Tag: 10.09.03

Music As Diplomacy

Relations between Canada and the U.S. have been a bit frosty ever since the American invasion of Iraq last spring, and the usual diplomatic channels don’t seem to be having much of an effect on an increasing divide between the two populaces. So the Canadian Department of Foreign Affairs is writing a $250,000 check to underwrite a two-week U.S. tour of the Ottawa-based National Arts Center Orchestra. “It might not repair the relationship between George W. Bush and Jean Chrétien, who are as chummy as two scorpions can be. But it will put Canada in the newspapers for a couple of weeks in a way the politicians can’t. If it’s an attempt to buy some good will, so be it.”

Atlantic SE Ballet Folds, Lawsuits To Follow

A bizarre situation is unfolding in Charleston, South Carolina, where a newly formed ballet company has folded unexpectedly, and its CEO has apparently skipped town, leaving unpaid bills and furious dancers and musicians in his wake. The Atlantic Southeast Ballet Company was founded 18 months ago, but performed only once in September 2003 before a financial crisis began to rear its head. “About noon Wednesday, Gordon Crowder, the artistic director and CEO of the nonprofit ballet company, left a message on the answering machine of the ballet orchestra’s conductor. The message said Crowder and his wife, Susanne Crowder-Puerschel, who is associate director of the ballet, ‘have no money and have gone on a little vacation.'”

But Will Anyone Use It?

Napster is back, and it’s legal this time. The embattles song-swapping service was shut down last year after the recording industry filed multiple lawsuits alleging copyright violation. The new Napster is owned by media company Roxio, which had no connection to the original service, and which is hoping that the notoriety of the Napster name will help it cash in on the growing consumer base desiring legal downloading options.

Cross-Gender Confusion

Cross-arts collaborations are all the rage in London. “Collaborations at their best can be energising creative moments produced by artists headed in unexpected new directions; about extraordinary melting pots of ideas. Or they can be a disaster, like the Steve McQueen and Jessye Norman encounter. They should also be undertaken with enormous care. Hitherto, there have been a few certainties about the capital’s artistic life: the Wigmore was the home of chamber music and song; the ENO was the home of opera in English; Sadler’s Wells was the home of modern dance. One might have found those certainties deadening or dull, but at least it was clear what those organisations were for. There’s a problem with mixing it all up: you can get all mixed up.”

Royal Shakespeare Homeless In Capital

The Royal Shakespeare Company is running out of time. If the company can’t find a theatre by the end of the week, it will be the first time in 40 years the RSC hasn’t performed a season in London. “If, as seems likely, that deadline passes without a result, it will be the first time in the RSC’s history that its Stratford season has failed to transfer to the capital. As so often happens with the Bard, tragedy has followed farce: the RSC’s disastrous decision to quit its long-standing London home at the Barbican is blamed for its embarrassing predicament.”

A Librarian With Her Own Action Figure

Is Nancy Pearl America’s most famous librarian? “Ms. Pearl’s fame has its roots in the most elementary function of the librarian: pressing a book into a patron’s hands and saying, ‘Read this.’ She fills many roles, but in each of them Ms. Pearl returns to the same transaction. At the Washington Center for the Book, part of the Seattle Public Library and a sponsor of author readings and events, she oversaw the ‘If All Seattle Read the Same Book’ program, which is essentially one gigantic book recommendation. (The program has since been tried by other cities, including New York and Chicago.)”