Met Opera Unions Agree To Federal Mediator
“The acceptance of a mediator was announced Thursday morning at a caucus of the negotiating committee of the American Guild of Musical Artists, the union representing the company’s chorus, stage directors, soloists and others.”
Indie Movie Makes More In Video-On-Demand Than In Theatres. Is This A More Viable Path?
“The movie, directed by Bong Joon-ho, made $3.8 million in its first two weeks of VOD release, compared with $3.9 million from five weeks in theaters.”
Newport Jazz At 60 – Grandad To The Modern Festival
“For the past 60 years, no institution has done more to help establish jazz as a legitimate art form than Newport and the notion of the jazz festival that Mr. Wein created. Where jazz once rubbed shoulders with pop stars like Frank Sinatra, it now competes for government and corporate funding with opera and chamber music.”
UK Teenager Quits School After His Drawing Goes Viral Online
“I reckon I wasted two years sat at school doing nothing. I didn’t expect this to happen a month ago. I feel honoured people appreciate my work and that I can hopefully make a living off it.”
Israeli Show Canceled In Edinburgh After Protests
“The hip-hop opera is presented by a company that receives money from the Israeli government which campaigners said made it legitimate to boycott, particularly due to the current situation in Gaza.”
Will Creating An “Arts District” Make A City More Dynamic?
“Dallas is trying to create more “vibrancy” downtown; trying to attract more people and keep them there for longer. One way it is doing that is through its arts district, a truly phenomenal collection of cultural institutions housed in equally impressive buildings, which is just now completing the commercial infrastructure it believes will activate the streetscape both day and night.”
Protests Over Light Installation In Toronto
The public art project, known as Nyctophilia, or love of the night, is set to be officially unveiled Wednesday night. In June, when the poles went up at the corner of Weston Rd. and Dennis Ave., it sparked a flurry of negative comments to the Star and other media outlets.
Why The Vienna Philharmonic Sounds Different From Other Orchestras
“The “Vienna sound” has been the subject of reams of music criticism, academic research, acoustical experiments and more than a little debate. Not everyone agrees on precisely what it is — it is sometimes described as plush, warm and rich or sumptuous — but many listeners say that they know it when they hear it.”
Amazon: Hachette Dispute Is About Lower Prices And More Money To Authors
“Books compete against mobile games, television, movies, Facebook, blogs, free news sites and more,” Amazon said in the statement, which was posted on the forum for its Kindle ebook reader. “If we want a healthy reading culture, we have to work hard to be sure books actually are competitive against these other media types, and a big part of that is working hard to make books less expensive.”
International Study: Culture Is Big Travel Appeal For Young People
“Of the 15 countries with the largest economies in the world, the participants – plus 1,000 additional young people surveyed from the UK – said that France was the most attractive place as a source of arts and culture, followed by Italy, the US and then the UK.”
“Save The Corcoran” Court Hearing Has An Uninhibited Star Witness
Philanthropist Wayne Reynolds, who was first wooed for the Corcoran’s board chairmanship and then rejected, “led a packed courtroom Wednesday on a rollicking and highly critical narrative account of his interactions with gallery leadership, at one point likening the Corcoran’s executive suite to ‘a goat rodeo,’ and asserting that he could do better, if given a chance.”
Met Opera Proposes Federal Mediator For Last-Minute Labor Talks
“With time running out before a lockout of its workers threatened for later this week, the Metropolitan Opera proposed on Wednesday that federal mediators be brought in at the 11th hour to facilitate negotiations with several of the company’s unions. But it was unclear if the unions would agree to a mediator, or if there was enough time left to forge a deal.” (includes video)
Orlando Ballet “Needs To Take A Deep Breath,” Says New Boss
“‘We all need to take a deep breath,’ says Jim Mitchell, the ballet’s fourth executive director in three years. During that time, the leadership was in flux and the organization was left homeless after a mold infestation shut down its headquarters in the former Orlando Utilities Commission building.”
Tracey Emin’s Bed Will Spend Ten Years At The Tate
“Tracey Emin’s controversial artwork <em>My Bed</em> is to return to the Tate after selling for £2.2m earlier this month. Count Christian Duerckheim, the piece’s new owner, has agreed to loan the work ‘for a period of at least 10 years’, said Tate director Sir Nicholas Serota.”
Is Your Name Your Destiny?
“Names work hard: They can affect who gets into elite schools, what jobs we apply for, and who gets hired. Our names can even influence what cities we live in, who we befriend, and what products we buy since, we’re attracted to things and places that share similarities to our names.”
