The Friday Informer: Stop me if you’ve heard this one
- Republican members of the House of Representatives have recommended ending all funding for the National Endowment for the Arts and the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. [Backstage.com] Meanwhile, both US News & World Report (culture department eliminated) and the LA Times (memo: more Hollywood fun) are also re-examining the needs of Americans RE: culture. [ArtsJournal.com]
- Most succinct review of David Lang’s new disc Elevated (Cantaloupe): “As one friend put it, ‘Sounds more Morton Feldman than Morton Feldman.'” [disquiet.com]
- Soundsandfury takes Greg Sandow to task for his “repeated misguided and perverse if well-intentioned notions concerning the garnering of new audiences for classical music via the mass appeal tactics and practices of popular culture, and for his mindless championship of the idea of the equality of importance of pop and so-called high culture, and the need to not draw lines of demarcation between the two.” He, and those of similar mindset, are gently urged “to take a sabbatical to do nothing but rethink seriously and deeply his wrongheaded notions on all these matters.”
- Journalists spilled more ink over John Adams’s Doctor Atomic in one weekend than the art form is likely to receive for the rest of the year. Justified? Discuss.