Assistance in Application To University

Posted on Thu, Dec. 23, 2004
EDUCATIONAdvisors to college-bound kids receive high grades, high feesAs competition for top colleges intensifies each year, students increasingly turn to high-priced consultants for help.BY MATTHEW I. PINZURmpinzur@herald.com
Applying to college seemed so much easier when Camilo Bernal went to Florida State University in the 1970s. As he sat through a college admissions seminar last March with his teenage son, Nicholas, he realized they were in trouble.
''All these forms, all these terms that I didn't know what they meant,'' Bernal said. ``We really didn't understand the whole process.''
Like a growing number of families, the Bernals turned to the burgeoning industry of private consultants who charge hundreds or thousands of dollars to shepherd students and their families through college enrollment and make their résumés more attractive.
As more students apply for the same number of spots, the high grades and test scores that looked so impressive a decade ago are increasingly humdrum, and eager students are desperate for other ways to stand out.
The most basic consultants provide test preparation, a timeline for applications and help with finding financial aid.
The Bernals turned to The College Partnership, which charges $1,500 to $1,700 for unlimited e-mail and telephone access to its team of coaches, as well as test-preparation materials and an extensive Internet site with details on colleges and universities.
''Any question I have, they've been able to give me an answer or refer me to someone who could,'' said Nicholas, a senior in the International Baccalaureate program at Coral Reef Senior High, 10101 SW 152nd St. in Miami.
More posh consultants -- some of whom charge more than a year's tuition at the nation's most selective private colleges -- spend dozens of hours coaching students on everything from selecting classes to founding community service organizations.
''When an education consultant works with a student, she becomes a parent, a friend and a guidance counselor,'' said Judi Robinovitz, whose Palm Beach County firm is among the most sought after in Florida. ``It's like working with a personal trainer.''
She charges $3,600 and up to help students select classes, prepare for tests, choose extracurricular activities and generally smooth the path from diploma to dorm room.
THE EXTRA MILE
When a recent client expressed interest in hotel management, Robinovitz helped arrange a summer internship at one of London's top hotels, and she is now a student in Cornell's well-respected hospitality program.
''Had we not been in that mode of exploring avenues that could lead to a career for her as early as her junior year, I don't think any of this would have come to fruition,'' Robinovitz said.
In an environment where top schools routinely reject 60 percent to 70 percent of applicants, the consultants push students to use their natural abilities and interests in remarkable ways -- ways that catch the eyes of admissions officers.
''Nowadays, so many kids have the grades and test scores to be considered for the top schools that they're looking at other things,'' said Katherine Cohen, who runs IvyWise, a New York education consulting firm. ``It's the soft measure, the intangible factors, that get weighed very heavily in the process.''
One of her clients was a star student who took five advanced placement classes as a junior. But Cohen worried that her application would look too much like classmates'.
The girl was an avid writer and poet, so Cohen encouraged her to found the school's first literary magazine and enter dozens of writing contests that would publish her work. Instead of just volunteering with children at a hospital, she urged the girl to teach them to write poetry and essays and publish the work in a hospital newsletter.
When Cohen found out the girl was also writing a novel, she showed the first few chapters to her own literary agent. The girl ended up with a two-book deal for $400,000 and acceptance to Harvard.
''She had the innate ability,'' said Cohen, a former Yale admissions officer who has written two books on the subject. ``We made her stand out.''
Tuition at Harvard is $27,448. Cohen charges $33,000 for her most intensive package, which includes 100 hours of counseling over a teen's junior and senior years of high school.
Her record, though, is just as rich: 85 percent of her clients were admitted to their first-choice school, and 100 percent to one of their top two choices.
''Just because you sent your son or daughter to that great private school and they got mainly A's doesn't mean your son or daughter is going to go to Harvard,'' said Cohen, whose firm also prepares students for graduate school, prep school and even exclusive Manhattan nursery schools.
Services like hers carry a stigma, though, especially among those whose opinion matters most: college admissions directors.
''Admissions people are very uncomfortable with packaging a candidate because it makes a student into someone they're really not,'' said Edward Gillis, admissions director at the University of Miami.
As impressive as Cohen's results sound, he said most applicants are admitted to one of their top two choices anyway. ''There's no secret handshake in this business,'' he said. ``I don't think it will change where a student is admitted to college at all.''
Nonetheless, the consultant business is booming. There are probably around 1,000 full-time education consultants, according to Mark Sklarow, executive director of the Independent Educational Consultants Association, and he estimated that 7 percent of high school graduates hired one this year.
''That is a number that's probably pretty close to doubled in the last five years,'' he said. ``Our projection is it will double again in the next five.''
INDIVIDUAL ATTENTION
Unlike high school counselors, who may be responsible for advising hundreds of students, high-end consultants such as Robinovitz and Cohen usually limit themselves to a few dozen students per year.
''In the public schools, we are spread very, very thin,'' said Robert Roddy, who handles about 840 seniors and at least as many juniors and sophomores as the college advisor at Michael Krop Senior High, 1410 NE 215th St. in North Miami Beach. ``I don't have the time to give the type of personal attention that some of the students need.''
When Nicholas Bernal finished his application essay, for example, he e-mailed it to The College Partnership and received a reply with some tips on restructuring it.
''I feel that the logic behind having a counselor with regard to navigating the maze from high school to college makes a lot of sense,'' said Ed Doody, president of the for-profit partnership, based in Colorado.
His company hosts 3,600 free seminars a year, introducing parents and teens to the application process.
The meeting sold the Bernals. The program helped Nicholas boost his SAT score 120 points, and he has already been accepted to Florida State and the University of Georgia.
Younger brother Gabriel, a sophomore at Coral Reef, has already signed up.
''He's not as motivated as Nicholas because he's only in 10th grade,'' said father Camilo. ``We signed up as an investment in the future.''
© 2004 Herald.com and wire service sources. All Rights Reserved.http://www.miami.com

- posted by Michael P. Whelan @ 4:08 PM

 
Russian Writer
Homing Instinct
Emigre writer Vassily Aksyonov retakes the Moscow literary scene by storm.
By Victor SonkinPublished: December 17, 2004
Strictly speaking, Vassily Aksyonov was not entirely shocked to receive this year's Open Russia Booker Prize, as his was the most famous name on the shortlist. But since the prolific emigre novelist had yet to win a single literary prize in Russia, let alone in his adopted United States, he wasn't going to jump to conclusions. Nothing was certain until the end of the ceremony on Dec. 2, when the jury's chairman, satirical novelist and longtime friend Vladimir Voinovich, named him the winner of Russia's most prestigious literary award.Given for best novel of the year, the Booker prize is sponsored by Open Russia, a humanitarian organization backed by jailed Yukos owner Mikhail Khodorkovsky. In his short acceptance speech at the Golden Ring Hotel ceremony, Aksyonov toasted "our prisoner" and closed by calling for Khodorkovsky's freedom.
"It's an absurd paradox," said the 72-year-old writer in an interview last week in his spacious Moscow apartment, "that people gather at a luxurious hotel in the center of Moscow to give a prestigious literary award, with television crews and journalists everywhere, while the man who made it possible is behind bars. We are getting mixed signals from the authorities all the time. It's bizarre and confusing."Though Aksyonov left the Soviet Union for the United States in 1980, he keeps a second apartment in a Stalinist skyscraper in central Moscow, and has been spending more time here in recent years. However, what with the constant invitations to judge local writing competitions, meetings with his readers and interviews with the press, the author prefers to go to his seaside house in France to write.Fame came to Aksyonov amid the cultural thaw of the early 1960s with his publication of two romantic novellas, "Oranges From Morocco" (Apelsiny iz Morokko) and "Surplussed Barrelware" (Zatovarennaya Bochkotara), in the liberal literary magazine Yunost. For a while, things were looking up for the young writer, who quickly became one of the cultural heroes of his generation.As the political pendulum swung backward in the late 1960s, though, the outspoken Aksyonov found himself on the wrong side of the Soviet regime. "Unlike in the United States, in Russia a writer doesn't count as an intellectual -- he is supposed to be a bohemian figure," he said. "That's exactly what I was: socializing with my friends, having heated discussions, meeting foreigners. Not everyone liked it." It wasn't long before the KGB got wind of his most anti-Soviet manuscript to date, "The Burn" (Ozhog), which Aksyonov had no intention of publishing. In 1977, he received a visit from two agents, who told him point-blank that if "The Burn" were ever printed, "we'd have to say our goodbyes to you." Aksyonov said that he had not been planning to publish it, and they appeared to be satisfied. In the wake of that conversation, however, the writer found himself barred from traveling abroad and his submissions relegated to magazines' slush piles. Unwilling to play by the authorities' rules, he told a Voice of America radio interviewer that he was being forced into exile and, meanwhile, contributed a piece to Metropol, the uncensored samizdat almanac that brought together the cream of his generation's literary elite. But the threats and surveillance only grew more intense, and when Aksyonov found the tires of his car slashed -- the broken knife defiantly left in the rubber -- he made up his mind to emigrate. "I met a high-positioned apparatchik and told him I was fed up and wanted to leave the country," the writer recalled. "He beamed and said, 'Well, that solves all our problems, doesn't it?'" Arriving in the United States in 1980, the prominent dissident was immediately shuttled into the university system, and taught Russian literature and writing in the Washington area before retiring earlier this year from George Mason University. "An American university is a miracle," he said last week. "[It] preserves the venerable tradition of shaping a harmonious personality. A biologist or a computer scientist needs credits in the humanities to complete his studies. It's wonderful."Having followed Russian politics from abroad for the past two decades, Aksyonov does not take current anti-American sentiment in Russia too seriously. "It's a fad," he said. "In the hungry years, around 1990, people went to the other extreme. Some wanted the Americans to occupy Russia and set things straight. It's clear to me that Russia is a part of Western civilization, and that what's happening now is that some people are unwilling to accept the obvious."Perhaps at no time since the 1960s has Aksyonov been such a presence on the Russian literary scene. Five of his books have been published or republished in Russia over the past few months. October brought the Booker nomination and the premiere of Dmitry Barshevsky's 22-part television series based on the writer's epic trilogy, "Moscow Saga" (Moskovskaya Saga), about a family's experiences under Josef Stalin. Aksyonov did not participate in preparing the television series, which received largely negative reviews in the Russian press. "I saw the 4 1/2 hour promo version and rather liked it," he said. "The actual episodes seemed less satisfactory." But the writer expressed his happiness at the interest that the series sparked in the original novels, even among his own family members. "When we came home after watching 'Moscow Saga,' my wife snatched the book from the shelf at once. She had read it before, of course. It just illustrates the power of filmmaking," he said.With his publications and popularity on the rise, Aksyonov is not that worried about his financial prospects. Still, being a writer in Russia is not a proper full-time job. Royalties and advances are substantially higher in the West, he said, and Western publishers spare no effort in promoting their product. "They send me on book tours, put me up in good hotels and organize press conferences and book signings."
Igor Tabakov / MT
Vassily Aksyonov keeps homes in Moscow and Washington, but prefers to do his writing in France.
Touring America over the years, Aksyonov has learned a thing or two about what makes foreign readers tick. "Once, I was signing 'Moscow Saga' in a huge American bookstore," he said. "A female customer stopped by, bags in hand, and asked what the book was about. I said it was about Russia, and she went on by. Well, I thought, that was not good salesmanship. I said to the next customer that it was a story of a doctor's family, and she bought it."The Booker-winning novel, "Voltairiens and Voltariennes" (Volteryantsy i Volteryanki), dreams up a clandestine meeting between the French philosopher Voltaire and Catherine the Great, who in fact corresponded for many years but never met. After buying a rare 1801 edition of their correspondence for $800 in a Moscow bookshop, Aksyonov set out to write the novel, which he calls "a true story that never happened." "To imitate 18th-century style, to find the right tone, was very difficult," he said. "At one point I was ready to drop the idea. But I continued reading, studying this fascinating epoch, and at some point the story just started writing itself."Twenty-four years abroad have given Aksyonov perspective on changes in his native country, and he has adjusted his writing along with the times. He recently completed a screenplay based on his 1983 novel "The Island of Crimea" (Ostrov Krym), a utopian vision of a free, Westernized Crimea hanging on at the edge of the Soviet Union. Now that the political landscape has altered, Aksyonov was forced to fudge political details to keep the story timeless."Things have changed since I wrote the novel, so in the script it is all metaphysical. It does not happen at any specific time," he said. "It is now about this curious nostalgia for the past that so many Russians feel."
Copyright © 2004 The Moscow Times. All rights reserved.



