Finding the Face of Jesus vs Obama as Jesus part1

Sculpture of Obama as Jesus Causes Stir

NATHANIEL HERNANDEZ

AP

Obama as Jesus?

Charles Rex Arbogast, AP

Art student David Cordero's papier mache sculpture of Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama as a messianic figure - titled "Blessing" - is causing a stir at a Chicago art school

CHICAGO (April 3) - He wears Jesus' robes and a neon blue halo, looks like Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama and is causing a stir at a Chicago art school.

An undergraduate student's papier mache sculpture of Obama as a messianic figure - entitled "Blessing" - went on display Saturday at a downtown gallery run by the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. By Monday, word of the piece had spread on political blogs, and the school had been flooded with calls.

David Cordero, 24, made the sculpture for his senior show after noticing all the attention Obama has received since he first hinted he may run for the presidency.

"All of this is a response to what I've been witnessing and hearing, this idea that Barack is sort of a potential savior that might come and absolve the country of all its sins," Cordero said. "In a lot of ways it's about caution in assigning all these inflated expectations on one individual, and expecting them to change something that many hands have shaped."

Obama's campaign worked Monday to the distance the Illinois senator from the artwork.

"While we respect First Amendment rights and don't think the artist was trying to be offensive, Senator Obama, as rule, isn't a fan of art that offends religious sensibilities," said Obama spokeswoman Jen Psaki.

Cordero said the school had fielded plenty of calls about his work, "some of them from angry people." He also said he had heard fromafew potential buyers.

Bruce Jenkins, dean of the art school's undergraduate program, said response to the piece - part of a student exhibition - has been mostly positive. He said people should take a close look at the sculpture and the context it was created in before judging it.

"When you see it, when you spend time it with it, you understand that it's not a provocative work at all," Jenkins said. "It opens a set of questions."

Most Popular - Last 24 Hours Possible Caves on Mars Intrigue ScientistsCouple's Home Razed After Three-Year FightTexas Workers Find Fetus in Sewer PipeSculpture of Obama as Jesus Causes StirTeacher Convicted of Making Bomb ThreatsThe Archdiocese of Chicago had not seen the work as of Monday afternoon and could not comment on it, said spokeswoman Dianne Dunagan.

The piece comes amid Catholic outrage in New York that led to an art gallery canceling an exhibit featuring a nude 6-foot-tall, anatomically correct chocolate sculpture of Jesus Christ.

Artist Cosimo Cavallaro said Saturday that he has received threats as a result of the sculpture, called "My Sweet Lord." Cavallaro said the controversy spurred "thousands" of e-mail messages from people offering help, donations and exhibition space.

 

The Human Face of Divinity

Michelangelo

This Christ from the Last Judgement by Michelangelo appears to me to be a portly young man, a little heavy. Although Jesus' muscles are evident, they appear "soft", not the same as an athlete, or laborer. Why would the artist choose this appearance? Let's speculate. This is the risen Christ with a "glorified" body. It would not have the defects of a body on earth, although there is a red wound barely visible that would correspond to the spear thrust into his side at the Crucifixion. A really thin body might be seen by Michelangelo's contemporaries as a symptom of illness. To be thin and muscular might indicate someone who works hard at physical labor, like a peasant or soldier. The well off, the nobility and clergy, would not be engaging in physical labor. Jesus at the Judgment would rank higher than any of these and it may be that the artist wanted to communicate a sense of rank.

The face does not seem to me to be particularly handsome or ugly. This might be the artist's way of avoiding disrespect for the Christ and criticism. If he were too handsome, if he exuded sexual magnetism, it would probably be seen as blasphemous. A face that is ugly or ferocious could also seem blasphemous, with the added result of making Christ seem unapproachable. [In contrast, look at the Christ of the Fiery Eye, from 14th century

Classical Music Looks Toward China With Hope

Classical Music Looks Toward China With Hope

BEIJING, April 1 — Yu Zhenyang, a self-assured 15-year-old violinist with a picture of Jascha Heifetz in his bedroom, glided through the Mendelssohn Concerto from memory. His teacher bounded across the room, flailing his arms, swooning to demonstrate pathos and urging Zhenyang to play with more passion.

The Classical RevolutionMillion Musicians Bloom

This is the first in a series of articles looking at China's embrace of Western classical music.

Multimedia

Classical Music and China

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Niva Whyman for The New York Times

Yu Zhenyang, a 15-year-old violinist studying at the Central Conservatory of Music in Beijing, during a lesson with his teacher, Lin Yaoji.

“You are the lead,” said the teacher, Lin Yaoji. “Be bolder. Stretch the distance between the notes, and then close the distance. I don’t want symmetry. Surprise me.”

Zhenyang is one of the brightest young stars at the Central Conservatory of Music in Beijing, which has in recent years become part of China’s huge export machine churning out musical virtuosos.