James Wolcott, Frank Bidart, David Rabe Win PEN Literary Awards
“The poet Frank Bidart, the critic James Wolcott and the playwright David Rabe are among the winners of the 2014 PEN Literary Awards, announced today by the PEN/American Center.”
Downtown L.A.’s Arts District Is Pricing Out The Artists (It’s An Old Story)
“In the 1970s, the streets east of Little Tokyo and west of the L.A. River made up a dingy district of hollowed-out warehouses that landlords rented to artists who needed a lot of space for little money. … [Now, a] new coffee shop moves in every month or so, and it’s hard to walk two minutes in any direction in the 52-block neighborhood without finding a blue-and-white filming notice.”
Hollywood And Kodak Unite To Save Motion Picture Film
“Faced with the possible extinction of the material that made Hollywood famous, a coalition of studios is close to a deal to keep Eastman Kodak Co. in the business of producing movie film. The negotiations … [should] result in an arrangement where studios promise to buy a set quantity of film for the next several years, even though most movies and television shows these days are shot on digital video.”
Rome’s Opera House Avoids Liquidation (For Now) With Labor Deal
“A tentative agreement has been reached between management and unions representing the staff of Rome’s Opera House, following recent strikes over the theatre’s restructuring and salvage plan. The threat of liquidation which had been hanging over the Opera House has been averted, pending an upcoming referendum by unions on the terms of the restructuring programme.”
Cincinnati Art Museum Names New Director
“Cameron Kitchin, director of Memphis’ Brooks Museum of Art, has been named the new director of the Cincinnati Art Museum after a nearly seven-month search.”
Trending On AJ
Can This Program Hook A New Generation Of Young Dance Addicts?
An experimental program at Manhattan’s New Victory Theater has been presenting to youngsters – for free – three weeks of wide-ranging modern dance programming, with the companies doing the same material they perform for adult audiences. The dancers seem to love it even more than the kids do.
100 Years Of World War I Movies (And How They Changed)
David Mermelstein surveys the ways in which The War to End All Wars has been portrayed on screen, and how each era’s preoccupations affected the stories those films told.
This Is The Guy To Bring To A Bloody Knife Fight (If You’re Putting It Onstage)
“Death is easy, but for a good eye-gouge, Broadway directors call Rick Sordelet. … A top purveyor of staged mayhem, Mr. Sordelet has created fistfights, sword duels, stabbings and gunplay for some 60 Broadway productions – as well as Hollywood films, the Metropolitan Opera, the 1995 Super Bowl halftime show, and Ben Hur Live.”
Poetry? There’s An App For That – Five Of Them, In Fact
The Times‘s app critic (yes, it has one) looks at an encyclopedic offering from the Poetry Foundation for discovering new poems; a Shakespeare app that includes all the sonnets and plays; two packages, for writing haiku and for longer verse; and an app devoted entirely to Eliot’s The Waste Land. (includes video)
London Theatre By The Numbers – This is A Booming Industry
“In 2012/13 more than 22 million people went to a London theatre performance and £618.5m was taken at the box office. London cinema admissions totalled 43 million, meaning the average ticket price would need to be more than £14.40 – which it is not – for cinema to have a bigger box office figure than theatre.”
The Met Opera: Caught Between Competing Realities
“Whether our current opera house model will survive will depend, I believe, on how successfully opera houses attract new artists to create work that speaks as eloquently to the traditions as to present-day audiences.” It’s an open question, however, whether the Met can do so. It certainly cannot while the stage door is padlocked.”
Iraqi Anger As Militants Damage Cultural Heritage
“The angry public reaction to the attacks on Mosul’s cultural history — including the eviction of Christians by militants, which outraged many Muslim residents who celebrate Mosul’s reputation for tolerance — appears to be the first spark of rebellion against harsh Islamic rule.”
Michael Kimmelman: Why The Frick Museum Shouldn’t Expand
“The city’s truest anti-MoMA, the Frick becomes the latest front in a larger battle to prevent nonprofit outposts of civilization from falling prey to the bigger-is-better paradigm.”
Time-Shifted Viewing Increasingly Competes With Live TV (And It’s Changing How Programing Is Done
“In the past year, the volume of DVR playback viewing that occurs during primetime hours has reached the point where the DVR now ranks as the No. 1 network. The ratings generated by viewers opting to watch time-shifted programs — from across the television dial — are equivalent to the averages of the Big Four networks combined.”