- posted by Michael P. Whelan @ 4:07 PM

 
Football Las Vegas Bowl.
Cowboy fans whoop it up in Las VegasBy SALLY ANN SHURMURStar-Tribune Staff Writer
LAS VEGAS -- The streets of Sin City are paved with brown and gold.
There's Ellie Noonan of Rawlins, wrapped in a gold Wyoming knit scarf and brown suede jacket.
And there's Carroll Orrison of Casper, standing next to a portable bar at the Golden Nugget. He's wearing his leather Wyoming jacket and a shirt in "true gold." He disdains the tannish "prairie gold" adopted by his beloved Cowboys in the new millennium.
"I'll never wear the new gold," the 75-year-old beer distributor says. "I will never wear anything but this gold."
Whatever the color, Orrison is just happy to be accompanying his Cowboys to another bowl. He and other Wyoming fans are reveling in the Pokes' first bowl trip in 11 seasons -- which also happens to be Orrison's 11th bowl game with the Cowboys.
"I've been to every bowl we've been in since 1951 in Jacksonville (Fla.)," he says.
Wyoming fans are supporting their Pokes in a big way. They've bought more Las Vegas Bowl tickets than fans of any other school in the past four years.
Earlier this week, fans had bought 7,300 of the 8,000 prepurchased by the university, plus an unknown number bought through other outlets.
Many of the Wyoming fans flew in Tuesday on air charters packed with Cowboy enthusiasts -- including Jeremiah Burridge of Casper.
"We were in the air an hour and 21 minutes," Burridge says. "We only had time to sing 'Cowboy Joe' once. In fact, it took more time on the ground to get here from the airport than we were in the air."
Belinda Knievel of Casper, an elementary teacher at St. Anthony Tri-Parish School, came to Las Vegas with her husband, Ron. It's her first visit.
"I told Ron, 'Let's just do it, let's just go,' " she says.
Ed Ricks of Douglas played football at UW decades ago, when a winning season -- not to mention a bowl game -- was merely a dream. Now he and his wife, Donna, are here with their three children, all of whom are UW students.
"They're loving this," Donna Ricks says.
The Cowboys and most of their fans are housed at the Golden Nugget Hotel and Casino. Just across the street, the back end of Binion's Horseshoe does a brisk business supplying Wyoming fans with beer.
Forty-four-ounce plastic beer glasses shaped like footballs go for $8. A bartender named Derek offers his opinion about the visiting throng:
"I like them all," he says. "Rodeo, bikers, football, they're all very cool."
(Sally Ann Shurmur, editor of Casper Inside, is rubbing elbows with Wyoming fans at the Golden Nugget Hotel and Casino this week.)


- posted by Michael P. Whelan @ 3:44 PM

 
Las Vegas Monorail Update

News Home - Help

Las Vegas Monorail Near Reopening After Shutdown
Wed Dec 22, 9:15 PM ET
LAS VEGAS (Reuters) - The glitch-plagued Las Vegas Monorail, shut down since September, could reopen this week just in time for the city's biggest surge in tourism, a spokesman for the $650 million system said on Wednesday.
Reuters Photo

The 3.9-mile monorail opened in July but was shut down on Sept. 8 after two incidents in which pieces fell off and it was deemed unsafe.
Experts with Bombardier Inc., the Canadian company that built the trains, determined that the drive shafts were improperly aligned.
Monorail spokesman Todd Walker said on Wednesday that weeks of testing of the system had proved successful and a final report would be with Clark County officials by Thursday morning.
That means the trains could be operating again by Christmas Eve, a boost for the city just as it anticipates its biggest visitor crush of the year, an official said.
The monorail runs north and south along a road to the east of the Las Vegas Strip and has stops behind major hotel-casinos as well as one at the Las Vegas Convention Center.
The closure has cost the monorail about $85,000 a day in lost fares.
Construction of the monorail was financed by the issue of state bonds on behalf of the privately held Las Vegas Monorail Co. It had been expected to be the nation's only public transportation system to make a profit.
The loss figure does not include refunds or contract extensions the system will have to give sponsors such as Nextel Communications Inc., who wrapped idled trains in ads.
The problems with the monorail have also thrown into jeopardy a $450 million expansion into downtown Las Vegas that was expected to be started next year and completed by 2008.
While the first part of the monorail was privately funded, the extension is expected to rely heavily on federal grants that were being held up until the first leg of the system was proven a success.
The monorail was funded entirely by the sale of bonds using the state's bond rating, with most of the debt insured.
Moody's Investor Service Inc. and Fitch Rating both put $455.8 million of the first-tier construction bonds on a watch list in recent months because of the shutdown.
Story Tools
Email Story
Post/Read Msgs
Formatted Story
Ratings: Would you recommend this story?
Not at all 1 - 2 - 3 - 4 - 5 Highly
Copyright © 2004 Reuters Limited. All rights reserved. Republication or redistribution of

- posted by Michael P. Whelan @ 3:42 PM

 
Yahoo Search Bad Weather
Wicked Weather Thursday December 23, 2004 1:00PM PT
Shoveling Snow Oh, the weather outside is frightful and your searches aren't so delightful. The recent spate of ill winds blowing across the country has rained down a number of queries. Searches on the generic "weather" were up 54% as curious travelers wondered how the conditions would affect their holiday plans. The Weather Channel, up 79%, blew into our top 20 queries. The spirit-killing storms also caused searches on "National Weather Service" to almost double over the past day -- up 96%. Where are weather searches hot? Looks like Lexington, KY, led the way yesterday followed closely by Fort Wayne, IN, and Little Rock, AR. Weather- and travel-related searches dominated yesterday and here are just a few of the spikes we witnessed:
Road Conditions (+413%)
Dallas Weather (+375%)
Indianapolis Airport (+261%)
Weather Radar (+216%)
Current Weather (+213%)
DFW Airport (+201%)
Doppler Radar (+189%)
Ohio Weather (+175%)
Local Weather Forecast (+162%)
Weather Maps (+148%)
Cleveland Weather (+147%)
Intellicast (+146%)
Indiana Weather (+140%)
Weather Network Canada (+136%)

