’s Digital Assist
It looks like a bugle. Sounds like a bugle. But “it is a bugle discreetly fitted with a battery-operated conical insert that plays the 24 notes of taps at the flick of a switch. It is all digital, with no human talent or breath required. All you do is hold it up, turn it on and try to look like a bugler.”
Honor At The Press Of A Switch
“The $500 electronic bugle is a necessity, the Pentagon insists. There are about 500 active-duty buglers, but more than 1,500 veterans die every day. Even the countless buglers at VFW and American Legion halls across the country can’t make up the difference.”
Sound Of The Universe
What do the heavens sound like? Music, report scientists – specifically a B flat — “a B flat 57 octaves lower than middle C. The ‘notes’ appear as pressure waves roiling and spreading as a result of outbursts from a supermassive black hole through a hot thin gas that fills the Perseus cluster of galaxies, 250 million light-years distant. They are 30,000 light-years across and have a period of oscillation of 10 million years. By comparison, the deepest, lowest notes that humans can hear have a period of about one-twentieth of a second.”
Why We Got Rhythm
“Music is still a mystery, a tangle of culture and built-in skills that researchers are trying to tease apart. No one really knows why music is found in all cultures, why most known systems of music are based on the octave, why some people have absolute pitch and whether the brain handles music with special neural circuits or with ones developed for other purposes. Recent research, however, has produced a number of theories about the brain and music.”
70 Cultural Groups Propose Homes At Ground Zero
More than 70 cultural groups have proposed setting up homes in the World Trade Center project. “The development corporation has not set a date by which a decision would be made. Site plans include a museum, a performing arts center and smaller cultural spaces. The proposals will be evaluated by the corporation, the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs and the New York State Council on the Arts.”
Philly Orchestra Raises $76 Million
The Philadelphia Orchestra confirms a $50 million gift and another $26 million raised towards an endowmwnt. “Leonore Annenberg, the widow of philanthropist Walter H. Annenberg, has pledged $50 million to the ensemble, orchestra leaders acknowledged. The gift, first reported in The Inquirer two weeks ago, is believed by orchestra administrators to be the second largest ever made to an American orchestra. Also yesterday, the orchestra announced that it had gathered an additional $26 million in pledges to its endowment campaign, whose goal is $125 million. Orchestra officials said the new money would give the ensemble the resources to make its ambitions, often hobbled by financial ills, into reality.”