Frank Rich on Negative Campaigning: Nuke 'em

LBJ "Daisy" ad clip from 1964

New York Magazine's Writer-at-Large, Frank Rich, hurls another molotov of political commentary this week, taking a look at negative campaigning in the upcoming presidential election and its recent predecessors: Frank Rich. Read Nuke 'Em.


Frank Rich appears with Fran Lebowitz on Wednesday, October 10 at Sanders Theatre in Cambridge.

"Tweet This?" panel discussion January 30

This just in from colleague Adam Roberts of Arts in America (ok, I added the bird):

"Tweet This?"
At select theatres and concert halls around the country you can now tweet from your seat as Carmen belts out an aria or Macbeth sees a dagger before him. Join us for an interactive community forum exploring the question of whether social media should have a seat at our performances or if it should exit stage left. Featuring a lively panel, audience Q&A (in-person and via skype), and a performance of the event's tweets by the Twitter Theatre Troupe.

Monday, January 30, 7:30pm

Admission is free but seating is limited. RSVP at http://kwiksurveys.com/?u=TweetThis .

Central Square Theater
450 Massachusetts Avenue, Cambridge

Host: Adam Roberts

Panelists:
Julie Hennrikus (StageSource)
Robin Abrahams (Boston Globe's "Miss Conduct")
Matt Heck (Boston Symphony Orchestra)
Nick Peterson (Central Square Theater)
Art Hennessey (The Mirror Up to Nature)

Join us in-person or call in via skype (id: artsinamerica) to participate in the conversation. The forum will be recorded and broadcast on Livestream.

Arts in America is an arts media company moving the needle forward on how America makes, produces, consumes, and talks about the arts.

Adam Roberts
Founder/Executive Producer
Arts in America
aroberts@artsinamerica.org

http://artsinamerica.org/
http://facebook.com/artsinamerica
twitter: @artsinamerica
skype: artsinamerica

Twitter in the house?

Cincinnati Symphony is making headlines with a new Tweet seats option at selected concerts. Check out this article from the Cincinnati Inquirer:

Symphony is tweet music to their ears

I can't say I think much of the headline (that groan you heard from across town was me) but the idea is one worth watching in this wags eyes ...

What do you think?

 

Celebrity Series of Boston: part of lo-fi movement or strictly digital?

Analog/digital, lo-fi/hi-fi, old/new; the analog, the old school, has gone underground, so says the Chicago Tribune. Adherents to technologies of the past such as cassette tapes, buttons, first generation video games, printed magazines and vinyl records are a persistent underground movement, one that favors the physical and the tactile over the digital. As Christopher Borelli of The Chicago Tribune writes:

"They are the Chicago Lo-Fi Resistance. They are not an organized group, or a collective of practicing luddites, or an especially underground insurrection. But the name fits: How else to describe a loose cadre of antiquarians doing their part to resist that hurtling pace of our digital existence?

Ask them why, and you get a flood of reasons: Nostalgia, politics, quality. They do not share a hive (analog) mind – each has his or her reasons. In fact, if they share anything, it's this: A desire for a more tactile world."

Click here to read the rest of Christopher Borelli's article.

...and while you are reading ask yourself, "Is the Celebrity Series of Boston part of this movement?" It seems to me there are arguments for and against: we have been doing this for over 70 years (we are older than, say, Atari); we present scads of live performances (the original musical medium, pretty tactile stuff); we celebrate musical forms of the past and the distant past. On the other hand we are current, we have a web site (and a blog, ahem); we are Twitterers; we are implementing a state of the art computer-based ticketing system; and things are generally "going digital" in our workplace. So which is it?

LA Times: "The arts see encouraging news in NEA survey"

Wagner and Bud Light 

The NEA's 2008 Survey of Public Participation in the Arts has generated a variety of responses, but has mostly been perceived as yet another version of the "arts in crisis" message. The Los Angeles Times dug a little deeper into the report and found another point worth emphasizing: the arts are not alone...

"The NEA's Survey of Public Participation in the Arts, conducted in May
2008 (before the current economic downturn), reported that 34.6% of
adults had gone at least once in the previous 12 months to an art
museum or seen a play, jazz performance, classical concert, opera or
dance -- the lowest percentage in a quarter century. Those who did
attend went less frequently, averaging about five times a year instead
of six. Only two arts categories -- musical theater and non-ballet
dance performances -- enjoyed attendance growth.