- posted by Michael P. Whelan @ 3:37 PM

 
Surfer Girl The Year In News
surfergirlHappy News YearThe networks cast their anchors for 2005.By Dana StevensUpdated Wednesday, Dec. 22, 2004, at 11:27 AM PT
At the end of a year that saw major changes in the TV news world, several networks are reshuffling their decks of talking-head playing cards. MSNBC is trying to woo Crossfire's co-host Tucker "Stop Hurting America" Carlson away from CNN (he also hosts the more polite Unfiltered on PBS) for a nightly show of his own, to fill the prime-time slot of the departing Deborah Norville. CBS is coyly dangling Katie Couric's name as a possibility to replace Dan Rather, which would make her the first solo female anchor of a network news broadcast (and the first female network anchor, period, since the ill-fated Dan Rather/Connie Chung co-hosting experiment of the mid-90s). And in January MSNBC is debuting a new, as-yet-unnamed daytime show co-hosted by former Fox commentator (and sometime plagiarist) Monica Crowley and ubiquitous presidential offspring Ron Reagan. What, if anything, do these changes portend for television news and the state of our national conversation in 2005? And do any of these new network/anchor combos sound like something you'd actually watch? Discuss among yourselves, or send e-mail to surfergirl@thehighsign.net. We'll reconvene next week after the ... er ... holiday. ... 11:27 a.m.
Tuesday, Dec. 21, 2004
Never—not even when soliciting entries for a Jeopardy! drinking game—have I gotten as much reader response as I did from last week's short item, "Putting the Christ Back in Christmas." (Click here and scroll down.) The feedback ranged from hate mail (Note to potential pen pals: Letters addressed to "Surfbitch" or beginning with the words "Sieg Heil!" are less than likely to be read through to the end), to well-meaning attempts at religious conversion (thanks for the thought, but God-wise, I'm good, really), to many sincere expressions of goodwill, and not a few excellent sightings of the new holiday hostility on TV and in the media.
Apparently without even realizing it, Surfergirl was indeed surfing the crest of a tsunami. Over the past few days, the save-Christmas meme has been everywhere: from the Fox News banner reading "Christmas Under Attack!" that ran all weekend under holiday-related stories; to Peggy Noonan pleading with Terry McAuliffe to "stop the war on religious expression in America" by ringing a bell and yelling "Merry Christmas!"; to the ubiquity of William Donohue, the Catholic League president who was quoted last week as saying that "Hollywood is controlled by secular Jews who hate Christianity in general and Catholicism in particular." Donohue, who should have been persona non grata on the talk-show circuit after that disgraceful outburst, was back on Hardball last night, cross-talking with a rabbi and an atheist about something or other—I couldn't bring myself to watch.
The problem here, of course, has nothing to do with the utterance or non-utterance of four perfectly unobjectionable Anglo-Saxon syllables denoting holiday cheer. No, the right's defensiveness on the Christmas issue seems to be little more than a seasonal variation of the same sore-winner language that's saturated the airwaves since the election. As of Nov. 2, the Christian right now controls every branch of government except, arguably, the Supreme Court (and, Donohue's anti-Semitic paranoia to the contrary, a good chunk of the media as well.) What gives, guys? You've got the country by the throat—take it easy. Have some eggnog. Stand over here by the mistletoe (well, maybe not you, Bill O'Reilly.)
One reader wrote in to cite, not a television show, but a Christmas letter from relatives who explicitly rejected "this politically correct happy holidays stuff—we all know what we mean when we say 'Merry Christmas', and it is time for the rest of the country to get with the program." That language perfectly summarizes the pugilistic tone of the save-Christmas crowd. If "Merry Christmas" means peace on earth, gingerbread and visions of sugarplums dancing in our heads, then I wish it to everyone out there, be they Jew, Christian, Muslim or pagan. If it's code for "get with the program," I think I'll change the channel. ... 2:18 p.m.Dana Stevens (aka Liz Penn) writes on television for Slate and on film and culture for the High Sign.Article URL: http://slate.msn.com/id/2111304/


- posted by Michael P. Whelan @ 2:21 PM

 
Royal Academy Of Dramatic Arts

December 22, 2004
A Call for Calm at the Royal Academy of ArtsBy ALAN RIDING
LONDON, Dec. 19 - Sir Nicholas Grimshaw is a man of good cheer, a quality that will no doubt be put to the test in his new position as president of the Royal Academy of Arts in London. In recent months, the 236-year-old institution has been embarrassing itself with a sorry public spectacle of scandals and in-fighting. Now it is Sir Nicholas's job to restore some luster to its name.
"It's clean-sheet time," he said cheerfully shortly after his election on Dec. 14 by the 80-member academy. "We have a chance to make a real fresh start. I'm enormously optimistic."
He brings more than enthusiasm. As a respected architect, best known here for designing the Eurostar terminal at Waterloo Station, Mr. Grimshaw is already more of a public figure than his three predecessors. Further, unlike the artists who make up most of the academy, he knows how to run a business, in his case a 100-member firm with offices in London, New York and Melbourne, Australia.
There is also a vacuum waiting to be filled. The outgoing president, Phillip King, a sculptor, gave health reasons for his early retirement last month, but he had been criticized by 30 academicians for weak leadership. And soon afterward, Lawton Fitt, the academy secretary, or chief administrator, resigned, citing frustration that her attempts to modernize the institution had been blocked.
"I think what the academy needs more than anything at the moment is a period of calm and consolidation, which will ultimately lead us once again to a feeling of joy at being there," Sir Nicholas, 65, said in an informal campaign platform sent to his colleagues before his election.
But what it also needs, he conceded in an interview in his architectural firm's office here, is change. "If we can get the administration working smoothly without interference by the academicians, then we can mobilize the Royal Academy to become a true cultural force," he said.
Yet are the academicians ready for a fresh start?
To describe the Royal Academy as rooted in the past is hardly a slight. It was created in 1768 by George III as an independent body designed to foster the arts and was soon Britain's most important art institution. Its first two presidents were Sir Joshua Reynolds and Benjamin West. John Constable, J. M. W. Turner and William Blake were among the graduates of the academy's schools.
Although its summer exhibition always drew crowds, the academy long served as a kind of gentleman's club for painters, sculptors, engravers and architects of good standing. And like other exclusive London clubs, it was run by its members for its members. This 18th-century governing structure remains unchanged. The problem is that the academy's place in the London art scene has changed beyond recognition.
Unlike major British museums, the Royal Academy receives no government subsidy. Instead, it survives by presenting exhibitions that must compete with those of the Tate, the National Gallery and the Victoria and Albert Museum. Thus, its public image is now defined more by successful shows like "Monet," "Sensation" and "Aztecs" than by the academicians themselves, not least because many high-profile young artists are not members.
This has in turn switched responsibility - but not actual power - for running the academy to its administrators and curators. And frequent power struggles have spawned mismanagement and occasional scandals. Seven years ago, the academy's bursar was jailed for stealing $720,000. This year, the head of the schools - himself an academician - was suspended after $144,000 disappeared without "proper documentation."
David Gordon, a former journalist and news executive who became the academy's secretary in 1998, was among the first to argue that the institution needed professional management. Now director of the Milwaukee Art Museum, Mr. Gordon was forced to resign in 2002 by Mr. King, whom he later described as "completely inadequate." Now, two years later, Ms. Fitt, an American and a former Goldman Sachs partner, is following Mr. Gordon out the door.
"There's a lot of ambiguity about who is responsible for what," she said in an interview with The Independent, the London newspaper. "Authority and accountability don't necessarily match up, and it makes it extra-difficult to move anything forward. I have been repeatedly frustrated in my efforts to make changes, to do some things the academy would benefit from, and finally that frustration told."
Ms. Fitt's position was further undermined when she crossed swords with Norman Rosenthal, the academy's exhibitions secretary for the last 27 years. Although not an academician, Mr. Rosenthal is a much admired, somewhat eccentric and at times irascible curator who in many ways is the public face of the academy (even when he recently appeared in drag at the so-called Alternative Miss World competition). When Ms. Fitt tried to fire him this spring for ignoring her instructions, his friends inside and outside the academy rose up and he stayed.
Mr. Grimshaw expressed sympathy for Ms. Fitt because, in essence, he shares her view that the academy secretary should be more an independent manager and less a servant of the academicians. "Secretary has a quasi-archaic ring about it," he said, "as if you want someone to do your bidding. The job needs to be more like a chief executive who runs a $43 million organization. The academy has to be run like a proper business."
For this to happen, though, the president will have to persuade his colleagues to cede power. "To be honest, I think they have played more of a veto role," Sir Nicholas said, "complaining when things go wrong, rather than playing a positive role. We need to define a new role for the secretary before we advertise for Lawton Fitt's successor."
By implication, this also means redefining the role of the academicians. While 13 belong to an executive council and others sit on committees, most seem far more engaged in their own careers than in the life of the academy. Members include architects like Norman Foster and Richard Rogers, sculptors like Antony Caro and Tony Cragg and painters like David Hockney and Gary Hume, but in practice the academy benefits little from their renown.
Here, then, lies perhaps Mr. Grimshaw's greatest challenge. He wants to rebuild an esprit de corps so that academicians not only become more involved in defining exhibitions and supporting the schools, but also serve as a cultural lobby at a time that Tony Blair's government has begun trimming support for the arts. "The academicians as a body should be a cultural force," he said.
And will this happen? "I'm going to spend the next six months lunching or meeting with all the academicians," he said. "I'm very keen to modernize the institution." He then added with a smile, "Call me in six months to see how I'm doing."
Copyright 2004 The New York Times Company Home Privacy Policy Search Corrections RSS Help Back to Top

