That would be Bang on a Can’s Julia Wolfe, whose latest album has works for four drum sets, six pianists, eight double basses, and nine bagpipers. She’s written an accordion concerto and a piece for musicians in pedicabs. “The last time I did something practical … was [in graduate school] at Yale – I wrote a woodwind quintet.”
Tag: 11.15.09
Atlanta Troupe Synchronicity Cancels Remainder of Season
Synchronicity Performance Group planned an extremely tight budget for 2009-10, and the company couldn’t sustain the loss it took on its children’s play Bunnicula, about a vampire rabbit. “As a result, Synchronicity has cancelled the last two shows of its season: Sarah Ruhl’s Dead Man’s Cell Phone and The Brand New Kid, a family show.”
Germans, Having Wanted Out, Want Back In On Google Books Deal
“German book publishers – angered at being included in the Google Books Settlement without being consulted – voiced concern Sunday that they had now been excluded.”
Beneath Buzz Over Huge New Film Studio, A Financial Mess
A “former head of Paramount Motion Pictures certainly sounded like the right man to build a huge movie and TV studio in Massachusetts,” but his $650 million plan for “14 sound stages and a virtual entertainment city in the woods of Plymouth” has been “marred by over-the-top claims, broken promises, legal infighting, and the chronic lack of one crucial ingredient: money.”
New Museum’s Joannou Show Will Be A Win For Audiences
The sermonizing over the New Museum’s upcoming show of a trustee’s collection is a bit much, Jerry Saltz writes. “I like that the art world isn’t regulated. I have seen [Dakis] Joannou’s collection, and it is incredible. And despite the way it looks, I think in the end the whole deal is for the best–given the state of the art world.”
A Wacky Public Access TV Art Show Revived On The Web
“Because the Beatsters, as Paul H-O calls them, usually arrived unannounced, dealers sometimes kicked them out — which made for great footage — and those who didn’t spent the evening on tenterhooks.”
Growing Pains – Working To Keep Opera Relevant In UK
“ITV1 is currently working on a new show following celebrities as they train to become opera singers. We’ll find out who will be hitting (or not as the case may be) the high notes next year.”
Britain’s Regional Theatres See New Creativity
The story of regional theatre in recent years has been bleak, with some of Britain’s oldest venues facing closure. But a new crop of creative directors are making local heroes of themselves.
The Trouble With Typefaces
“It’s always a pleasure to discover a formally gorgeous, subtly expressive typeface while walking along a street or leafing through a magazine. But that joy is swiftly obliterated by the sight of a typographic howler. It’s like having a heightened sense of smell. You spend much more of your time wincing at noxious stinks, than reveling in delightful aromas.”
In Concert, Bands Recreate Their CDs (Why?)
“This trend isn’t just exhausted, it feels like a cruel perversion of a concert’s real-time magic. Live music might be the last bastion of unpredictability in today’s hypercurated mediascape: a fleeting opportunity to experience something unfiltered, spontaneous and really real. Instead, we’re paying to see our greatest living, breathing, sweating, bleeding rock stars behave like iPods. And with no “shuffle” function!”