But a surprise in the survey is that, over the course of the last
quarter-century, the arts look like a bastion of stability compared
with other popular leisure activities in which masses of Americans
traditionally have invested time, money and the effort it takes to show
up in person and sit among strangers."

Read all of The arts see encouraging news in NEA survey.

Not exactly a "break open the champagne" kind of message, but it is a little comforting to know that the arts are in the same boat with some pretty big players in the battle to slay the couch-potato-ease-of-use-everything-at-our-fingertips-live-life-from-the-sofa dragon.

On the other hand, football attendees have to sit outside in the wintertime ...

Highlights from the NEA's 2008 Survey of Public Participation in the Arts.

The NEA 2008 Survey of Public Participation in the Arts (the whole magilla).

Berlin, Germany and the Celebrity Series

Several things have us meditating on Germany in general and Berlin in particular this season (no, not Berlin, New Hampshire, watch the video!). For one we are presenting a remarkable and somewhat coincidental array of German performers and works in 2009-2010. And many of them are indeed from Berlin. So, Bostonians, once you finish watching Berlin in 3-D, take a look at Germany coming to your own back yard:

1. The Berlin Philharmonic, conducted by Sir Simon Rattle, make their return visit to Symphony Hall within a week of the 20th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall. (November 15, Symphony Hall)

2. Violinist Christian Tetzlaff, though he was born in Hamburg and lives near Frankfurt, is certainly German. Tetzlaff will perform an unaccompanied violin recital that will feature works by J.S.  Bach, among others. (January 31, NEC’s Jordan Hall)

3. The Berlin Philharmonic Wind Quintet, as the name implies, is made up of first chair players from their venerable parent ensemble. The orchestra has been here before, of course, but this concert is the Wind Quintet's Boston debut. (February 5, NEC’s Jordan Hall)

4. Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra will play an all-Beethoven program under the baton of Maestro Riccardo Chailly and featuring Brazilian pianist Nelson Freire. (February 25, Symphony Hall)

5. The Berlin-based Artemis String Quartet makes its Boston debut with an all-Beethoven program (March 5, NEC’s Jordan Hall)

6. Max Raabe & Palast Orchester capture the elegant decadence of pre-war Berlin of the 1920s and 30s in a program called “A Night in Berlin.” (March 6, Paramount Theatre, 2 shows)

7. German-born bass-baritone Thomas Quasthoff, in addition to being a truly gifted singer and profound communicator, is also  a teacher at Berlin’s Hans Eisler School of Music. His May 2 recital will feature works by German composer Johannes Brahms, among others.(May 2, NEC's Jordan Hall)

The Laramie Project: Ten Years Later

Page for the Boston production at the Cutler Majestic Theatre, October 12, 2009

Emerson College Laramie Project blog

Judy Shepard on Ellen

Small Town Hall, Kids on Money

From the good people at Marketplace (American Public Media) comes Small Town Hall, videos of kids talking about money, saving, investing, recession and the deficit.

National Summit on Arts Journalism live feed, 10/2/09, 12pm-3pm

Live video by Ustream


The National Summit on Arts Journalism is taking place today at the USC Annenburg School for Communication. Their will be a live feed of the summit starting at 12pm today (10/2/09). Among the events featured will be two roundtable discussions about the art and business of arts journalism (see below).

1:25 pm
(EST) Roundtable: The Art of Arts Journalism

• Moderator: Laura Sydell, Reporter, NPR


• Guests: Jeff Chang, author and journalist; Seth Schiesel, Reporter, The New York Times

3:20 pm (EST) 
Roundtable: The Business of Arts Journalism

• Moderator: András Szántó, Director, NEA Institute in Classical Music


• Guests: Richard Gingras, CEO, Salon.com; Deborah Marrow, Director, The Getty Foundation

UPDATE: I made a classic mistake and posted the Pacific time start as the Eastern time start. This feed is scheduled to begin at noon today, EST. Anyone have a fork? I need to get started on my humble pie....

Greg Pierotti on 'Laramie Project' & interview with convicted killer McKinney

Actor-playwright Greg Pierotti talks about 'The Laramie Project: Ten Years Later' and his interview with convicted killer Aaron McKinney, the person responsible for the death of Matthew Shepard in 1998.

The Laramie Project: Ten Years Later ... An Epilogue will be performed in Boston (Cutler Majestic Theatre) and around the country on October 12.