- posted by Michael P. Whelan @ 2:19 PM

 
Yahoo Buzz Christmas Searches Carols
O Holy Moley Thursday December 23, 2004 4:00AM PT
Christmas Cheer If you're looking for a way to infuse a little joy into your neighborhood, consider skipping Christmas lights that carol. Decorations aren’t supposed to be noisy, and sometimes it's best to stick to the old-fashioned way of doing things. Searches on Christmas carols (+18%) are surging and they’re especially popular with kids under 13 and their parents. Judging from queries, if you live in Kansas, Louisiana, or Mississippi, you're in prime caroling country, so you better brush up on your Christmas carol lyrics (+24%).
Wherever you're belting out a little holiday cheer, it wouldn't hurt to search out the lyrics lest you realize that you've forgotten the second verse mid-song. While Brits have declared O Holy Night their favorite carol, the songs stack up a little differently on this side of the pond:
12 Days of Christmas Lyrics
Silent Night Lyrics
O Holy Night Lyrics
Santa Baby Lyrics
Jingle Bells Lyrics
All I Want for Christmas Is You Lyrics
Carol of the Bells Lyrics
Jingle Bell Rock Lyrics
Frosty the Snowman Lyrics
Feliz Navidad Lyrics
Previous: You're Doing Great, Baby! Next: Wicked Weather

- posted by Michael P. Whelan @ 1:51 PM

 
Thomas Friedman OP ED NY TImes

December 23, 2004OP-ED COLUMNIST
Worth a Thousand WordsBy THOMAS L. FRIEDMAN
here has been so much violence in Iraq that it's become hard to distinguish one senseless act from another. But there was a picture that ran on the front page of this newspaper on Monday that really got to me. It showed several Iraqi gunmen, in broad daylight and without masks, murdering two Iraqi election workers. The murder scene was a busy street in the heart of Baghdad. The two election workers had been dragged from their car into the middle of the street. They looked young, the sort of young people you'd see doing election canvassing in America or Ukraine or El Salvador.
One was kneeling with his arms behind his back, waiting to be shot in the head. Another was lying on his side. The gunman had either just pumped a bullet into him or was about to. I first saw the picture on the Internet, and I did something I've never done before - I blew it up so it covered my whole screen. I wanted to look at it more closely. You don't often get to see the face of pure evil.
There is much to dislike about this war in Iraq, but there is no denying the stakes. And that picture really framed them: this is a war between some people in the heart of the Arab-Muslim world who - for the first time ever in their region - are trying to organize an election to choose their own leaders and write their own constitution versus all the forces arrayed against them.
Do not be fooled into thinking that the Iraqi gunmen in this picture are really defending their country and have no alternative. The Sunni-Baathist minority that ruled Iraq for so many years has been invited, indeed begged, to join in this election and to share in the design and wealth of post-Saddam Iraq.
As the Johns Hopkins foreign policy expert Michael Mandelbaum so rightly pointed out to me, "These so-called insurgents in Iraq are the real fascists, the real colonialists, the real imperialists of our age." They are a tiny minority who want to rule Iraq by force and rip off its oil wealth for themselves. It's time we called them by their real names.
However this war started, however badly it has been managed, however much you wish we were not there, do not kid yourself that this is not what it is about: people who want to hold a free and fair election to determine their own future, opposed by a virulent nihilistic minority that wants to prevent that. That is all that the insurgents stand for.
Indeed, they haven't even bothered to tell us otherwise. They have counted on the fact that the Bush administration is so hated around the world that any opponents will be seen as having justice on their side. Well, they do not. They are murdering Iraqis every day for the sole purpose of preventing them from exercising that thing so many on the political left and so many Europeans have demanded for the Palestinians: "the right of self-determination."
What is terrifying is that the noble sacrifice of our soldiers, while never in vain, may not be enough. We may actually lose in Iraq. The vitally important may turn out to be the effectively impossible.
We may lose because of the defiantly wrong way that Donald Rumsfeld has managed this war and the cynical manner in which Dick Cheney, George Bush and - with some honorable exceptions - the whole Republican right have tolerated it. Many conservatives would rather fail in Iraq than give liberals the satisfaction of seeing Mr. Rumsfeld sacked. We may lose because our Arab allies won't lift a finger to support an election in Iraq - either because they fear they'll be next to face such pressures, or because the thought of democratically elected Shiites holding power in a country once led by Sunnis is anathema to them.
We may lose because most Europeans, having been made stupid by their own weakness, would rather see America fail in Iraq than lift a finger for free and fair elections there.
As is so often the case, the statesman who framed the stakes best is the British prime minister, Tony Blair. Count me a "Blair Democrat." Mr. Blair, who was in Iraq this week, said: "Whatever people's feelings or beliefs about the removal of Saddam Hussein and the wisdom of that, there surely is only one side to be on in what is now very clearly a battle between democracy and terror. On the one side you have people who desperately want to make the democratic process work, and want to have the same type of democratic freedoms other parts of the world enjoy, and on the other side people who are killing and intimidating and trying to destroy a better future for Iraq."
Copyright 2004 The New York Times Company Home Privacy Policy Search Corrections RSS Help Back to Top

- posted by Michael P. Whelan @ 1:40 PM

 
Muareen Dowd NY TImes OP ED

December 23, 2004OP-ED COLUMNIST
Christmas Eve of DestructionBy MAUREEN DOWD

In Iraq, as Yogi Berra would say, the future ain't what it used to be.
Now that the election's over, our leaders think it's safe to experiment with a little candor.
President Bush has finally acknowledged that the Iraqis can't hack it as far as securing their own country, which means, of course, that America has no exit strategy for its troops, who will soon number 150,000.
News organizations led with the story, even though the president was only saying something that everybody has known to be true for a year. The White House's policy on Iraq has gone from a total charade to a limited modified hangout. Mr. Bush is conceding the obvious, that the Iraqi security forces aren't perfect, so he doesn't have to concede the truth: that Iraq is now so dire no one knows how or when we can get out.
If this fiasco ever made sense to anybody, it doesn't any more.
John McCain, who lent his considerable credibility to Mr. Bush during the campaign and vouched for the president and his war, now concedes that he has no confidence in Donald Rumsfeld.
And Rummy admitted yesterday that his feelings got hurt when people accused him of being insensitive to the fact that he arrogantly sent his troops into a sinkhole of carnage - a vicious, persistent insurgency - without the proper armor, equipment, backup or preparation.
The subdued defense chief further admitted that despite all the American kids who gave their lives in Mosul on the cusp of Christmas, battling an enemy they can't see in a war fought over weapons that didn't exist, we're not heading toward the democratic halcyon Mr. Bush promised.
"I think looking for a peaceful Iraq after the elections would be a mistake," Mr. Rumsfeld said.
His disgraceful admission that his condolence letters to the families of soldiers killed in Iraq were signed by machine - "I have directed that in the future I sign each letter," he said in a Strangelovian statement - is redolent of the myopia that has led to the dystopia.
The Bushies are betting a lot on the January election, even though a Shiite-dominated government will further alienate the Sunnis - and even though Iraq may be run by an Iranian-influenced ayatollah. That would mean that Iraq would have a leadership legitimized by us to hate us.
International election observers say it's too dangerous to actually come in and monitor the vote in person; they're going to "assess" the vote from the safety of Amman, Jordan. Isn't that like refereeing a football game while sitting in a downtown bar?
The administration hopes that once the Iraqis understand they have their own government, that will be a turning point and they will realize their country is worth fighting for. But this is the latest in a long list of turning points that turn out to be cul-de-sacs.
From the capture of Saddam to the departure of Paul Bremer and the assault on Falluja, there have been many false horizons for peace.
The U.S. military can't even protect our troops when they're eating lunch in a supposedly secure space - even after the Mosul base commanders had been warned of a "Beirut-style" attack three weeks before - because the Iraqi security forces and support staff have been infiltrated by insurgency spies.
Each milestone, each thing that is supposed to enable us to get some traction and change the basic dynamic in Iraq, comes and goes without the security getting any better. The Los Angeles Times reported yesterday that a major U.S. contractor, Contrack International Inc., had dropped out of the multibillion-dollar effort to rebuild Iraq, "raising new worries about the country's growing violence and its effect on reconstruction."
The Bush crowd thought it could get in, get out, scare the Iranians and Syrians, and remove the bulk of our forces within several months.
But now we're in, and it's the allies, contractors and election watchdogs who want out.
Aside from his scintilla of candor, Mr. Bush is still not leveling with us. As he said at his press conference on Monday, "the enemies of freedom" know that "a democratic Iraq will be a decisive blow to their ambitions because free people will never choose to live in tyranny."
They may choose to live in a theocracy, though. Americans did.
E-mail: liberties@nytimes.com
Copyright 2004 The New York Times Company Home Privacy Policy Search Corrections RSS Help Back to Top