With the same energy, drive and sheer population weight that has made it an economic power, China has become a considerable force in Western classical music. Conservatories are bulging. Provincial cities demand orchestras and concert halls. Pianos and violins made in China fill shipping containers leaving its ports.

The Chinese enthusiasm suggests the potential for a growing market for recorded music and live performances just as an aging fan base and declining record sales worry many professionals in Europe and the United States. Sales for a top-selling classical recording in the West number merely in the thousands instead of the tens of thousands 25 years ago.

More profoundly, classical music executives say that the art form is being increasingly marginalized in a sea of popular culture and new media. Fewer young American listeners find their way to classical music, largely because of the lack of the music education that was widespread in public schools two generations ago. As a result many orchestras and opera houses struggle to fill halls.

China, with an estimated 30 million piano students and 10 million violin students, is on an opposite trajectory. Comprehensive tests to enter the top conservatories now attract nearly 200,000 students a year, compared with a few thousand annually in the 1980s, according to the Chinese Musicians Association.

The hardware side has also exploded. As of 2003, 87 factories made Western musical instruments. By last year the number had grown to 142, producing 370,000 pianos, one million violins and six million guitars. China dominates world production of all three.

The Communist Party, which three decades ago was trying to wipe out classical music, now deems it an essential component of the “advanced culture” it vows to create to make the country a true great power.

At the same time European classical music has a charge of pop-culture frisson in China. Young people flock to concerts, or at least those they can afford. A woman at a Beijing bookstore was seen carrying Mozart’s portrait in her wallet. Piano showrooms look like auto dealerships, with coddled youth staging impromptu recitals on Baldwins and Yamahas made in China, as anxious parents haggle over prices. Stars like Lang Lang, the piano virtuoso, make television commercials.

“Music is hot in China,” said Chen Hung-Kuan, the chairman of the piano department at the Shanghai Conservatory. “It may be fading in Western countries,” he added, but in China the talent is “unlimited.”

Harnessing that talent has not always been smooth. Parents view acceptance to an elite conservatory not only as a passage into the world of art but also as an escape from poverty. Teachers push their students to master technical showpieces by rote to impress judges at the standardized nationwide competitions that serve as entrance exams for top schools.

China at its best produces virtuosos who can compete worldwide. But it has yet to develop a deep, sustainable culture in Western music. It has no symphony orchestra that ranks with a major orchestra in the United States, most critics say. Fans here flock to hear greats from the West but often shun the high prices to hear local performers.

The government has a complex bordering on mania when it comes to building concert halls. Some are white elephants, constructed hastily with little attention to programming or economic viability.

But optimists hope that these are growing pains for an art form that only a few decades ago, during the Cultural Revolution, was suppressed. Today classical music arouses few of the political and nationalist sensitivities that have made it harder for other kinds of Western culture or media to take root in China.

 

Classical Music Looks Toward China With Hope

Published: April 3, 2007

(Page 2 of 3)

“Music is the least national of the arts,” said Wu Zuqiang, a composer, a former director of the Central Conservatory and a government adviser on the arts. “It crosses cultures more easily than anything else.”

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Miranda Mimi Kuo for The New York Times

Above, Yu Zhenyang, a violinist, with his mother, Yu Ya, who quit her job to bring him to a conservatory in Beijing. Below, Beijing’s National Theater.

The Classical RevolutionMillion Musicians Bloom

This is the first in a series of articles looking at China's embrace of Western classical music.

Multimedia

Audio Slide Show Classical Music and China

One of the clearest signs that classical music has official approval in China came from Li Lanqing, a retired member of the ruling Politburo Standing Committee and former minister of education. Mr. Li wrote a lengthy, loving tribute to 50 Western composers in which he argued that you cannot be a true intellectual if you don’t understand Western classical music.

In a surprisingly bold statement he said that Chinese composers should “borrow theory and technique from European classical music to reform Chinese music.”

What Mr. Li called for was the revival of a longstanding goal. European classical music has long if not deep roots in China and has been associated with modernity for centuries. The Jesuit Matteo Ricci brought a clavichord when he visited China in the late 16th century. An Italian missionary, Teodoricus Pedrini, arrived in Beijing in 1711 and wrote court music for Emperor Kangxi.

Western music flourished here in the early 20th century. It even enjoyed strong support by Communist leaders until the Cultural Revolution. When China’s “reform and opening” policy took hold in the late 1970s, Western music started making a significant comeback. Chinese musicians began flowing to the United States.

By the 1990s members of the Politburo boasted of their love for classical music. President Jiang Zemin said he consoled himself after the death of the paramount leader Deng Xiaoping in 1997 by listening to Mozart’s Requiem.

But elite support may count for less than the upsurge in interest among Chinese nationwide, including millions of parents and youth far outside Beijing, Shanghai and the other modern cities.

