The new managing director of the Berlin Philharmonic says that she wants to give the atmosphere surrounding the orchestra a new energy, and to broaden the Phil’s target audience. Pamela Rosenberg, who came to Berlin from the San Francisco Opera, says that it isn’t about selling tickets (the Phil sells out most of its concerts, anyway) but about using what many consider to be the greatest orchestra in the world to promote classical music to the wide swath of the public to which it has no meaning.
Tag: 12.01.06
Final Act
An international scam attempting to prey on AIDS victims with hopes for a cure was foiled this week when the film actor the scammers had hoped would endorse their product instead smelled a rat and turned them in to the BBC. “The project planned to inject 40 AIDS victims with the serum and depriving them of anti-retroviral drugs.”
A Rockwell Record, With A Hopper To Match
“A beloved Norman Rockwell painting that was discovered behind a false wall in a Vermont home last spring sold yesterday at Sotheby’s for $15.4 million, a record price for the artist at auction… It was not the only record of the day. ‘Hotel Window,’ a 1955 painting by Edward Hopper owned by the actor Steve Martin, which depicts a woman sitting in an empty hotel lobby, brought $26.8 million.”
Indies Gearing Up For An Eclectic Sundance
The Sundance Film Festival is less than two months away, and the lineup is looking more than slightly eclectic. “Five dramas made by American directors were shot with characters speaking mainly in Spanish, Hindi, Korean, Portuguese or Muskogee, an American Indian language… Sexual oddities and sexual abuse, the ravages of war, the challenges of immigration, human disabilities and the writer’s life: all will be recurring themes.”
Celebrating Your Surroundings, No Matter How Bleak
It’s not easy promoting high culture in a city like Detroit, where urban blight is a far more common sight than public art. So for the architecture of the new Museum of Contemporary Art Detroit, organizers decided that they needed to embrace the city they hoped would be embracing it. “Housed in an abandoned car dealership on a barren strip of Woodward Avenue, it fits loosely into a decades-long effort to restore energy to an area that was abandoned during the white flight of the 1970s. But the design springs from a profound rethinking of what constitutes urban revitalization.”
Judging By His History, We’re Sure It’s Quite Tasteful
“Banksy, the anarchic graffiti artist, has poked fun at Michael Jackson, the pop star who faced child abuse charges, by featuring him in a drawing inspired by Hansel and Gretel… Jackson is seen trying to coax a little girl and a boy with a sweet in one of four works displayed in Santa’s Ghetto, an amusement arcade that opens in Central London today.”
Can Australia Keep Up The Good Work?
Some Australian critics are pinching themselves to see if the high quality of the current crop of homegrown films can possibly be real. But even as film buffs celebrate a golden year of Down Under moviemaking, many look at the past as evidence that the good times won’t last. “The one thing the Australian industry has never been very good at – and which drives film critics even nuttier than they usually are – is consistency.”
Chicago Back On The Air And In The Studio
“After more than five years, the Chicago Symphony Orchestra will return to the national radio airwaves early next year as part of a comprehensive new media agreement that includes the launch of a new in-house recording label for compact discs and digital downloads, it was announced Thursday… The series will comprise 39 weekly programs, with interviews and special features augmenting the taped performances.”