Nonesuch Records has always been an anomaly in the world of the American recording industry. More than merely a collection of artists, this label actually inspires loyalty in its customers, many of whom will go out of their way to purchase a Nonesuch album, sure that their money will not be wasted. Indeed, the “tiny, vigorously eclectic label… has become a kind of American cultural institution. It has an influence far out of proportion to its size, and some think it could be a guidepost for a record industry in desperate need of direction.”
Tag: 10.03.04
The New, Non-Linear MoMA
As New York’s Museum of Modern Art looks towards the November opening of its new $858 million Manhattan home, it faces a defining moment in its history, and a moment in which it hopes to abandon the linear way in which its collection has always been strictly organized. “Defined for so long as the arbiter and guardian of progressive art, MOMA reopens… at a time when even its own curators no longer believe that art progresses like science. Narratives overlap and intertwine; instead of one big story, there are many competing stories… But complexity too often leads to incoherence. Can MOMA, the most influential voice in the modern-art establishment, still tell the story of 20th-century art in a convincing way?”
Too Many Movies?
There are a lot of movies being made these days. Perhaps too many. “Each year, as more of them arrive in American theaters – and as an even greater number are left behind to wander the festival circuit in perpetuity – the conditions they face become more starkly Darwinian.” Brilliant films are in ever greater danger of being lost in the crowd, and lowest-common-denominator dreck will always win out if there is Hollywood money behind it. “There may be more variety, more creativity and more money in movies than ever before, but is there a tipping point at which more becomes too much?”
A New View Of China
“Though the study of Chinese art still focuses [mainly] on court life, it has broadened to include the lives of ordinary citizens. These revisions largely come from archaeology of the last hundred years, and particularly of the last three decades… Archaeology has upset and confounded the traditional linear narrative with discoveries that no one could have anticipated. What we call China is revealed as a complex world more culturally diverse, more multiethnic than previously imagined. Archaeological discoveries are redefining what it means to be Chinese.”
Choosing Quality Over Clout
The Chicago International Film Festival turns 40 this year, and in its middle age, it has settled nicely into its role in the film world. The Chicago Fest is not a big event on Hollywood’s calendar, but the organizers have long since come to grips with that fact and, rather than begging for world premieres and striving for recognition from the big studios, “the Chicago event began concentrating more on showing quality films no matter whether they’d screened elsewhere.”
Bolshoi Reborn? Getting There, Anyway.
Russia’s Bolshoi Ballet hasn’t been looking like itself for the last decade or so. “The footwork lacked precision. The jetes drooped like steamed celery. Dancers’ feet bobbled more landings than the Olympic gymnasts this summer. Dancers depicting young lovers looked bored and in need of couple’s counseling.” But now, with a bold new artistic director in place, things are looking up, and a $350 million renovation is pending at the Bolshoi’s home theatre in Moscow. Still, change is a process, and there’s no question that the Bolshoi is still a fair distance from reattaining its former glory.
Bernstein: The Man & The Music
Leonard Bernstein’s legacy looms large over the American musical landscape. Not only a revered composer and conductor, Bernstein is also justly famous for having been one of the few individuals able to connect children to serious music in an age when pop culture had begun to dominate the cultural sphere. A new radio documentary series examining Bernstein’s role in American culture begins this week, and “after some throat-clearing about the nature of Bernstein’s genius, the show becomes suddenly addictive. The radio format does what no biography can: superimpose the voices against a torrential background of music, most of it as jaunty, optimistic, vigorous and full of bravado as Bernstein was himself.”
Roth’s Lindbergh Forcing Midwest Soul-Searching
In Philip Roth’s latest novel, aviator and Nazi sympathizer Charles Lindbergh defeats FDR for the U.S. presidency, and a nightmare scenario of American anti-Semitism unfolds. It’s fiction, of course, but the Lindbergh character is based on a very real human being, and the book is raising eyebrows in his home state of Minnesota. Lindbergh is held up as a local hero in Minnesota – the airport is even named after him – and many locals aren’t keen to be reminded of the more sordid details of his life. But the book is providing an opportunity for the state to reexamine its own prejudices, and its devotion to a man who was not always what he seemed.
Ducking Responsibility
Philip Roth’s decision to write a fable of American politics and hate was less about surface prejudice than it was about every human being’s capacity to ignore the suffering of others. “The deepest reward in the writing and what lends the story its pathos wasn’t the resurrection of my family circa 1941 but the invention of the family downstairs, of the tragic Wishnows, on whom the full brunt of the anti-Semitism falls – the invention particularly of the Wishnows’ little boy, Seldon, that nice, lonely little kid in your class whom you run away from when you’re yourself a kid because he demands to be befriended by you in ways that another child cannot stand. He’s the responsibility that you can’t get rid of.”
People Will Listen, If You Teach Them How
The newly rekindled San Antonio Symphony held an outdoor concert last week aimed at the city’s Hispanic population, and (almost) nobody came. Yes, it was a broiling-hot day, but Mike Greenberg suggests that the SAS may be trying to attract new audience members without making a real commitment to the most basic audience-building technique. “A Mexican American doesn’t have to make any more of a cultural ‘leap’ to the symphony than does a German or Polish or Italian American… [But] to build an audience for the long term, the symphony needs to take a long-term view of its educational and outreach missions, and I don’t think it’s done that very well.”