That trend began, paradoxically, just as Mao Zedong was trying to wipe out remnants of Western bourgeois influence. Musical talent was one of the few things that could offer an escape from harsh labor in the countryside, where millions of urban youth were sent to commune with peasants.

“Every kid — you have 10 fingers, you were playing something at that time,” said Li-Kuo Chang, the Chinese-born assistant principal violist of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra. “Whether you have talent or not, that was a way of saving you to be sent to the factory or farm.”

The Cultural Revolution gave rise to a hunger for music. When it ended, people were “so thirsty to suck everything in,” said Yu Long, one of China’s most energetic conductors and musical entrepreneurs.

Mr. Yu described his own initiation. One day in 1976 his grandfather approached him with a “mysterious smile” and played a tape of Mozart’s Symphony No. 40. “I suddenly felt in another world,” Mr. Yu said. “I decided to go abroad and study. It opened a whole new world for me.”

More recently China’s family-planning policy, which limits most urban parents to a single child, prompted many to treat their offspring like prodigies.

Children are being pushed to study an instrument, both as a possible means of advancement in the country’s hypercompetitive school system and as a way of creating respectable, well-rounded adults. Increased prosperity means that more families can pay for lessons, which has turned private teaching into a lucrative profession.

“We have the chance to give the best to our kids,” Mr. Yu said. “Not like our parents.”

The story of Yu Zhenyang, the Mendelssohn-playing student, is not unusual. He started playing violin at 7 in a mandatory arts class in Jingzhou, in Hubei province. His teacher, a graduate of the Central Conservatory, recognized his talent and persuaded his parents to allow him to specialize in music. At 9 he won a national youth violin competition, and two years later he tested high enough to enter the middle school attached to the Central Conservatory.

His mother, Yu Ya, gave up her job and moved with him to Beijing. “Our feeling was that he was not only the pride of our family, but actually of the whole town,” said Ms. Yu, who accompanies Zhenyang to classes, rehearsals and performances, often with a video camera. The family, with little savings of its own, borrows from friends to pay the steep tuition and the rent for part of a small walk-up apartment near the school.

Zhenyang sleeps and practices in the only bedroom. “He has to have a room that’s big enough to practice, or it doesn’t sound right,” Ms. Yu said. She sleeps on a cot tucked along the wall of the hallway outside.

Classical Music Looks Toward China With Hope

Published: April 3, 2007

(Page 3 of 3)

Zhenyang said his goal was to play so well that musical experts around the world would not be able to tell his nationality unless they looked at his face. “Much of what people talk about as being identifiable as the Chinese accent in music is really just not measuring up to the international standard,” he said. “It’s subtle, but you can hear the same flaws in the performances of people trained in China. That’s what I want to overcome.”

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The Classical RevolutionMillion Musicians Bloom

This is the first in a series of articles looking at China's embrace of Western classical music.

Multimedia

Audio Slide Show Classical Music and China

The insight hints at one of the obstacles Chinese musical experts feel that the country still faces. Classical music, Chinese critics say, is still treated too often like a technology that can be mastered with the right combination of capital, labor and quality control. But a combination of technique, culture and creativity are needed to create playing that sounds spontaneous, sensitive and rich in emotion — not wooden and shaped by a cookie cutter.

Yu Long, the conductor, said the major obstacle to spreading musical culture was not money but the state-run education system, which focuses on prizes and status among young musicians and teachers. Though awards are seen to bring credit to society, they do little to enhance people’s appetite for music. “It cannot be like a race,” Mr. Yu said. “It is about beauty and feeling.” And music must be seen as part of a larger culture, he added, as in the West. “Here people lock themselves up in a practice room and think they can make great music,” he said.”

There are other concerns. While government support for classical music is clearly strong, critics say China has misallocated hundreds of millions of dollars on elaborate concert halls. That money might havebeen better spent, they suggest, on music education and affordable performances.

The trend began in Shanghai in the 1990s, when city leaders decided they needed a great opera house to compete with other international cities. The city set aside a prime plot of land next to the new government headquarters. The striking French-designed glass-and-steel structure cost $160 million.

Critics say city officials have spent far less time and money on managing the house. Its administrators, under pressure to recoup the big investment, have set New York prices for many shows despite Shanghai’s much lower average standard of living. The city pressures state-owned companies to purchase seats to fill the house.

Communist Party leaders have dreamed of having an even grander performance center in Beijing since the 1950s. President Jiang revived the idea in the 1990s and selected the block just west of Tiananmen Square. The government chose another French architect, Paul Andreu.

The National Theater, as it is called, is already widely considered a white elephant, even before it has opened. The project is four years late and, by local media estimates, at least $100 million over its already enormous $400 million budget.

Communist Party leaders argued for years over who should run the National Theater. No agency wanted to take responsibility if it had to assume the cost of operating its four performance halls. Finally, late last year, the Beijing city government was named the operator. But no formal opening has been announced.

