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Charles Wadsworth, the director of Spoleto Festival USA’s chamber music series for more than 30 years, announced during the festival’s last weekend that he will retire in 2009.

The year will mark Wadsworth’s 80th birthday and the 50th consecutive season in which he has curated chamber music, beginning with Gian Carlo Menotti’s Festival of Two Worlds in Spoleto, Italy.

“We will miss Charles and look forward to celebrating his birthday and his tremendous artistic contributions,” said Paula Edwards, a spokesperson for the American festival.

Actor Michelle Hurst and writer and director Ain Gordon  in Lexington's Downtown Arts Center where they are presenting In This Place . . . , a play inspired by the "alternative history" of Lexington. Copyrighted Lexington Herald-Leader photo by David Perry.

Jim Clark, the president and CEO of LexArts, invited stage writer and director Ain Gordon to come to Lexington to find a story in the city's history to tell.

It is the sort of thing Gordon has done in New York and New Jersey, and Clark has seen how it generated interest and dialogue in the communities where Gordon worked.

"I started walking around downtown and saw all of those historic plaques," said Gordon. "My first reaction was, it's all been taken care of. There's nothing for me to do. This town is covering its history."

But then he started to think about the plaques and how in most cases they couldn't possibly tell the whole story of what happened at each site. He also spotted a place that curiously did not have a marker: 245 South Limestone.

"It was as old or older than many of the houses that had markers, and it wasn't marked," Gordon said. "I thought, 'Why is that? Whose house is this?'"

Through his investigations, Gordon found the 1830s-era house was originally the home of Samuel Oldham, the first free African-American man in Lexington to own his own land and build his own house.

Now, Gordon is giving two unique markers to the house -- which was bought in 2006 by Coleman Callaway III and is being renovated.

First, there's a play, In This Place ..., which opened Thursday for a three-night run at the Downtown Arts Center. The one-woman play uses traditional theatrical techniques and multimedia to tell the story of the Oldham House through the owner's wife, Daphney.

Later this summer, a new-concept historic marker will be unveiled at the house. Rather than try to encapsulate the history into a paragraph like the familiar bronzed signs dotting downtown do, the new marker will direct viewers to a Web site full of research Gordon did while writing In This Place .... The site will also showcase video from and for the play's production shot by Lexington documentary filmmaker Joan Brannon.

Wu Han (center) and David Finckel (right) at Shaker Village in Harrodsburg, Ky., last year with their daughter Lilian. Photo courtesy of Finckel and Han. (Below) Meadow View Barn, a renovated tobacco barn, is the venue for the Chamber Music Festival of the Bluegrass.

Last year, the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center participated in a pioneering effort: The first Chamber Music Festival of the Bluegrass.

Presented by the Centre College's Norton Center for the Arts and its director, George Foreman, the fest was held at the Shaker Village of Pleasant Hill in Harrodsburg, Ky., off the beaten path for most concert goers, in a renovated tobacco barn, an atypical venue for musicians more accustomed to cozy concert halls.

And it was a smashing success.

The concerts were sold out, and the chamber music society's press representative says the musicians haven't stopped talking about Kentucky.

So, with the second edition upon us, we got on the phone with cellist David Finckel and pianist Wu Han, co-directors of the Chamber Music Society, to talk about the second edition of the festival and their return to the Bluegrass.

Lexington Herald-Leader: Tell us about your trip here last year and what made it so great.

David Fickel: The most wonderful thing, besides being in Kentucky, and in such a beautiful place and having such beautiful weather and meeting all the new people and playing for a new audience was being present at the birth of a really exciting new project. These days, when classical music takes root in a new location and blossoms, it's wonderful news for everybody involved. We also look at our involvement at the Shaker Village there as being something that the Chamber Society is good at, something that we should do, being the kind of organization we are, we should go around and help people start new things because we can present great art in great programs and get people excited.

In the end, we all had a marvelous time. We made a lot of new friends, and we've really been thinking about it ever since.

Wu Han: In a regular concert, we usually hit a city and play for an audience of 500 to 2,000 and then we probably split the next morning and hit the next town. That's a performer's life.

