You Can’t Fight The Studio

Everyone in Hollywood hates the cold, corporate, impersonal studio system, and many imagine that if only one could get past the egos, the greed, and the dreaded process, there must be a better way to get a film distributed. But those who try an alternative route are often in for a hard lesson in just why things are the way they are.

You Mean Writing A Symphony Is Harder Than Singing A 3-Minute Song?

Let’s face facts: “classical” works written by ambitious pop stars always suck. Always. Likewise, attempts by pop singers, no matter how talented in their field, to tackle Schumann lieder (Streisand) and classic English lute music (Sting), nearly always end in disaster. But why? It’s pretty simple (and depressing), actually. “Many rock musicians can’t read music and have what strikes most classical musicians as rather a loose conception of authorship, relying on amanuenses to transform vague ideas into detailed life.”

Pickets vs. Pirouettes In Atlanta

The musicians who work the pit at Atlanta Ballet will be marking the opening of the 2006-07 season with picket signs. The company disbanded the orchestra in August, preferring recorded music to the cost of maintaining a house band. The musicians have filed an unfair labor practices claim, and plan to protest at the ballet’s performances this week.

Whose 5th Is It Anyway?

Beethoven’s 5th is arguably the most well-known work of classical music in the world. But it’s also probably the work most messed with by conductors. “Some prefer the electricity of [John Eliot] Gardiner, some the grandeur of [Fritz] Reiner and some the nobility of George Szell, still others the compelling manipulation of conductors who interpret the score as if they had composed it themselves, such as Carlos Kleiber.”

Funding Up, But So Is Confusion

San Antonio is devoting more money to the arts than at any time in recent years, but “the people in charge of the money are complaining about a confusing process that might not be fair to everyone… Board members questioned the fairness of a scoring method that was supposed to weigh the merits of each group. They also asked whether it was appropriate to give large grants to organizations that hadn’t received funding in the past, while at the same time less money was being given to groups with proven track records.”

Labor Strife In Dallas

“Two weeks before the Dallas Opera is to open its 50th-anniversary season with Verdi’s Nabucco, the opera company and its union orchestra don’t have a contract.” The company is seeking a 5-year deal (long by industry standards) that executives call “flexible” and the musicians call “regressive.”

A Sell-off Of German Museum Art?

“Cultural life in Germany would almost certainly be more vital with a smaller, better capitalised arts sector, but the path to it is unclear. So it is not surprising that in the combination of acute financial need and firmly local and regional political oversight, the issue of deaccessioning is cropping up in fairly primitive forms.”

K-W Symphony Makes Payroll

The Kitchener-Waterloo Symphony saga took a turn for the better yesterday, when the beleagured Ontario orchestra announced that it had raised enough money to make this week’s musicians’ payroll. The musicians also voted to agree to a 15% pay cut for the current season, and the symphony has less than a million dollars to go to meet its goal of bringing in CAN$2.5m by month’s end.

Victoria And Albert Considers Rentals

The Victoria & Albert Museum is considering renting out paintings it doesn’t have room to show. “The V&A has 2,000 oil paintings, which makes it the country’s third largest collection. The difficulty, however, is that there is only space to show 170 oil paintings in its refurbished picture galleries, which were opened three years ago. A further 180 are on show in other galleries.”