Beijing needs a space for music that is bigger and more sophisticated acoustically, but the government mishandled the project, said Wu Zuqiang, the government arts adviser, who consulted on the theater during its design phase in the 1990s.

Classical music in China faces other obstacles. The quality of instruments in conservatory orchestras, particularly woodwinds and brasses, is poor. Not enough time is given to chamber music, vital to building the skills of listening and playing together with sensitivity. Some wonder how much Western traditions can be assimilated.

“There’s no question the talent is there,” said Joseph W. Polisi, president of the Juilliard School. “The commitment to Western art music is definitely there. But is that talent prepared to absorb what we have here?”

Pianistic Postcards Spanning Centuries Pierre-Laurent Aimard

Pianistic Postcards Spanning Centuries Pierre-Laurent Aimard

 

 

By ANTHONY TOMMASINI

Published: April 3, 2007

The astounding French pianist Pierre-Laurent Aimard spent the first part of his adventurous career in the front lines of the musical avant-garde as a mainstay of Pierre Boulez’s contemporary-music ensemble in Paris. In the last decade, though, he has branched out, revealing himself to be an elegant and exciting performer of Mozart, Beethoven, Schumann and Ravel.

Jennifer Taylor for The New York Times

Pierre-Laurent Aimard at his lecture-recital at Zankel Hall.

On Sunday night at Zankel Hall, as part of his Perspectives series at Carnegie Hall this season, another dimension of this essential 49-year-old artist emerged: inspired teacher. Mr. Aimard presented a program of nearly three hours titled “A Promenade in 88 Keys and 300 Years.” His subject was the evolution of musical styles during three centuries of piano music, and the shifts in attitudes among composers toward the piano itself. To make his points in this provocative and continually surprising lecture, Mr. Aimard played more than 30 musical examples, both short pieces and excerpts of longer ones, everything from Scarlatti to Scriabin to Stockhausen.

That this cultured Frenchman spoke in heavily accented English and sometimes, searching for the right phrase, invented words (like Bartok’s “giving freedom to these resourcements of energies”) made his comments all the more delightful. Mr. Aimard proved a most mischievous professor. Rather than delineate the individual achievements of the Viennese Classical masters, he assembled an amalgam to make a three-movement Viennese Classical sonata. A humorous presto from Haydn’s Sonata No. 40 in G was conscripted as a first movement (even though it is actually a finale, but “that doesn’t matter,” Mr. Aimard said). As a slow movement he offered the pensive Adagio from the Sonata No. 17 by Mozart, with its “perfect sense of proportion, balance, harmony and space.” And the bustling first movement of Beethoven’s Sonata No. 7 in D, music that for all its impishness conveys a stunning mastery of construction, was the finale of this mix-and-match piece.

Mr. Aimard had a rather Boulezian take on the history of piano music. His ear was drawn especially to the uses of color and texture, and he leapt on every bit of evidence that composers like Liszt and Brahms were already pushing the boundaries of tonality. His analysis of the way Ravel created misty waves of shimmering sound in “Ondine” by building harmonies and melodic lines from the upper notes in the overtone series was a revelation.

The entire second half of the program was devoted to 20th-century music. Among the highlights were a wonderfully clattering account of Stravinsky’s Piano-Rag Music, which Mr. Aimard described as the composer’s radical cut-and-paste reassembling of a ragtime piano piece, and scintillating performances of works by Messiaen, Ligeti and Elliott Carter.

Introducing “Guero” (1970) by Helmut Lachenmann, Mr. Aimard explained that the pianist is supposed to perform the piece mostly by scraping his fingernails along the edges of the keys to evoke the sounds of an African instrument that is played by scratching a stick along the ribbed side of a woodblock. Instead, to protect his fingers, and with deep apologies to this “very left wing” German composer, Mr. Aimard played the piece using two of his thoroughly capitalist credit cards.

The next event in Pierre-Laurent Aimard’s Perspectives series is on May 10 at Zankel Hall at 7:30 p.m.; (212) 247-7800 or carnegiehall.org.

Pastors Wife

Help, My Husband Is a Pastor!

Beneth Peters Jones

As a woman begins to serve in ministry with her husband, she quickly learns that the life of full-time Christian service is not the exalted and glamorous existence that she may have anticipated and that laypersons often imagine. While ministry living is privileged in the spiritual sense, it is simultaneously pressured in the human sense. “To minister” means “to serve,” and serving drains our human resources. How can a pastor’s wife keep herself from drying up—or blowing up?

My greatest help through the years has come from studying servants before me. In particular, I’ve drawn repeatedly from Jesus’ direct dealings with His disciples. In Mark’s Gospel I find two essential Rs.

