“57. Smart companies will get out of the way and help the inevitable to happen sooner.” That’s thesis number 57 from the Cluetrain Manifesto. Orchestras, just like hundreds of other commercial and non-profit organizations around the country, have been generally slow or reluctant to adapt to the changing media landscape. New media is not a fad anymore and although Web sites such as Facebook and Myspace are likely to fade away when something newer and flashier comes along, the changes in communication are here to stay. So what’s an orchestra to do? In the following series of posts, I...
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After nearly 5 months of inactivity, this blog will return. Stay tuned for a large project with a series of posts.
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Just found out that the wonderfully talented laptop artist Jeremy Flower has his own Web site. In one of his posts he talks about the Chicago high school visits of a few weeks ago, as a part of the “Ainadamar” curriculum. He has also uploaded the student-created beats. I very briefly talked to Jeremy at one of the high school visits. In my heydays I used to be a fervent tracker (quite different from the infamous Trekkies) and now that fire has been rekindled (thank you, Jeremy Flower and Osvaldo Golijov). Although I still have my very own self-produced...
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The Chicago Symphony Orchestra announced its 2008-2009 season today. The overarching theme of “Echoes of Nations” is really close to my heart. Ever since I wrote an essay on the question of “what is a nation?” for a scholarship contest on textbookx.com, I’ve been enormously interested in the subject of nations and nationalism. It didn’t win any prizes, but it changed my entire historical and philosophical outlook. Benedict Anderson’s Imagined Communities still ranks high among the books that have had the most influence on my view of the world. But more on this later. Coinciding with the season announcement,...
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R.E.M. is coming out with a new album, Accelerate, soon. These guys can do nothing wrong in my book and you’ll find me at United Center on June 6 when they return to Chicago. The first single from the new album is Supernatural Superserious, a mix of eighties, nineties and new millennium R.E.M. Radiohead, being Radiohead, of course gets all the publicity with its pay-what-you-like downloadable album, but R.E.M. shows to be even more innovating and creative when it comes to the Internet. Three months before the release of their new album, the band launched ninetynights.com. Every day a...
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All the while I wasn’t blogging, two journalists have started blogging and one journalists with a blog is no longer a journalists. Let me start with the latter: Marc Geelhoed, who wrote for Time Out Chicago, has joined the dark side and we now have two Marcs with a Dutch last name working at the CSO. The first two are Andrew Patner, who’s now blogging at The View from Here, and Catalina Maria Johnson, who is bilingually blogging at Beat Latino. Be sure to tune in to All Things Considered tonight, to hear a report from Catalina on an...
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It’s 2008. I spent the holidays in Texas and it turned out to be a very American, and maybe even more Texan experience, including barbeque in Lockhart, outlet malls in San Marcos, and walking out of a church in protest against a horribly inappropriate homily that rambled about the homosexual threat against families (clearly a sign it’s election season). Looking back on 2007, it was a good year for me: I became a first-time homeowner, a godfather and an uncle. Professionally, I entered my second year at my job and kept learning and developing: announcing a new season; another...
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Ever since my first opera attendance, when I saw Parsifal at the Vienna Staatsoper with Placido Domingo in 2002, I have not seen a better opera. Maybe it was the first impression that counts. Growing up, opera wasn’t present in my life; all that I knew of opera was packaged in those tedious concerts with the Three Tenors. No context, no stories. After Parsifal, I realized opera could be grand, thought-provoking and beautiful. After moving to Chicago, the first Lyric Opera performance I attended was Der Rosenkavalier with Susan Graham. Brilliant and stunning, but it was still Parsifal that...
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No post for a while and this is what I come up with? Have a look at this bizarre video; a remix of one of my favorite songs. (But it’s “low playing,” not “low plane”!) Find an awesome live version in the Netherlands here.
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It’s an exciting time for Dutch people. Saint Nicholas’ Eve is approaching. Unfortunately, there are some things horribly wrong with the Dutch celebration of this great feast (and I’m not talking about the Eurotrash music here). But on a happier note, it’s also a time of delicious candy and chocolate letters. For those who want a piece of traditional Dutch Saint Nicholas celebration, here below follows my very own (tailored for American grocery stores) recipe for “pepernoten:” Marc’s Pepernoten 2 cups self-rising flour ½ teaspoon baking powder 1 cup of brown sugar 3 tablespoons milk 1 stick unsalted butter...
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Visitor numbers for my Web site keep growing. Last March was the first time my Web site saw over 1,000 unique visitors. This October, just over half a year later, I broke the 2,000 figure. The total amount of unique visitors for March 2007 was 2,228. Total visits amassed to 7,324; total pages to 15,558; and total hits to 32,356. FeedBurner tells me that there are approximately 55 people subscribed to my feed for Dutch Perspective, up from 43 last March. Most viewed page was still “dutchperspective/feed” up to 4,341 page views from 2,989 in March. Hits from search...
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