“The 2006 Biennial will have a title for the first time, ‘Day for night’, which the curators believe sums up a dark mood in contemporary culture. They say that many of the works that will be included in the show reflect a sense of foreboding, dread or anxiety which emerged as a recognisable theme from the hundreds of artist studios they visited.”
Tag: 11.30.05
Voices Of Poetry
“Historic recordings of poets such as Tennyson, Yeats, Kipling, Betjeman and Sassoon are being made available through a new online initiative. The Poetry Archive also aims to ensure current leading English-speaking poets are recorded reading their own work for future generations. The free archive has been created by UK Poet Laureate Andrew Motion and recording producer Richard Carrington.”
Troubled Times For Tate?
“These are troubled times for the Tate. Behind the scenes, the critically-acclaimed series of 13 paintings, said to be Ofili’s take on the Last Supper, is at the centre of a row that has engulfed some of the biggest names in Britain’s artistic establishment. At the heart of the affair is the fact that, when The Upper Room was purchased from him for £705,000 earlier this year, Ofili was himself a Tate trustee. This, critics say, represents a major conflict of interest. The matter is so serious that, last week, the Department for Culture, Media and Sport said it will investigate.”
Pinter Pulls Out Of Nobel Ceremony
Playwright Harold Pinter has pulled out of giving a speech at his Nobel ceremony. “The Nobel Foundation said a lecture pre-recorded by Pinter will be shown on a big screen at their Stockholm academy on 7 December. The British playwright, 75, has been treated for cancer in recent years.”
Whitney Biennial Goes Global
“For 70 years, the sprawling Whitney Biennial exhibition of contemporary art has prided itself on its insistence on an American point of view. But as times and tastes change and art world boundaries dissolve, the 2006 biennial’s two foreign-born curators have ventured across the Atlantic. Not content with just recording what’s happening in contemporary art around the United States, the curators have scoured artists’ studios in art capitals like Milan, London, Paris and Berlin, a first for Whitney Biennial curators… Given the proliferation of large art fairs all over the world and the speed by which images travel across the Internet, the curators said they wanted to make this biennial something more than a rambling show of new art.”
Beloved Children’s Author Dies
“Stan Berenstain, who with his wife, Jan, churned out more than 250 books showing how the warm and fuzzy Berenstain Bears – Mama, Papa, Brother and Sister – confronted and learned from life’s little crises, died on Saturday in Doylestown, Pa. He was 82.”
Haven’t Made It Big As A Pianist? (Invest In Yourself)
“At the make it now or never age of 33, Simone Dinnerstein is among the numerous talented classical concert artists who are learning the realities of creating a career without the cachet of being a child prodigy or major competition winner. That means raising funds herself for recordings and concerts. Having begun a successful series of concerts playing J.S. Bach’s 80-minute keyboard Everest, the Goldberg Variations, in Philadelphia in December 2002, she financed her own recording of the piece in February to circulate among the music industry (it has been featured on XM satellite radio).” She followed that up with a recital at Carnegie Hall…”
Decoding The Podsphere
Podcasting, being the ultimate DIY technology, is a bit scattershot at the moment. Competence mixes with incompetence, and it’s fairly difficult to distinguish the good from the bad without downloading and listening to everything you find. But “two new search engines offer to do for podcasting what Technorati does for blogs by letting users search podcasts by keyword to single out audio that suits their interests. Podzinger and blinkx scour audio content for keywords by translating the audio into text and creating an index for quick searching.”
The Self-Made Virtuoso
The trouble with being a solo musician is that your career is frequently at the mercy of other people’s priorities, whether they be agents, orchestra managers, or whomever. Rarely does a promising young soloist have the time (or the will) to fully manage her/his own career, and the result is a descent into an exhausting and unfriendly world of bookings, recording gigs, and an endless search for more recognition. But as 26-year-old British violinist Jack Liebeck is showing, there is a way to skirt the “usual” process and emerge with both a healthy career and an intact psyche – just do everything yourself.
Rostropovich Walks Out On Bolshoi
Mstislav Rostropovich has pulled out of the Bolshoi Opera’s world premiere production of the Prokofiev opera, War & Peace, after becoming frustrated with the lack of professionalism at the company. The cellist and conductor had reportedly clashed with Bolshoi management, and was further upset by singers he found to be unprepared, and by an orchestra that featured a continually revolving roster of musicians. The production was to have marked Rostropovich’s return to Moscow’s musical fold, seven years after his last performance there met with unfavorable reviews.