- posted by Michael P. Whelan @ 1:36 PM

 
New Jersey Symphony

December 23, 2004
An Orchestra Takes Stock After a Gift Gone WrongBy DANIEL J. WAKIN

Leaders of the New Jersey Symphony Orchestra are divided over an investigative report that failed to assign personal blame for deceptions that turned the orchestra's acquisition of a collection of rare string instruments into an embarrassment. They also differ over just how damaging the episode will be.
A report prepared by three board members and issued last week said that a committee of trustees, staff members and musicians was wrong, during the negotiations for the collection, not to have told the full board that some appraisers had valued it at far less than the donor said it was worth - and that there were doubts about some of the instruments' authenticity.
The orchestra ultimately purchased the 30 violins, violas and cellos early last year for $17 million from a pet-care magnate, Herbert Axelrod, after he and the orchestra had announced its value as $50 million; the difference could have been a tax deduction for Mr. Axelrod. The committee had told the board the instruments were probably worth about $26 million, not revealing the low-end evaluation of $15.3 million.
Both the chairman of the orchestra, Dr. Victor Parsonnet, and its president and chief executive, Simon Woods, said in interviews this week that there was no reason to assign individual blame or hold anyone accountable for the events. But Bill Baroni, one of the authors of the internal investigative report and a member of the New Jersey State Assembly, was sharply critical of the conduct of some current and former symphony executives.
Mr. Woods, who was hired in April, after the acquisition of the collection, said, "There's not going to be any kind of personal witch hunt," adding, "We're focused on getting things right so the organization functions better in the future."
His predecessor, Larry Tamburri, helped lead the effort to acquire the instruments and was singled out by several of the report's authors for failing to properly investigate rumors that Mr. Axelrod was under investigation by federal authorities over other instrument transfers.
"Larry did not do anything, and did not even tell the instrument committee," said Mr. Baroni, who, like the other authors of the report, is a member of the symphony board but was not involved in the purchase. Mr. Tamburri telephoned an official at the Smithsonian Institution, to which Mr. Axelrod had also made a donation of instruments publicly valued at $50 million, and was told that the talk of an investigation was merely a rumor, Mr. Baroni said.
"That's the kind of important piece of information that at least you need to bring to the board and instrument committee," he said. He said Mr. Tamburri would probably have been fired if he were still there.
Mr. Tamburri, who left New Jersey to become the president of the Pittsburgh Symphony, has repeatedly refused requests to comment on his role, issuing only a brief statement that praised the report, noting that it found flaws in the process but concluded that the acquisition was a good idea.
Mr. Baroni also noted that the orchestra's general manager, Susan Stucker, a member of the instrument committee, was present with two violin experts at a six-hour meeting in August 2002 at the Newark Museum at which one of the experts made an independent evaluation of the collection. The report said that "few, if any" notes were taken, and the expert phoned in his evaluation after spending only 10 minutes with each instrument.
"It's a profound lack of due diligence when you don't take notes," Mr. Baroni said.
Ms. Stucker did not return a telephone call seeking comment.
Dr. Parsonnet, who was a member of the instrument committee - and with Mr. Tamburri, a driving force in the acquisition - disagreed that Mr. Tamburri deserved particular blame, adding that Ms. Stucker had his full confidence.
"I certainly wouldn't want to blame anyone," he said. "I'm an amateur at this. I'm a heart surgeon. I'm not a violin collector."
Dr. Parsonnet, a prominent figure in New Jersey philanthropic and cultural circles, was a social acquaintance of Mr. Axelrod's. He acknowledged that the instrument committee felt pressured by Mr. Axelrod - and he left open the possibility that his relationship with him may have played a role in the acquisition. "It may have contributed, but I'm not sure," he said, adding: "I have no guilt. I know I could have done things better with better experience."
The orchestra's primary response has been to hire a consultant to review the way its board operates. Her report is due next month, Mr. Woods said.
No outside agency has conducted a review of the symphony's handling of the acquisition. But its internal review drew some skepticism from the staff of the Senate Finance Committee in Washington, which is looking into whether donors to nonprofit organizations are using inflated gift values as tax dodges. The panel has sought information about Mr. Axelrod's gifts to both the symphony and the Smithsonian Institution.
One of the key issues in the committee's eyes is whether the orchestra did anything to help Mr. Axelrod claim an improper tax deduction.
The symphony's internal report said the orchestra had protected itself from a criminal investigation by making the "wise decision" not to formally acknowledge a gift from Mr. Axelrod. But in a letter to Senator Charles E. Grassley, the Iowa Republican who is chairman of the Finance Committee, Mr. Woods noted that Mr. Axelrod never requested the Internal Revenue Service form that would have recorded the gift.
A Republican staff member of the Finance Committee questioned how praiseworthy that course of action was. "It's not a case where a charity made a deliberate effort not to" document the gift, he said. "They were just not asked to do it." The staff member said that public comment had to come from its chairman, Senator Grassley, a member of whose staff said he was not available to answer questions.
After his deal with the New Jersey Symphony, Mr. Axelrod became caught up in a separate tax fraud investigation unrelated to any instrument deals. He fled to Cuba and then Europe, was arrested in Germany and extradited. Earlier this month, he agreed in a plea bargain not to claim a deduction for the gift.
Dr. Parsonnet said he was worried about long-term damage to the orchestra's image - the very thing it was trying to burnish with the acquisition of the instruments. "Most people tell me they think it won't hurt," he said. "They think it will go away."
Mr. Woods said that giving to the orchestra's annual fund from individuals, corporations and foundations for the fiscal year ending next June was 28 percent ahead of where it was this time last year.
Mr. Baroni was less optimistic. At a neighborhood Christmas party on Sunday evening he was chatting with a donor to the orchestra, he said. "I feel I've been cheated," she told him.
And at a Christmas concert that same day by the Trenton Symphony Orchestra, a Santa Claus came onstage to offer the orchestra its Christmas present, a set of Stradivarius violins, Mr. Baroni recounted. The conductor replied: "No thanks. We're very happy with the instruments we have."
Copyright 2004 The New York Times Company Home Privacy Policy Search Corrections RSS Help Back to Top

- posted by Michael P. Whelan @ 1:22 PM

 
Plastic Surgery
Cuts Like a Knife Tuesday December 21, 2004 6:00PM PT
Miss Plastic Surgery Unlike your looks, the desire to improve your appearance will never fade, and searches reflect it -- they're pumped up like Melanie Griffith's collagen-laden lips on matters regarding cosmetic procedures. Kicking off the plastic surgery parade are searches on The Swan (+476%), which soared in the wake of the season two finale. And with all the talk about the show signaling the end of womanhood as we know it, females lapped it up, outsearching men by a 3-to-1 margin. It was especially popular with women aged 35 to 44 -- this small sliver accounted for one-fifth of all Swan searches yesterday. Perhaps the possibility of a transformation begins to have an allure once you've reached the back half of your thirties. In China, a recent pageant limited only to women who've undergone cosmetic procedures garnered some buzz, causing "Miss Plastic Surgery" and "Miss Artificial Beauty" to go from no searches into the thousands. Finally, the weblog "Awful Plastic Surgery" continues to draw searches whenever they expose side-by-side photos of celebs who've supposedly gone under the knife. Right now, searches for the site are holding steady, but their piece on Tara Reid's botched augmentation helped boost their buzz. Count on the site to emit a buzzing noise whenever a nip or tuck goes awry.