The first R is in Mark 3:14: “And he ordained twelve, that they should be with him, and that he might send them forth to preach.” Jesus ordained that twelve be with Him. Here I see the Lord stating the core factor in service: our personal relationship and fellowship with Him. Yet that’s the most threatened part of our ministry life, because we reverse the order of the above phrases—we give doing precedence over being. That’s a sure formula for trouble. As Jeremiah puts it, we thereby turn away from God’s sufficient supply and hew out for ourselves cisterns—broken cisterns, which can hold no water. So for the remainder of this article let’s draw close to our Savior, looking in on an interesting and important incident with His disciples.

Mark 6:31, 32: “And he said unto them, Come ye yourselves apart into a desert place, and rest a while: for there were many coming and going, and they had no leisure so much as to eat. And they departed into a desert place by ship privately.” There’s the second R, rest. Just as we reverse priorities in our relationship and service, so, too, we ignore the strategic necessity for rest in our service. Digging into the Mark 6 passage, we find a good deal that should convict and challenge us.

First, note the source of this going-apart incident: Jesus Christ Himself. “He said unto them …” Apparently the disciples were so caught up in the busyness and blessing of service that they were numb; they were running on sheer nervous energy. He called them to rest—right in the middle of everything. But more: He takes them to rest, and He gives them rest. So would He do for and with you and me. Do we hear His invitation? Or, as with Eve in the Garden after her sin, does God quietly sigh, “Where are you?”

Now comes the invitation/command itself: “Come ye yourselves apart.” I find the form of address Jesus used here interesting: “you yourselves.” It’s like saying, “Yes, I mean you.” Thereby the Lord addresses them, identifies them, and isolates them. What a clear bid for their attention and response! Has that personal, underscored invitation changed since then? Not at all. Every day I live I experience the wonderful reality of Christ’s intimate involvement with me as one of His disciples. Also important in Jesus’ invitation is the fact that He called them away from ministry. There were ongoing needs and opportunities all around them; yet He said, “Come … apart.” He certainly had that prerogative. He was the One they served. He wanted to change their focus and their location temporarily and thereby refresh them. He will do the same for us if we take time to rest in Him.

Now the Lord indicates their destination: “a desert place.” An instant mental picture comes up on the screen, doesn’t it? They were going to a place where they could enjoy solitude. Remember how often Jesus Himself went apart throughout His ministry years? He knew those times were essential for prayer, fellowship with the Father, and overall quietness and renewal. But how many ministry folks today scorn doing that! They somehow feel guilty—so they limit their “away” times to visiting relatives or attending a conference. Neither of those, nor anything similar, can have the restful effect the Lord wants for His disciples.

Not only was the place they were going important; so also was the purpose: to “rest a while.” Jesus directly addressed the great need they had at that moment. They were tired physically, mentally, emotionally, and spiritually—just as you and I get as we relentlessly drive ourselves in our ministry efforts. Yet, have you ever contemplated how consistently God built rest into His creation and His commands? Human beings have to sleep every day; the Jewish calendar was replete with special times of feasting/rest; every week is to have a day of rest. Clearly, our Creator never meant for us to be perpetual motion machines—but we try to be. We in ministry depart from Scripture at that last point if we exempt ourselves from taking one day of rest in every seven. Sorry, but that’s not spiritual—it’s disobedient.

God saw to it that a description was inserted in this incident: “for there were many coming and going, and they had no leisure so much as to eat.” Doesn’t that sound like your calendar? Services, meetings, appointments, counseling sessions, and special events … breakfast gobbled individually as we dash out the door, lunch from a brown paper bag or a vending machine, dinner as a do-it-yourself microwave affair. Such constant, unrelieved pressures/adaptations can spell disaster both in our family ministry and in our formal ministry.

Now note the ending: “and they departed into a desert place.” I wish I were so responsive and obedient! The disciples didn’t procrastinate or hesitate. No protestation, “Just one more job, Lord, one more healing.” They left—left the people and the pressures of ministering. Even the means of their going is instructive: “by ship privately.” Our children used to put it this way: “Let’s do something or go somewhere so we can be just people.” That’s a valid and important need.

Now we’ve seen and heard the Master, and we’ve watched the disciples. It’s our turn. Will we hear? Will we heed? Can there be real restoration without rest? Strung-out servants break; burned-out servants fizzle. We laugh at those who think that the Bible says “cleanliness is next to godliness,” but are we living in ministry as if we believe the Bible says “exhaustion is next to godliness”?

Our call to rest in the ministry comes not from enemies of the Lord—they’re delighted if we end up in a padded cell or in sin, not from our congregation—they have no idea of ministry’s strains, and not from our friends—they’re galloping too. Rather, our call to rest comes from the Lord Jesus Christ Himself. Will we obey—or will we continue to live with a muffled but perpetual inner cry of “Help!”

 

Beneth Peters Jones, wife of Dr. Bob Jones III, speaks regularly at women’s conferences around the country.

