“Rock’s share of overall music sales has remained steady at about 20 percent of the market, according to Nielsen SoundScan. But on the radio, rock’s numbers — both in audience share and in number of stations — are on the decline, in part because rock fans are moving to the Internet and satellite radio for their music and in part because the rock audience doesn’t spend nearly as much time listening to radio as do audiences for black and Hispanic music.”
Tag: 11.27.05
Punk Ballerina Returns
“Karole Armitage was part of the city’s cultural zeitgeist in the 1980’s – she had a high-profile relationship with the artist David Salle (with whom she still collaborates) and choreographed for Michael Jackson and Madonna on the side. But by 1989, she was fed up trying to carve out an artistic life in the increasingly mass-market environment of New York.”
Now she’s back…
Who Will Succeed “The Most Powerful Man On Broadway”?
Gerald Schoenfeld is by most accounts “the most powerful person in American theater. A round, wryly funny man whose formal manner seems held over from another era, Mr. Schoenfeld is the chairman of the Shubert Organization, the largest Broadway theater chain. He took over sole leadership of the organization in 1996, when Bernard B. Jacobs, its president, died at the age of 80. Now that Mr. Schoenfeld is in his 10th year in that role and his ninth decade on the planet, his succession and what it means for Broadway remains a dominant mystery in an industry famed for its uncertainties.”
Now Playing The Jazz Laptop…
“Whether operating the computer themselves or engaging technicians to help them program it, today’s most visionary jazz artists have embraced laptops, Apple PowerBooks and other computer technologies, thereby redefining the sound of jazz in the 21st Century.”
Recording Companies Want To Use Anti-Terror Laws To Catch Downloaders
“Big firms including Sony and EMI want to use new powers designed to track terrorists on the internet to crack down on music and film pirates – including the parents of children who download music – who are estimated to cost the industry £650m a year. Internet companies will have to log all the pages visited by surfers for at least a year so the security services can track terrorists using the web for fund-raising, training or swapping information. But the move has been greeted with alarm by human rights campaigners who say that the step is an example of the ‘mission creep’ of draconian new anti-terror powers.”
Museums – Looking For Permanent Solutions
“Museums have taken great efforts to tend and build their permanent collections. Most own far more art than they could ever show at any given time. And yet these treasures hardly matter to a generation of art lovers reared on temporary exhibitions. Museums are looking for remedies. Not many have done what the Hirshhorn has done — put the entire exhibition schedule on pause, focusing solely on the permanent collection. A good number, however, are returning our attention to the great art they own.”
Is Literature Dying?
That’s what two elder statesmen of American literature claim. Literature is dying. Novels will become “a footnote to our technological and advertising age,” warned Norman Mailer. “Literature is an endangered species,” intoned Lawrence Ferlinghetti. But is it?
Making It Big As A Small Orchestra
“About 600 professional orchestras now operate in the United States, according to a new study done at the University of Cincinnati. That would seem to be an astounding figure for an art form many industry experts predicted would be extinct by now. A higher percentage of smaller orchestras are operating with balanced budgets than the larger orchestras. The bigger orchestra’s cost structure is more rigid; the small orchestras are much more flexible. They can adjust to financial difficulties much more quickly.”
Lost In The Middle Of The Pacific
Orange County California’s Pacific Opera and Pacific Symphony have a problem. “Now in its 20th season, Opera Pacific, which produces opera locally, is suffering from something of an identity crisis, and the financial woes that result. Seems that a relatively high percentage of people don’t know that we have our own opera company here behind that Orange Curtain. The Pacific Symphony has discovered the same thing. In a survey taken several years ago, the orchestra found that only 10 percent could name the group as resident here, and only 5 percent knew the name of its music director, Carl St.Clair.”
Earl Wild At 90
The pianist celebrates his birthday with a recital at Carnegie Hall. “That Mr. Wild can still play beautifully was clear during his recital in July at the Mannes College of Music. He was coming off quadruple-bypass surgery and operations on both eyes, and he needed a steadying hand to mount the steps to the stage. But once seated before his piano, he played through demanding works by Beethoven, Liszt and Chopin without so much as unbuttoning his sky-blue sport coat. Some of his passagework was sketchy, and he had lost some of his rhythmic bite. But his pianism still had plenty of verve, fluidity and grace.”