For the first time ever, all the artists on Billboard’s Top Ten chart are African-American. “Nine of the ten are rappers, plus one track by R&B singer Beyonce and reggae star Sean Paul.”
Tag: 10.06.03
Dali Gang Comes To Justice
A prison worker at New York’s Riker’s Island has admitted his role in stealing a Salvatore Dali sketch earlier this year. “Last week, a former assistant deputy warden admitted his role in the March 1 robbery at the Rikers Island jail and implicated his co-workers in the role-reversing rip-off. The plot’s alleged mastermind and the two other members of the ‘Dali gang’ are all due in court this month.”
Pavarotti: Just Call Me Teacher
Tenor Luciano Pavarotti says he’ll turn his attentions to teaching when he retires from singing in 2005: “I want to give something back to the younger generation. Teaching I think is the most difficult thing; teaching is more difficult than singing. Why? Because you have to transfer a thought from your brain to the brain of the other person and the throat of the other person. I want to teach people who really are good,”
Aussie Stages – Buy Australian
Is there too much American theatre on Australian stages? “Australians should get out and see their own stories told on stage, says Playbox Theatre artistic director Aubrey Mellor. He argues that cultural cringe is alive and well and that we know more American and British history than our own.”
Carnegie Establishes Education Center
Carnegie Hall gets a $24.7 million gift to extablish a music education center. It is the largest single donation in the hall’s history. “We think we can make a difference in music education. When you think about how audiences are declining, or you go to concerts and see the age of the audience, you’re looking at a major void.”
The Biennale Of Florence – Tangled In Paperwork
“When the first Florence Biennale was held, more than 40 years ago, it was a trailblazer for the international art market, attracting scores of foreign dealers, 120,000 paying visitors and another 40,000 invited guests. But in the decades that followed, it lost ground to rivals as the Paris Biennale established a reputation for chic glitz and the small Dutch town of Maastricht attracted the world’s most important dealers, collectors and curators to its art fair.” Italy’s draconian art export laws are so tough, they have played havoc with the biennale.
Elevating Elgar
Edward Elgar was so revered in his home country England that his picture adorns the back of the £20 note. “Yet a recent YouGov poll found that three-quarters of British adults were unable to recognise his portrait on the back of theirs. They were more likely to say the man with the droopy moustache was the imperialist Lord Kitchener than England’s greatest home-grown composer since Henry Purcell.” A new initiative aims to raise Elgar’s profile.
Fighting The American Cultural Juggernaut
A new free-trade agreement between the U.S. and Australia threatens to devastate Australia’s cultural and film industries, according to union activists there. At issue is whether Australia will be able to maintain its own cultural identity if a flood of American films, television shows, and other items of mass culture are allowed to hit the open market unrestricted by local content restrictions.