Music games won't be solo gigs anymore

 

 

 

 

Music games won't be solo gigs anymore

 

 

By Mike Snider, USA TODAY

Guitar Hero was just the opening act. MTV and the developers of that video game have a headliner in the works called Rock Band, which lets four music lovers gig together in person or online.

Expected in stores for the year-end holidays, the Electronic Arts game (no price set) for the Microsoft Xbox 360 and Sony PlayStation 3 will be played with four instrument-based video game controllers: two guitars (lead and bass), a drum kit and a microphone.

In the popular game Guitar Hero, players tap color-coded fret keys and strum a guitar-shaped controller in time with scrolling on-screen notes. Rock Band "takes the core premise of Guitar Hero and expands it tenfold," says Alex Rigopulos, co-founder of Harmonix, which developed the game and the Karaoke Revolution games. "It lets you create a complete collaborative band."

MTV is supplying creative and financial support to Rock Band's development, as well as helping make deals with various music publishers.

That means Rock Band will have performances by the original artists. In most previous music games, almost every song is done by a cover band. For Rock Band, some labels plan to supply original recordings. "This game offers a meaningful way for labels to participate in a segment of entertainment they, for the most part, have not been able to," MTV's Jeff Yapp says.

The songs on the new game haven't been revealed yet. Current games include the Allman Brothers, Joan Jett, Kansas, Nirvana and Wolfmother. "We'll be covering a great breadth, from metal to classic rock to Southern rock to everything in between," Rigopulos says.

Online connectivity is a key to the game. The developers envision additional songs for online purchase beyond those in the retail version. And players need not be together to jam. "You could have one guitarist in Germany and another one in Texas, a drummer in New York and a singer from somewhere else, and they can play together online," EA's David DeMartini says.

The music game phenomenon continues its crescendo. 2005's Guitar Hero and this year's Guitar Hero II (both for the Sony PlayStation 2) are top sellers, having sold about 3 million copies total, according to The NPD Group. Research firm Interpret says about 6.8 million have played Guitar Hero II.

A version of the game for Microsoft's Xbox 360 is in stores on Tuesday ($90), and Hands-On Mobile today is expected to announce a cellphone version.

The 20 Worst Lyrics Ever: No. 20

The 20 Worst Lyrics Ever: No. 20

Posted Mar 27th 2007 1:00PM by Spinner Staff
Filed under: The Hit List

Where have all the poets gone? To pop music, of course. However, judging from our list, some of these esteemed wordsmiths could use a new thesaurus. We'll take your complaints at the end.

"If I was a sculptor

But then again, no"

--Elton John's 'Your Song'
(lyrics by Bernie Taupin)


Well, then stop bringing it up already! This line has been wasting our time for three decades.

 

 

 

The 20 Worst Lyrics Ever: No. 1

Posted Mar 27th 2007 1:00PM by Spinner Staff
Filed under: The Hit List

"Coast to coast

L.A. to Chicago"

--Sade's 'Smooth Operator'


Sade was born in Nigeria and grew up in London, but her biggest hit reveals that she's clearly not a smooth navigator.

 

 

The 20 Worst Lyrics Ever: No. 18

Posted Mar 27th 2007 1:00PM by Spinner Staff
Filed under: The Hit List

"I love you like

A fat kid loves cake"

--50 Cent's '21 Questions'


Gangsta, schmangsta -- brotha should write Hallmark cards.

Idol’ for the Operatically Inclined

Disella Larusdottir in the semifinals of the Metropolitan Opera National Council Auditions last weekend in New York. She advanced to the finals, which are Sunday.

By ANNE MIDGETTE

Published: April 1, 2007

BEYOND the elegant wood-paneled foyer, in the slightly dingy auditorium of the Academy of Vocal Arts in Philadelphia, opera singers took the small stage, one after another. A young soprano in gothlike attire earnestly bleated out Bellini. A radiant mezzo-soprano lighted the stage with a warm, vivid sound, but her top notes were consistently flat. A baritone spread his arms and bellowed as if his life depended on it. The Metropolitan Opera National Council Auditions are open to all comers.

Chester Higgins Jr./The New York Times

Michael Fabiano in the semifinals.

“If you can type your application, you can sing for us,” said Darren Keith Woods, the general director of the Fort Worth Opera and, on Feb. 3, one of three judges at the Philadelphia district round of an event that has been called the “American Idol” of the opera world. The Metropolitan Opera National Council Auditions offer tremendous exposure and, for up to five winners, prizes of $15,000.

Philadelphia is one of 45 districts that feed winners, from 20 to 30 years old, to 15 regional finals. The next stop is the semifinals on the Metropolitan Opera stage. Last weekend 22 semifinalists — some of the larger regions like New York advance more singers — were winnowed to 11 finalists, who will sing with full orchestra at the National Grand Finals concert on Sunday afternoon. For most singers it is a lifelong dreamjust to sing on the Met stage. The one prize the Met auditions do not offer is an actual Met contract.