- posted by Michael P. Whelan @ 6:27 PM

 
Music Selections

December 19, 2004
Inside the Box
Throughout the CD era, record labels have delved into their archives to create boxed sets for musicians well known and obscure. Now they're digging deeper, not just for hits and album tracks, but for outtakes, concert recordings, rehearsal tapes and hotel-room demos. Where a boxed set used to sum up a career, now it's just as likely to be an alternative history of musicians' second thoughts and might-have-beens. Here, the pop and jazz critics of The New York Times review notable boxed sets of three CD's or more. Other major boxed sets, including collections of Nirvana and Albert Ayler, were reviewed earlier this year.
'CAN'T YOU HEAR ME CALLIN': BLUEGRASS, 80 YEARS OF AMERICAN MUSIC' Bluegrass didn't start out as one kind of music. In the history traced by this comprehensive set, bluegrass was a rural heritage of fiddle tunes and gospel songs, Celtic-Appalachian ballads and blue yodels. It was rural music for portable string instruments and harmonizing voices, and its songs were equally matter-of-fact about hard times, death, heartbreak and faith. The music coalesced, took a genre name and became a showcase for flying fingers in the 1930's and 40's with Bill Monroe and His Blue Grass Boys. And very soon thereafter, its songs started to proclaim their traditionalism, praising family elders and simpler bygone days, until the sound of banjo picking or country fiddle became musical shorthand for rural nostalgia.
This collection follows bluegrass from the hills to the coasts and back to Nashville. It's more or less chronological, but it also groups songs by topic - trains, God, homesickness, lost love - and savors the way the music loops back on itself as old tunes get reworked. And along the way, it picks up songs that would re-emerge as rock 'n' roll, only to be carried back to the countryside once again. Columbia Legacy. 4 CD's. $49.98. JON PARELES
'THE COMPLETE NORMAN GRANZ JAM SESSIONS' These are not the "Jazz at the Philharmonic" live recordings that made the producer Norman Granz's name around the world in the 1940's; those were collected on another boxed set, a few years back. Here Granz, obsessed by the artistic and commercial promise of jam sessions, convened all-star bands and fistfuls of famous frontline players, including Charlie Parker, Ben Webster, Sweets Edison, Stan Getz, Roy Eldridge and Dizzy Gillespie. Many had already sealed their reputations; others, like Illinois Jacquet and Flip Phillips, greatly increased theirs by doing a version of bravura acting in Granz's format, revealing the soul of mankind in four choruses of a blues or a standard. Granz drafted great rhythm sections, too, to cushion all the provocative and competitive soloing; Disc 2 includes the seasoned team of Count Basie and the rhythm guitarist Freddie Green, and Disc 3 the pianist Oscar Peterson with the bassist Ray Brown. Beautifully packaged - Granz himself pioneered lavish record packaging - this music, casual, gregarious, deeply swinging, helped define and consolidate serious jazz for a generation. Verve. 5 CD's. $60. BEN RATLIFF
'SANDY DENNY: A BOXFUL OF TREASURES' An enthralling boxed set devoted to the career of Sandy Denny, the folk-rock singer who died in 1978. (Order online at www.forcedexposure.com.) Her famous Led Zeppelin collaboration, "The Battle of Evermore," isn't here, but just about everything else is, including her best work with Fairport Convention. This set expands upon the 1985 collection "Who Knows Where the Time Goes" (named after Ms. Denny's best-known song, which was covered by both Judy Collins and Nina Simone), adding unreleased tracks you might actually enjoy, including her lovely version of "Silver Threads & Golden Needles," the pioneering folk-rock hit by Dusty Springfield.
The liner notes, by Jim Irvin, make no secret of her often chaotic life, starting with a forthright admission from an early collaborator (and boyfriend), Danny Thompson: "I did try and keep her off the brandy." But although bands and partners came and went, her luminous voice rarely failed her. Denny loved to sing long notes that just hung in midair, rippling with gentle vibrato, and as her musical world expanded, she learned how to slow down and sink into the music. In an audacious song called "Quiet Joys of Brotherhood," from her 1972 solo debut, "Sandy," her voice multiplies and multiplies until you're hearing a wild chorus of Dennys. Fledg'ling. 5 CD's. $67.KELEFA SANNEH
'100,000,000 BON JOVI FANS CAN'T BE WRONG,' BON JOVI Jon Bon Jovi's heartfelt autobiography is in this box, which includes more than three dozen previously unreleased songs. Not in the lyrics, which wrap endless clichés around vows of romance and determination, or in the music, which can't believe it's not Springsteen or the Who. It's in the liner notes from Mr. Bon Jovi, who details triumphs and disillusionments and new starts. Yet by the time those feelings reach the songs, they've been stripped of anything but the generic. Island. 4 CD's and 1 DVD. $59.98. JON PARELES
'BOB BROOKMEYER: MOSAIC SELECT 9' Early on, the valve trombonist and pianist Bob Brookmeyer found a way toward originality in jazz that wasn't obsessed with futurism or disjunctive sounds. Unusual for his generation, he drew sustenance from early jazz and swing-era players and American folk songs, and - before becoming a star arranger and player in Gerry Mulligan's big band - created a series of quiet, piquant and unprecious little small-group records. This set reissues late-50's recordings, including the marvelous "Traditionalism Revisited," "Kansas City Revisited" and "Stretching Out." 3 CD's. $39. Available only from Mosaic at www.mosaicrecords.com or (203) 327-7111. BEN RATLIFF
'SEVEN STEPS: THE COMPLETE COLUMBIA RECORDINGS OF MILES DAVIS 1963-1964' Another installment in Columbia's complete and meticulous boxing of Davis's career, this chapter documents a transitional phase between the working band that made "Kind of Blue" (including Wynton Kelly, Paul Chambers and Jimmy Cobb) and the band to end all bands, the one including Wayne Shorter and Herbie Hancock. The saxophonists here are George Coleman, whose supple, athletic, highly patterned playing helped define the straight-ahead jazz of then and now, and Sam Rivers, who stretched things much further. But by Davis's standards, it's a reined-in period. Sony Legacy. 7 CD's. $130. RATLIFF
'DEATHPROD' Four CD's document the sound of Deathprod, the solo project from the Oslo-based electronic producer Helge Stein. Suffice it to say this set doesn't rely on songs you can sing by heart: Mr. Stein loves to summon up thick, often ominous clouds of sound, gesturing at everything from avant-garde composition to black metal without ever quite revealing his hand. Highlights include the seductive (and, needless to say, ultra-obscure) 1994 "Treetop Drive" album, a tremulous collaboration with the violinist Hans Magnus Ryan, as well as "Imaginary Songs From Tristan da Cunha," a wild adventure in "ethnographic surrealism" (according to the liner notes), where ominous hums and an eerie female choir eventually give way to a truly unexpected noise: applause. Rune Grammofon. 4 CD's. $55.98. KELEFA SANNEH
'DOCTORS, PROFESSORS, KINGS & QUEENS: THE BIG OL' BOX OF NEW ORLEANS' Past and present are inextricable in New Orleans, where musical styles from the 1920's to the 21st century are all in the air. Jazz, blues, funk, rhythm and blues and local phenomena like carnival music, brass bands and (imported from the bayous) zydeco are all on this set, which has plenty of songs in praise of the city itself. Current New Orleans musicians and club favorites mingle with pioneers (Louis Armstrong, Professor Longhair, Fats Domino, Clifton Chenier, the Meters) on an unacademic, noncategorized album that suits the city's time-warped party spirit. Shout Factory. 4 CD's. 59.98. PARELES
'DURAN DURAN: THE SINGLES 1986-1995' Your average box set aims to consolidate a career, but this one (like the three recent Depeche Mode boxes and the new Blondie box) deconsolidates a career, putting each hit (or miss) single on its own CD, along with a few B-sides. In other words, this unwieldy box is for Duran Duran fanatics only. The best part is the remixes, which hint at the evolution of dance music, from the Latin Rascals' gleefully chopped-up version of "Notorious," from 1986, to Junior Vasquez's coolly efficient house-music mix of Duran Duran's take on the hip-hop classic "White Lines," from 1995. For casual listeners, there's a great one-disc compilation here, but you'll have to make it yourself: all you need is a blank CD, a CD burner and a friend who's one of those fanatics. Capitol. 14 CD's. $46.98. SANNEH
'FIVE GUYS WALK INTO A BAR ...,' THE FACES Nowadays, Rod Stewart wears a tuxedo and croons pop standards. But from 1969 to 1975, when he sang with the Faces, he reveled in self-deprecating working-class rowdiness. The Faces played Cockney-tonk, dousing American blues, soul and country with beery English bonhomie, while Mr. Stewart came across as a jovial lad who could never turn down a good time. This collection mixes hits with live recordings and rehearsals, and despite a few too many cover versions of American soul and blues songs, it's a solid reminder of the Faces' rootsy, rough-hewn charms. Rhino. 4 CD's. $59.98. PARELES
'DEXTER GORDON: THE COMPLETE PRESTIGE RECORDINGS' From a 1950 recording at the Hula Hut in Los Angeles, with an audience lustily shouting him on, through a pair of lovely 1969 records with a rhythm section of Barry Harris, Buster Williams and Tootie Heath, and scattered live and studio dates in the early 70's, this set collects the tenor saxophonist Dexter Gordon in one casual situation after another. Gordon was earthy, natural class personified: the raw-toned, floppy, pleasantly laggard playing enlivens all this blues and bop. Fantasy. 11 CD's. $140.RATLIFF
'GRAND THEFT AUTO: SAN ANDREAS' The ultraviolent California city of Los Santos has some of the country's best radio stations, even though Los Santos doesn't exist: it's the fictional setting of "Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas," the blockbuster video game sequel to "Grand Theft Auto: Vice City." This eight-CD boxed set compiles the greatest hits of the fake city's fake radio stations. Since the game's aesthetic owes so much to Los Angeles hip-hop, it's odd that California rappers get only half a disc here. (There are discs devoted to country weepers, heavy funk, 1970's riff rock, 1990's alt-rock and more.) It's fun to hear hits everyone remembers (Bell Biv Devoe's epochal "Poison," on the new jack swing disc) bump up against those most have forgotten (Samuelle's greasy "So You Like What You See"), but still: don't these fictional radio stations have fictional D.J.'s who could stitch these stand-alone tracks together into a real-life mix? Rockstar Games/Interscope. 8 CD's. $51.98. SANNEH
'BEYOND DESCRIPTION (1973-1989),' GRATEFUL DEAD'ALL GOOD THINGS,' JERRY GARCIAEven die-hard Deadheads admit the Grateful Dead's later years don't match the dizzying creativity of the band's beginnings. The prodigal improvisations of the early Dead were often banked down to a simmer, tempos grew logy and group fantasias gave way to more deliberate strategies and experiments: with odd meters, with suites of songs, with exotica (notably the still strange "Blues for Allah") and with the Dead's version of funk. Outtakes that augment this collection of eight studio albums and two double-CD live albums (Rhino. 12 CD's. $149.98.) largely vindicate the Dead's original editing. It's the live tracks, and a studio jam with Lowell George singing "Good Lovin'," that work up the old light-fingered serendipity. Jerry Garcia's six studio albums (Rhino. 6 CD's. $74.98.) show a musician curious about every style from soul to Appalachian ballads to Gypsy jazz, and his solo albums shine with guitar solos that don't burrow back into the band's flux. But after Garcia's first solo album, the Dead got his best songs. His own bands grounded him in conventional genres, and while Garcia's plaintive voice can be touching, his many cover versions fall short of the originals.PARELES
'LEFT OF THE DIAL: DISPATCHES FROM THE UNDERGROUND' In the 1980's, while MTV was raising the wattage of celebrity pop, the disciples of punk created a do-it-yourself realm of quirky songs, local scenes, genuinely independent labels and van-and-couch tours. This set doesn't have every local brainstorm - sorry, no Notekillers - and it's tilted toward Los Angeles, but it does reach from Hoboken (the Feelies) to Brisbane (the Go-Betweens). Heard now, these songs sound both idiosyncratic and classic: terse, melodic, often harking back to the 60's. And they're far less dated than the era's glossier hits. Rhino. 4 CD's. $64.98. PARELES
'MICHAEL JACKSON: THE ULTIMATE COLLECTION' Like a lot of boxed sets, this one aims to do two things at once. Songs are chosen based on two contradictory sets of criteria: they have to be either very popular or very obscure. That means the still-big hits from "Thriller" give way to the rock 'n' roll novelty "State of Shock," featuring Mick Jagger (it's better than you'd think) and the extraterrestrial slow jam "Someone in the Dark," featuring E.T. (unfortunately, it's exactly what you'd think). So this isn't the kind of boxed set you'd want to load into your CD changer and it could have used a bit more annotation (there are no reminiscences from the star himself, just an essay by the cultural critic Nelson George), but there are some minor revelations: the third disc documents Mr. Jackson's underrated post-"Thriller" period, when he was scrambling to respond to hip-hop's increasing popularity. And the DVD captures a Bucharest concert where the audience outdoes the star: his incredibly precise dance moves mesmerize, but it's the crying, fainting fans who truly astonish. Epic/Sony BMG. 4 CD's, 1 DVD. $59.98. SANNEH
'DON PULLEN: MOSAIC SELECT 13' The pianist Don Pullen, who died in 1995, solved quite a puzzle: how to connect the disjunctive vehemence of avant-garde jazz with the melody and rhythm of the music's more popular tradition. He could play and compose with Dukish prettiness, but he also dealt out rudely dissonant cluster chords. His dependable quartet, jointly led by the saxophonist George Adams, improved through the 1980's; then he made two trio records ("New Beginnings" and "Random Thoughts") that were alternately lively and extraordinarily moving. The four original records from the end of the quartet and the beginning of the trio are repackaged here. Three CD's. $39. Available from Mosaic only. RATLIFF
'DIZZY REECE: MOSAIC SELECT 11' Dizzy Reece, a New York-based trumpeter born in Jamaica, made four solid records for Blue Note from 1958 to 1960 that disappeared into collectors-only oblivion; this set resurrects them. ("Blues in Trinity," recorded before he got to America, with a band including the little-known English saxophonist Tubby Hayes and the American drummer Art Taylor, is a special find; the rest come from after his resettlement, using New York musicians from the A-list or close to it.) Mr. Reece played with a hint of downcast calm; his style wasn't as hard-shelled as many American trumpeters of his time. Three CD's. $39. Available from Mosaic only. RATLIFF
'THIS IS REGGAE MUSIC: THE GOLDEN ERA, 1960-1975' Another year, another reggae boxed set. This one isn't particularly ambitious, but it is effective, sketching a neat history of reggae's evolution from 1960 to 1975, including trailblazers from Alton Ellis to Bob Marley to I Roy. Every song gets a paragraph that adds context and trivia (is there any good reason why every boxed set doesn't contain this?), and even experts may find themselves seduced by the sheer thrill of hearing the genre stretch out, getting heavier and slower and bolder. Lots of the best songs here seem to be doing everything at once: Andy Capp's pioneering dub track "Pop a Top" is both a cheerful keyboard-driven lark and a thrilling (even unnerving) sound experiment; the Heptones' "Hypocrite" is sweeter than any pop song is fiery, and more fiery than any pop song is sweet. Trojan. 4 CD's. $54.98. SANNEH
Copyright 2004 The New York Times Company Home Privacy Policy Search Corrections RSS Help Back to Top

