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A New Chapters Daily Arts Alert ... by Cathleen Bond Monday, Feb. 26 The battle of the bookstores is over, and a winner has been declared. But what does it all mean for Canadian readers, writers and publishers? To follow this story, I've had to keep up with the business pages, the arts section and the gossip columns. Here's some of the info I've gleaned that leads me to believe the Reisman takeover of Chapters is good news for Canadian culture:
I'll be watching developments over the next few months because I'm curious to see if these changes are noticeable at the consumer level. Meanwhile, what do you think? Keep me posted if you see any shifts in the book biz in your community ... Email me
La Scena has been doing a bang-up job the past few months and is creating quite an archive of Canadian music. It's also presenting what it calls the web's first classical music webcast scheduler. "The webcasts are categorized as Live schedule, on demand (available for a limited time), archive (available permanently on demand) and radio. We are still testing to iron out the bugs." There are also tons of free musical downloads, both audio and video, with a new feature every week, and contests to win free CDs.
Fine Tuning: CBC Television kicks off a special week-long series, Countdown to the Junos, tonight with The Best of the Junos. Hosted by teen heart-throbs The Moffatts, the show features all the musical numbers from the 2000 Juno Awards - performances by the Barenaked Ladies, Great Big Sea, Diana Krall, Amanda Marshall, Sharon Riley and Faith Chorale, Our Lady Peace, Chantal Kreviazuk and Prozzak. 7 p.m. on CBC Television.
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 Updated each weekday by Cathleen Bond ... bookmark this page and come back for the latest news, reviews and gossip on the Canadian arts scene. RECENT FEATURES: More from our year-end review: >> Public Art >> Film >> Digital >> Visual Art >> Literature >> Dance >> Architecture >> Music and Opera >> TV or not TV
>> Bruce Mau: Big designs in LifeStyle >> Robert Service: Musical tribute to a Canadian hero >> Circle of Trees: Art and nature come full circle >> Atwood: The critics and The Blind Assassin >> Public Art: Who decides what art will fill our civic spaces and expand our imagination? >> Digital Art: Clickable Cancon, a quick tour of the latest in digital art. >>
Cancon Quiz >> Iron Road: The Arts & Culture forum follows the creation of a new Canadian opera >> Interview: Carole McDowell tells us how she and artist Helen Lucas made the transition from gallery walls to the www gallery. >> Public Library in Peril How should libraries be transformed to meet future needs of Canadians? >> Culture
at the Crossroads >> Web
Wizard
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Heather Reisman, the wife of financier Gerry Schwartz and the founder of the 15-store Indigo chain, is now firmly in control of the 75-plus stores in the gigantic Chapters chain. The proposed merger of the two stores will likely go ahead, and some stores (she predicts about 20 in all) will be closed. That makes sense. The ultra-competitive Reisman opened a number of Indigo stores right across the street or kitty-corner to Chapters outlets, so something has to give.
Music Mag:
My favourite Canadian online music mag, La Scena, has a new issue online and on the stands -- with a feature on 26-year-old cellist Yegor Dyachkov, who seems headed for a brilliant international career. The mag enthuses about the cellist's relationship with the audience, and quotes him at length: "A triangle is established with the public, the performer, and the music—the music always at the top as far as I’m concerned. The performer is free to express himself during the recital. He works with the skills he has, the research done on the particular work, the spontaneity of the moment, the inspiration, and his playing partners. There’s no other way to do it—this is how you learn to play, not by making recordings! You learn to play for yourself, but the real work of expression, the ability to transform an idea into something that can be heard, to communicate an emotion, can only be learned by actually being onstage.”
Twenty clicks through Canadian culture: Test your memory, from Anne
of Green Gables to Shift.