In Philadelphia the three judges — Mr. Woods; the baritone Mark Oswald, himself a winner in the 1989 competition and now a respected voice teacher; and the accompanist Craig Rutenberg, the Met’s director of music administration — sat at a table from 10 a.m. to 7 p.m., listening to 52 singers. Each started with an aria of the singer’s choice; the judges decided whether to ask for a second. Rachel Sliker, a 27-year-old soprano, began with a moving performance of “Ain’t It a Pretty Night” from Carlisle Floyd’s “Susannah,” showing her expressive range.

For her second aria the judges asked for “Come scoglio” from Mozart’s “Così Fan Tutte,” a faster-moving, more virtuosic piece. For a young professional like Ms. Sliker auditioning is all in a day’s work; she has done about 30 auditions this season. For a judge it is a day’s work.

“People ask how I can sit for six days listening to auditions,” said Paul Kilmer, the director of artistic administration of the Opera Theater of St. Louis, who often judges the Met auditions. “But when a wonderful voice comes along, it recharges the battery.”

The singers represent all levels of experience. Eric Dubin, a 25-year-old baritone, was on home turf at the Academy of Vocal Arts; he is a student there. He has been singing since he was 15, when he signed up for choir because a friend told him that it was “a blow-off class.” He fell in love with opera the next day, when the teacher, hearing his voice, played him a recording of Robert Merrill.

“If I could do this, it would be terrific,” Mr. Dubin remembered thinking. But, he added, “I didn’t know it was going to be so hard.”

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By contrast Disella Larusdottir, 30, is a relative latecomer to opera. An Icelandic soprano, she started studying trumpet with her father, an orchestral trumpeter, when she was 8 and added piano at 15. But she began singing only at 22, after she had completed a degree in psychology and found herself working in a supermarket. At first her main interest was pop of the Eurovision variety; a Christmas album she made with her sisters hit Iceland’s top-40 charts.

But when Laura Brooks Rice, a voice teacher at Westminster Choir College in Princeton, N.J., gave a master class in Iceland, Ms. Larusdottir was inspired to follow her and begin serious opera training in 2003. It seems to have worked. Now a teacher at Westminster herself, Ms. Larusdottir opened her Philadelphia audition with “O quante volte” from “I Capuleti e i Montecchi,” Bellini’s setting of “Romeo and Juliet,” sung with beauty, ease and artistry.

Theoretically the judges are not looking for finished products. A stated purpose of the auditions is to identify the singers with the greatest potential for a career, rather than those who are most polished and professional. But a singer who seems a diamond in the rough to one listener may sound just plain bad to another. The three judges in Philadelphia, faced with many singers and limited time, stuck to the basics.

“I don’t think about how do we fix this,” Mr. Rutenberg said. “I go in listening for decent rhythm, singing in tune, starting a phrase with intention and ending it with intention. If we’re lucky enough to get a performance on top of it, so much the better.”

The opera world is rife with tales of the whims and wiles of Met competition judges, in part because such a large competition is doomed to disappoint many people. But Gayletha Nichols, who has directed the program since 2000, has worked hard to make the process transparent. Certainly the judges in Philadelphia seemed grounded and were in accord with one another. In the end they found that eight singers had received their unanimous approval — Mr. Dubin, Ms. Sliker and Ms. Larusdottir among them — to advance to the regional finals at the Kennedy Center in Washington on Feb. 24.

TRYING to establish uniform standards of judging may be the trickiest thing about managing the far-flung National Council Auditions. The program is run entirely by volunteers. The auditions have existed in something like their present form since 1954, when they were established to succeed the Auditions of the Air, which began in 1935. (Winners received $1,000 and a Met contract.)

 

Idol’ for the Operatically Inclined

Published: April 1, 2007

(Page 2 of 2)

Ms. Nichols, who said she never saw the point of doing the auditions when she was a singer, is trying to get the point across to the next generation, adding features like feedback from the judges for any participant who wants it and a new stipulation that singers can audition in any district they choose. But it is the volunteers in each region who run the operation, who raise money for expenses and prizes and who select the judges from lists provided by the Met.

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Michael Fabiano rehearsing with his coach, John Churchwell.

 

Chester Higgins Jr./The New York Times

Angela Meade, a soprano, in the semifinals of the National Council Auditions; she was among the 11 singers to advance to the finals, which are Sunday afternoon at the Metropolitan Opera.

There are considerable discrepancies from one district to another, not just in standards but also in prize money. In the Wisconsin district a winner may receive $5,000; in the Philadelphia district winners get $300. Singers have started traveling to the districts and regions that offer the most money — to the displeasure of donors who would prefer to see their money go to local singers.