- posted by Michael P. Whelan @ 6:17 PM

 
Art Scene In Motion

December 19, 2004STUDIO VISIT
The History of Art, in Baggy Jeans and Bomber JacketsBy MIA FINEMAN
OUT & ABOUT 'Passing/Posing' Kehinde Wiley's show will be at the Brooklyn Museum, 200 Eastern Parkway, at Prospect Park, through Feb. 5.

ON a recent Wednesday afternoon, the studio on West 23rd Street where Kehinde Wiley lives and works was a maelstrom of activity. Near the door, three art handlers were packing five of his large canvases for shipment, hammering supports and loudly tearing through fat rolls of cellophane tape. The paintings, which were barely dry, were to be shipped that night to the contemporary-art fair Art Basel Miami Beach, where they would be installed in the booth of Mr. Wiley's New York dealer, Jeffrey Deitch.
Several young assistants breezed in and out of the studio, talking on cellphones about travel arrangements and trying not to collide with the packers. A couple of cleaning women in white uniforms stepped gingerly around the large potted palms and the half-finished canvases leaned against the walls, collecting abandoned coffee cups and emptying trash cans. The artist's two Italian greyhounds - a breed he first noticed in late-Renaissance portraits of Italian noblemen - scurried across the hardwood floor on toothpicklike legs, vying for attention.
At the center of the commotion sat Mr. Wiley, an amiable man with a round face and a sturdy, compact frame. Leaning forward in his chair, elbows on his knees, he tried to focus on his interview. "Sorry things are so crazy today," he said, then laughed. "Actually, it's like this pretty much every day."
Just three years out of art school, Mr. Wiley has achieved the kind of meteoric success that most young artists only dream about. He is represented by major galleries in New York, Los Angeles and Chicago. His shows have been covered by the art press, as well as by mass-circulation magazines like Vibe, Vogue and Essence. His work has already found its way into several museum collections, as well as into the mansions of celebrities like Russell Simmons, Elton John and Denzel Washington." If you want to buy one of his newest paintings, which sell for up to $20,000, you'll have to put your name on a waiting list.
Now, at 27, he's having his first solo museum show, "Passing/Posing," at the Brooklyn Museum through Feb. 5. The exhibition features 18 large-scale paintings, all depicting young black men in urban street clothes - sports-team jerseys, hoodies, baseball caps, baggy jeans, puffy jackets - floating in front of lushly colored decorative backgrounds. In the back room is a chapel-like installation, first shown at last year's Miami Beach Basel art fair, which includes four cupola-shaped paintings and an enormous ceiling panel that the Brooklyn Museum recently bought for its permanent collection.
Still dressed in his work clothes - a paint-encrusted "wife-beater" tank top and cotton shorts, which serve as wearable rags for wiping off his brushes - Mr. Wiley described his process. His models are young men whom he approaches on the streets of Harlem, Los Angeles and Detroit, inviting them back to his studio. "Having an attractive woman with me helps," he added with a laugh. (He also pays them for their time: $100 an hour.)
Together, they leaf through art history books - usually monographs on old masters like Tiepolo, Titian, Ingres or Raphael. The subject selects a pose from one of the paintings, which he imitates while Mr. Wiley photographs him. "I've seen people choose small figures in large paintings, not even the stars of the show," he said, "and I've seen people who directly want to see themselves as Christ in heaven."
Later, using his photographs for reference, the artist paints the figure, adding background threaded with ornamental patterns derived from a variety of sources, including Celtic manuscript illumination, Islamic metalwork, and Baroque and Rococo architectural designs. Sometimes he transforms the ornate filigree patterns into a sea of stylized spermatazoa, which he renders in gold or platinum - a sly reference to the hyper-masculine posturing of hip-hop culture.
Mr. Wiley was born and raised in south central Los Angeles. When he was 11, his mother, a linguist, enrolled him in an art program that supplemented weekly studio classes with visits to local museums. At the Huntington Library galleries, he was particularly drawn to portraits by the 18th-century British painters Thomas Gainsborough and Joshua Reynolds.
"They were so artificial and opulent," he said. "There was this strange otherworldiness that, as a black kid from Los Angeles, I had no manageable way of digesting. But at the same time, there was this desire to somehow possess that or belong to that."
After getting his bachelor's degree at the San Francisco Art Institute, he went on to the graduate program at the Yale University School of Art. There, he came up against his instructors' expectations that his work would deal explicitly with the politics of black identity. "There was this overwhelming sense of, 'O.K., Kehinde, where's your Negro statement?' " he recalled.
His response was to paint a series of ironic images of watermelons in the style of Magritte or de Chirico. These works are now installed in the back of Mr. Wiley's closet. "While they're not some of the most sophisticated or beautiful paintings I've made," he said, "they're some of my favorites because they remind me of a point in my life that felt absolutely desperate and lost and powerless. I don't want to romanticize that too much, but it's interesting to look at."
It was in 2001, when he was an artist in residence at the Studio Museum in Harlem, that Mr. Wiley hit upon his current melding of late-Renaissance prototypes and hip-hop street style. "With the work I'm doing now, I'm interested in history as it relates to bling-bling," he said in an interview with Christine Y. Kim, a curator at the Studio Museum. "In places like Harlem, people ornament their bodies, love Gucci and Versace ... I'm interested in certain types of French Rococo ornament that end up as faux décor in shopping malls or in Michael Graves's faux neo-classicism, for that matter."
Ms. Kim sees Mr. Wiley's style in relation to the work of his contemporaries, like Yinka Shonibare, a British artist of Nigerian descent who reinterpreted Fragonard's "Swing" (1767) using African textiles. "They're taking elements from two very distinct, divergent histories and cross-referencing the image and iconography to create an explosive and compelling collusion of histories and ideas," she said in a telephone interview.
It's not difficult to understand why Mr. Wiley's work would appeal to curators and collectors of contemporary art. His paintings are big and bold, and the colors are exquisitely rich; their iconography is hip, savvy and spiked with references to the European high-art tradition.
But this artist is also eager to reach a more general audience. "I want my work to look as familiar to young kids as it is to seasoned art historians who know all the references," he said. "What appeals to me about painting is something that has cultural fluency."
Another undeniable aspect of Mr. Wiley's appeal has to do with his penchant for showmanship. For the opening of his show in Brooklyn, he hired a drag queen trained in Italian opera, sporting a wig and Venetian-style ball gown and backed by a string quartet in black tie, to perform a version of the Kelis song "Milkshake." This was followed by an extravagant banquet at Grand Prospect Hall, a Victorian-era ballroom in Park Slope.
"He knows how to make life big," said Mr. Deitch, known for his high-octane, youth-oriented gallery program. For his next show at Deitch Projects, "Rumors of War," Mr. Wiley plans to create a series of large-scale equestrian portraits, using live horses as models.
"We'll probably have to hire stunt doubles for some of the poses," he mused. He has also commissioned a composer to transpose hip-hop songs to be played by an all-black military brass band and has applied for a permit to hold an opening-night parade somewhere in Manhattan.
Mr. Wiley's new paintings made it safely to the Miami Beach Basel art fair, and after a brief detour to go fishing in the Gulf of Mexico, so did Mr. Wiley - with 100 pounds of fish in tow. "He found the hottest restaurateur in town to cook up all the fish and threw a huge banquet for all his friends," Mr. Deitch said. "It was the most fun thing going on in Miami Beach on Sunday night."
Copyright 2004 The New York Times Company Home Privacy Policy Search Corrections RSS Help Back to Top

