Pinchas Zukerman

A few times a season, if I am a very good boy, the National Arts Centre Orchestra invites me to speak to audiences before their concerts, or to interview musicians onstage after. Last Thursday and Friday were a little nervous-making because for the first time I interviewed the orchestra’s music director, Pinchas Zukerman, who doesn’t fake it if he’s not having a good time. My luck held, because the superb young Danish-born violinist Nicolaj Znaider was on hand, and Zukerman is very fond of Znaider, so we had a blast. I learned a lot.

– ABC has confirmed that it has signed Christiane Amanpour to be the new host of This Week. Amanpour is known more for covering foreign policy than domestic policy, so that might shift the focus of This Week a bit from the very domestic-politics-inclined Stephanopoulous. The real question is whether she can or will shift the show in the direction of discussing issues, rather than process or horse-race stuff. Since Meet the Press has been totally obsessed with trivial horserace stuff for years, first under Russert and now under Gregory, there is an opening for a Sunday talk show where the discussion is about who’s factually correct, rather than who’s winning the media narrative. But I don’t really feel confident that this can happen, under any host. The shows just aren’t built that way.

Ottawa’s National Arts Centre Orchestra is bucking recessionary thinking and going big