“In some regions you’re competing with other arts groups,” Eleanor M. Forrer, the chairwoman of the mid-Atlantic region, said of fund-raising efforts. “And in some you’re the main event in town, and you get 500 people in the audience.”

The regional event in the small hall of the Kennedy Center on Feb. 24 was more formal than the Philadelphia district competition: less an audition, more a concert. The new surroundings affected singers’ performances. Some seemed more constrained; others appeared to have learned from their Philadelphia experience.

Ms. Larusdottir, who had replaced two arias from her Philadelphia list, was working with an extra handicap: lack of sleep. She had sung a recital in Delaware on the Thursday; rushed back to Philadelphia to sing in the finals of the Philadelphia Orchestra’s Greenfield Competition on Friday; and without even staying to find out whether she had won (she had), left with her husband, Teddy Kernizan, a pianist and conductor, to drive to Washington, arriving at 1 a.m. Saturday for auditions 12 hours later. But her voice showed no sign of fatigue, and she sang her second aria, from Weber’s “Freischütz,” with evident enjoyment, down to a little bounce on her toes at the end of the piece, in time to the music.

“The No. 1 singer seems to emerge fairly quickly,” said Mr. Kilmer, who was one of the judges here with Ms. Nichols and Carol Rausch, the chorus master of the New Orleans and Chautauqua operas. “Then it becomes a question of who is 2 or 3.” Ms. Larusdottir advanced to the semifinals. Mr. Dubin took third place. Ms. Sliker came up short.

The second-place winner was a soprano Mr. Kilmer and Ms. Nichols already knew. They felt that her audition had not showed what she was fully capable of in a complete performance.

There is such a network of auditions and competitions in the United States that it is not unusual for judges to recognize some of the singers. Buzz grows around a few. The name of Michael Fabiano, 22, a tenor who won in the New England region and who also studies at the vocal academy in Philadelphia, came up so often before the semifinals that he started to seem a shoo-in before even opening his mouth.

Ms. Larusdottir, by contrast, came out of left field. The week before the semifinals she was in Vermont singing Zerlina in a semi-amateur production of Mozart’s “Don Giovanni.” Since she was doing so well in competitions, it seemed odd for her to do a modest role in a modest production.

“You apply for programs, and they all say the same thing,” Ms. Larusdottir said. “ ‘You need experience before we can hire you.’ ” So she is doing what she can to get some.

The Met auditions are only one among many competitions. On March 1, after three days of semifinals, the George London competition held its finals in the new hall of the Morgan Library & Museum in New York, choosing from a field of some 90 singers, many of whom — like Mr. Fabiano and Christopher Bolduc, a baritone and another Academy of Vocal Arts student — were also competing in the Met auditions. The finals of Operalia, Plácido Domingo’s international competition, will take place in Paris in June, and the finals of the venerable Belvedere competition in Vienna are held in July. All are prestigious, but for American singers the Met auditions remain the ones everyone love to hate — not least for the status of the name.

PRE-EMINENCE was not necessarily to the good at the semifinals of the Met auditions. The 22 singers arrived a few days early for a backstage tour of the Met, a panel discussion with former Met audition winners and private coaching with their accompanists. It all led up to the moment of performance (with piano) on the singer’s holy of holies, the Met stage. The moment was at once terrifying and a career highlight.

Ms. Larusdottir stopped the show with “O quante volte.” Mr. Fabiano lit into his big aria (from “Le Villi,” by Puccini) with passionate intensity. Angela Meade, the third student in the semifinals from the Philadelphia academy, powered out a “Casta Diva,” from Bellini’s “Norma,” that left everyone breathless. But however thrilling it was for the singers, for a listener the variations in quality from region to region were painfully evident.

Auditions are not a clear ticket to success, within or outside the Met. But the Met does try to keep in touch with past winners, making education grants, for example, available to anyone who has made the semifinals.

“I went from having no work to having full-time work as a singer,” said Elizabeth Batton, a mezzo-soprano, who won the Met auditions in 2000.

A majority of past winners have had active careers as singers. But for every Deborah Voigt or Renée Fleming there are two singers who have been steadily employed without finding the limelight.

Still, it’s hard not to be drawn into the excitement of the process. After the semifinals the small audience gathered on the Met’s Grand Tier for the judges’ announcement. The singers stood in a group with fixed, nervous smiles, waiting for Ms. Nichols to read off the 11 names of those selected to advance. Ms. Meade, Mr. Fabiano and Ms. Larusdottir were among them.

Making it to the finals is its own victory. And if the system that got them there is, as one opera insider put it, “incredibly, wonderfully flawed,” it does manage to cast a net to involve the whole country in the excitement of discovering opera.

And for the singers it remains a watershed. “After I won, I went for a walk with my mother,” said Esther Heideman, a 2000 winner. “She said, ‘What do you do next?’ I said, ‘I have to come up with a new dream.’ ”