The Emmy Awards telecast is coming up this weekend, and from all reports it ought to be one entertaining evening, with the multiple stars of Desperate Housewives battling each other in the same category. But in the wake of Hurricane Katrina, and with Americans demonstrating a decided fatigue with the culture of self-congratulatory celebrity, will anyone be watching? “Last fall, the Emmy telecast suffered the second-lowest ratings in history. Then the Golden Globe Awards, the People’s Choice Awards and the Grammy Awards were all clobbered in the ratings by original episodes of Housewives, which aired opposite each of the ceremonies.”
Tag: 09.16.05
Daytime Emmys Moving West
The Daytime Emmy Awards are moving to L.A. for 2006, marking the first time the telecast will originate from a city other than New York. Another change: the nominees for the awards, which honor game shows, soap operas, and other tripe, will now be announced on ABC’s The View, which is, of course, eligible for Daytime Emmys itself.
Stolen Rembrandt Recovered
“A self-portrait by Rembrandt has been recovered by Danish police, nearly five years after it was stolen in a daring raid on Sweden’s National Museum. It was retrieved on Thursday during an operation at a Copenhagen hotel that resulted in the arrest of four people… The artwork – which was reportedly undamaged and still in its original frame – is worth an estimated £34m.”
Rich New Deal For L.A. Phil
The Los Angeles Philharmonic has a new contract with its musicians which will make it the highest-paying orchestra in the U.S. in the deal’s final year. The ensemble, which currently has a minimum salary of $2025 per week, will get a better than 20% raise by 2009, eventually reaching an annual salary in excess of $127,000. “Among other provisions, the contract includes measures to streamline the Philharmonic’s auditioning, hiring and vesting processes; allows for free local radio broadcasts; reduces the orchestra by two players (through attrition); redesigns the musicians’ healthcare plan; and calls for the members to donate three concerts to help finance pension costs and raise money for the orchestra’s endowment fund.”
Kahane In Colorado
Jeffrey Kahane debuts this week as the Colorado Symphony’s new music director, succeeding Marin Alsop, and he has big plans for the ensemble. “He envisions the orchestra in four or more years playing in New York’s Carnegie Hall and perhaps even touring to Europe or South America.” Kahane is also promoting a “chamber music style” of music-making in which he and the musicians work as colleagues, rather than a conductor simply barking orders from on high. In that vein, he will conduct several concerts this season while seated at a piano keyboard, playing a concerto while leading the orchestra.
Apparently, It’s True: There Are No Good Conductors
The prestigious International Sibelius Conductors’ Competition, held every five years in Helsinki, has ended with the jury declining to award a prize to any of the three finalists. Conductor Esa-Pekka Salonen, speaking for the judges, declared the level of competition to be “disappointing,” and further announced to the audience that “not one finalist conducted the symphony by Sibelius in a way that would entitle him to any of the first three prizes.” The jury awarded each of the finalists a lesser prize instead, but the competition’s chairman was clearly displeased by the decision.
Sheffield’s Man On A Mission
London’s Sheffield Theatres has a new artistic director, and while Samuel West is best known for his boyish good looks and serious acting chops, but it may be his fierce commitment to cutting-edge interpretation of classic theatre, as well as his leftist politics, that speak the loudest in his new career. “Even if we’re unlikely to see West in the pages of Hello magazine, he is self-evidently a man with a mission: a Botticelli cherub with balls.”
Can A Single Painting Do More Than A Whole Exhibition?
Not every museum can afford to bring in the so-called blockbuster shows that have increasingly come to be the financial backbone of the visual arts industry, but smaller institutions do have another option for drawing a crowd: a single, spectacular, and (most importantly) high-profile work borrowed or bought to get bodies in the door. These “destination pictures” not only serve as a draw unto themselves, but unlike a blockbuster show, they sit well in the midst of the museum’s larger collection, inviting patrons to experience all the museum has to offer.
Inviting Shaw Back Into The Room
It’s been 55 years since Irish-born playwright George Bernard Shaw died, but the mark he left on theater and society as a whole has scarcely begun to fade. Shaw, “whose exceptionally long and fecund career as a center of London theatrical and political life is being celebrated beginning tomorrow in a festival of talks, readings and performances at the New York Public Library, titled ‘Man or Superman?'”, was also a particular enigma for fans and detractors alike. “Shaw was cutting a calculated, irresistibly dangerous figure as a firebrand critic, polemicist and soapbox orator long before his plays were first produced in London. It was a fire-breathing persona, stoked over seven decades, that expected, nay demanded, to be caricatured.”
Or Maybe It’ll Just Mean More Unwanted Phone Noise
For those who have been wondering what the big deal is about Apple’s new iPod/phone hybrid, and even more for those who have become more than a little resentful about the whole iPod phenomenon, here’s a pleasant thought: the MP3-playing phones, which come with powerful built-in speakers, may just have the potential to jerk us back into a reality in which music is meant for sharing with others. If the basic iPods “suggest that music is a solitary experience, comprised solely of plugging into your own greatest hits,” the phone version allows for the possibility that music “can once again be something that is not just the soundtrack to your own little world, but which you enjoy with other people.”