- posted by Michael P. Whelan @ 5:36 PM

 
Batman With A British Accent

December 19, 2004
Batman Now Speaks With a British AccentBy DAVID GRITTEN

LONDON
SHORT of Davy Crockett and some of the other characters in John Wayne's oeuvre, it's hard to think of a more obviously all-American hero than Batman, Bruce Wayne's caped alter ego. As for Batman's fictional hometown, Gotham City: has anyone ever doubted that it claimed far closer kinship with the darker corners of New York City, which sometimes shares that nickname, than with the Nottinghamshire village of Gotham?
Even so, "Batman Begins," which opens in American theaters on June 17, will arrive as the product of a startlingly British alignment of talent and location, though the intended setting of the myth hasn't changed. The film, from Warner Brothers, was shot largely in Britain by a young London-born director, Christopher Nolan. And the cast includes Christian Bale, a Welshman, as Bruce Wayne/Batman, along with British mainstays like Michael Caine, Liam Neeson (born in Northern Ireland), Gary Oldman, Tom Wilkinson and Linus Roache in supporting roles.
Some exterior scenes for "Batman Begins," now in post-production, were shot in downtown Chicago (at least on the right continent); but Gotham City was recreated in an unlikely spot in the heart of the English countryside, at R.A.F. Cardington, a former British air base some 35 miles north of London. Cardington is best known for two gigantic hangars that once housed the pre-World War II-era airships R100 and R101. The larger hangar was transformed into Gotham for "Batman Begins."
Whether audiences will actually sense Britishness in the finished movie remains far from clear. Mr. Nolan, after all, successfully cast Guy Pearce, who was born in Britain and grew up in Australia, as a memory-challenged American insurance investigator in his trademark film, "Memento," which was shot in Southern California.
Among the new movie's many British actors (and Cillian Murphy, an Irish-born London resident, playing the villainous drug peddler, Dr. Jonathan Crane, a k a "The Scarecrow"), at least one should seem a natural presence: Mr. Caine, who plays Bruce Wayne's British butler, Alfred Pennyworth, succeeding the British actor Michael Gough, who took the part in the previous four Batman films. But Mr. Neeson plays Henri Ducard, Bruce's distinctly non-British-sounding mentor and trainer; Mr. Oldman is Lt. James Gordon, a friendly Gotham City cop who helps Batman fight crime; Mr. Wilkinson plays a Mafia don, Carmine Falcone; and Mr. Roache is Bruce's father, Dr. Thomas Wayne. Indeed, Morgan Freeman, as Lucius Fox, a Wayne family friend, and Katie Holmes, as Rachel Dawes, Bruce's childhood friend and adult love interest, are the only Americans in the 10 leading roles.
Mr. Bale, for his part, handily mastered an American accent for his portrayal of Patrick Bateman, the sociopathic Manhattanite in "American Psycho," and the rest of the cast appear to have learned the same trick at one time or another. (Mr. Neeson most recently did so in his well-received performance as the sex researcher Alfred C. Kinsey in "Kinsey.")
But these fine actors are clearly in for some extra work, which perhaps speaks to the importance of Mr. Nolan. Although he has never directed an action film, he was given wide latitude by Warner Brothers in its push to revive a faltering franchise that hit the wall in 1997 when its fourth iteration, "Batman & Robin," directed by Joel Schumacher, took in just $107 million at the American box office.
"I think it's about Chris Nolan's power as a director, and his vision of what he wants to do," said Ian Thomson of the U.K. Film Council. In re-envisioning the franchise, Mr. Nolan decided to return to the story's genesis, as outlined in "Batman: Year One" comics: as a child, Bruce Wayne saw his parents murdered and vowed to avenge all evil.
Warner Brothers, which declined to discuss the new film's casting or make Mr. Nolan available to do so, need not feel uneasy about associating "Batman Begins" with more typically British products - the romantic comedies of Hugh Grant or the endless string of period costume dramas with bewhiskered men in frock coats and maidservants, eyes cast downward, bobbing and curtsying obediently.
In fact, the studio need only look at its own output lately. Of the major American film companies, Warner Brothers has been the most aggressive in working on British turf, Mr. Thomson noted. Much of the "Harry Potter" franchise is being shot at Leavesden, another abandoned British air base. Recently, acres of soundstage space at another studio were given over to shooting "Charlie and the Chocolate Factory," starring Johnny Depp and set for release by Warners next year. Within the last year, moreover, interiors for two other ambitious productions, "Phantom of the Opera" and "Alexander," both distributed in the United States by Warners, were shot on stages here. (Not to mention the first "Batman" in the current series, which was shot in Britain.)
All of this comes in a year when, even allowing for tax breaks, the weak dollar has made Britain forbiddingly expensive. So why not go to, say, Eastern Europe, which is cheaper? Much of the Civil War film "Cold Mountain," for example, was shot in Romania. Technical expertise is one reason; Britain justifiably boasts of outstanding behind-the-scenes filmmaking talent, including a cluster of world-class special effects houses in the Soho district of London. "Studios know they get value for money here," Mr. Thomson said.
And there are other attractions. If American film executives are faced with a long shoot abroad, and the choice is London or maybe Bucharest, they're apt to choose London, where the language is familiar and a dizzying range of entertainment and culture compensates for absence from home. Few countries, moreover, have soundstages as big as those in Britain. Visitors to Cardington have said that the Gotham City set is vast enough to encompass a freeway and an elevated rail track like the El in Chicago. (This Gotham is in a state of decay, ravaged by corruption and organized crime, its look influenced by the now-demolished slums in Kowloon, Hong Kong.)
Finally, one wonders whether it even matters that British actors will dominate a classic piece of Americana. It's certainly been done before: In "Gone With the Wind," the main Southern belles were played by Vivien Leigh, born in British India, and Olivia de Havilland, daughter of a British patent attorney in Tokyo, while Leslie Howard's Ashley Wilkes never quite shook off Howard's native London.
More recently, there was much harrumphing in the British news media when an American actress (a Texan, even) was chosen to play that essentially English heroine, Bridget Jones. But the iciness of the British thawed when they finally saw Renée Zellweger's portrayal.
Certainly, the two enthusiastically received "Batman Begins" trailers being shown in theaters betray no sign of the film's British provenance. So Americans now face some choices. They can be gravely insulted that the British have appropriated an all-American icon. They can be amused by the whole farrago. Or they can view it as subtle revenge by the British on Hollywood for foisting Austin Powers upon them.
Copyright 2004 The New York Times Company Home Privacy Policy Search Corrections RSS Help Back to Top

- posted by Michael P. Whelan @ 5:28 PM