Glenn Close to host The Laramie Project: Ten Years Later Pre-Show

Glenn Close

Actress Glenn Close will serve as host for the pre-show webcast for The Laramie Project: Ten Years Later ... An Epilogue, on October 12. Matthew Shepard's mother, Judy Shepard, will give the welcoming remarks and a post-production Q and A
moderated by National Public Radio Arts and Culture correspondent Neda
Ulabay.

Over 150 theaters will participate in the event on October 12, including, in Boston, a presentation by the Celebrity Series of Boston and Emerson College at the Cutler Majestic Theatre. Tickets are free, you can reserve yours on the Celebrity Series web site.

Emerson College Laramie Project blog

Tectonic Theater Project

Tickets now available for The Laramie Project, 10 Years Later ... An Epilogue

In June 2008, members of Tectonic Theater Project returned to Laramie, Wyoming to explore how the town had changed in the ten years since Matthew Shepard's murder.
What they found defied their expectations. The result is a new play about how we construct our own history.

This is the continuing story of an American Town.

Emerson College in association with the Celebrity Series of Boston presents The Tectonic Theatre Project in The Laramie Project, 10 Years Later...An Epilogue, by Moisés Kaufman, Leigh Fondakowski, Greg Pierotti, Andy Paris and Stephen Belber.

Join The Laramie Project Online Community.

Get more information or reserve your tickets for this free community event.

Individual tickets for our 2009-2010 season go on sale September 14!

That's right, peeps, you all know that Celebrity Series subscriptions (3 or more shows) have been available since April, but starting September 14 those of you who have not been able to find 3 or more performances to your liking (should be about 4 people by my count) can now buy the one or two shows you have your heart set on.

It all starts Monday, September 14.

You can buy your tickets online at www.celebrityseries.org or by calling CelebrityCharge at (617) 482-6661 and talk to one of our friendly box office wizards, they'll take good care of you.

Downloading music found to be better for environment than buying CDs

 

In a not particularly surprising, but helpful, finding, researchers from Carnegie Mellon and Stanford Universities found that:

"... buying an album digitally reduces
carbon dioxide emissions by 40 to 80 percent relative to a best-case
scenario for purchasing a CD."

Read all of The Carbon Case for Downloading Music.

The Berlin Philharmonic's new YouTube channel

Along with your CDs and DVDs, the Berlin Philharmonic's new YouTube channel will have to do until the real thing comes along (which, in Boston, will be November 15). Here is the official introductory video/montage/ad thingy.

While I'm on the topic, here is Sir Simon Rattle giving some of his thoughts on classical music and the digital revolution.

The American Time Use Survey

The American Time Use Study, conducted by the U.S. Census bureau, measures how we, by various groupings, spent our day on average in 2008. It is a picture not for the faint of heart:

Graphic

NY Times article

American Time Use Survey homepage

Royal Opera House to perform opera with Twitter libretto

This project has an air of inevitability to it, but London's Royal Opera House will perform an opera using Twitter contributions for the libretto. Here is a snippet of the AP story:

"In an effort to get more people involved with opera, which sometimes
suffers from an elitist, highbrow reputation, London's world-famous
Royal Opera House is turning away — temporarily — from classic talents
like Giuseppe Verdi and Giacomo Puccini and giving the composer's pen
to ... just about anybody.

All you need to contribute is a
computer or a mobile phone and an account on Twitter, the popular
micro-blogging site that is open to all."

Read all of the Associated Press story.

Random assortment of contributions to date:

"Nuts, i love hazelnuts." Bang! The bird dropped from the sky, dead, its tiny wings were frozen."

"concerns of a nihilist. I would bring you flowers, but they would die. I would love you, but, why?"

"Still in park. Her, shivering with coffee: I’m so cold- let’s leave Boston. Him: Anywhere! Around the world India, then Egypt!"

"but the distance between us is psychological – not physical or intellectual. And what’s happened toooooo the ginger cat?"

"forget! forget! the natives won’t forget! Lovers, mysterious in the mosquito net!!"

View the line-by-line progress of the libretto.



Make a contribution to the libretto (login required).



Visit the Royal Opera House on Twitter (is that close to Covent Garden?)

Royal Opera House web site

WBCN radio signs off for good

It's true. WBCN, fixture of Boston radio for 41 years (and originally the classically formatted Boston Concert Network) is going away today. Story.

Andrew Dickson at The Guardian on the future of arts TV

Andrew Dickson, writing for The Guardian newspaper in the UK, says arts broadcasting is at a crossroads in his country (and, presumably, in ours as well). Read Is this the future of arts TV?