So, to have the opportunity to base in such a gorgeous environment - it's inspiring to be in such a pure and spiritual place like the Shaker Village - and to have the opportunity to be involved in a festival is incredibly satisfying. Festival is a place you come to meet people to have exploration, to have a community that has the opportunity to mingle, to eat meals together, to talk and to share a space and exchange ideas. At the end of the festival, we know the presenters very, very well, we get to know the audience, we get to know where to eat locally, we get to hike a little bit and the audience bonded with us. We have so much to share and it's a very different sensation from just traveling from city to city and doing one night stands. The setting of the Shaker Village is fantastic. I don't have the TV to distract me with CNN and 30 minutes of updating in my hotel room. And everyday I would wake up in the same place and it is very close to nature and I get to meet my audience in the daytime.

That's unusual for musicians and I think it's unusal for the audience to be that close to the musicians.

And playing the tobacco barn is so unusual. It's very close to the earthiness of what we do using the chamber music form and its intimacy. It's a project I really treasure.

Q: Last year, before you came, you said you were curious as to what the venue was going to look like. How did the tobacco barn turn out as a place to play?

WH: I loved it. To have a little bit of cowbell and the birds flying around the Dvorak Piano Quintet is not a bad thing at all.

Note: This article discusses an event in Charleston, S.C., called Kulture Klash 2, a kind of art party that I argue could be a model for "authentic" branding as posited by Bill Breen in a 2007 article in Fast Company. Inspiration for this piece comes from Andrew Taylor's hugely insightful blog on arts and the business of the arts and my fellow Flyoverstani Bridgette Redman's August post about authenticity and audience connection.

Song of Experience
Kulture Klash 2 and the authenticity of an emerging arts brand
By John Stoehr, Charleston City Paper

One way of explaining the astounding popularity of the iPod, YouTube, and Facebook is that they feel authentic.

Charleston, S.C. -- It's time again in cinematic history to call for the imminent death of the movie theater.

When TV emerged in the 1950s, the death knell was tolling.

When VHS ascended in the '70s, Gabriel was calling.

When DVDs triumphed in the '90s, theaters were knocking on heaven's door.

But death? Not yet.

This time, though, things are different. Movie theaters are facing a perfect storm of cultural, economic, and technological change that's been brewing for the past half decade.

International piracy (bootlegs popping up on the Shanghai black market), advancements in home entertainment systems (56-inch high-definition TV, DVRs), and improvements in broadband and the Internet (cable on demand, streaming video from Hulu and Netflix) -- these have conspired to undermine the value of going to the movies.

But movies aren't going away. You could even say it's a great time to own a theater, says Mike Furlinger of the Terrace Theatre in Charleston, S.C.

The same technological advancements that have come to threaten theater venues are the very advancements that will make them more relevant and profitable, he says.

Along with mainstream movies, theaters everywhere are trying to make themselves unique by subscribing to live broadcasts of special timely events, like sports and opera, as well as films made for niche-market demographics, such as fashion-obsessed teenage girls, pro-wrestling freaks, NASCAR fans, or Japanimation aficionados. 

After the jump, read more about movie theaters taking steps to use high-tech to attract viewers, plus other companies enticing audiences with fashionable amenities and plain old-fashioned aggressive business tactics in order to break into the Charleston market.

Even since Gian Carlo Menotti severed ties in the early 1990s between The Festival of Two Worlds in Spoleto, Italy, and its American counterpart, Spoleto Festival USA, based in Charleston, S.C., there has been speculation about how to get the two back together.

After Menotti's death at the age of 95 on Feb. 1, 2007, speculation has grown. Last Monday, it swelled to its highest pitch yet.

That's when the mayor of Spoleto, Italy, and the new director of The Festival of Two Worlds Foundation (it recently changed names) arrived in the Lowcountry to meet Mayor Joe Riley and tourism officials at the Convention and Visitors Bureau to discuss ways of boosting commerce between the two cities.

The meeting was also seen as the latest step in "reunifying" the two festivals. The next day's Post and Courier announced that "Spoleto may rejoin with Italian roots" and "Officials with Umbrian festival visit Charleston, discuss reunion."

Strange thing, though. No one from Spoleto Festival USA was there.

And even if someone from the American organization had been present, what does "reunification" really mean? Beyond the obvious and so far largely symbolic, sentimental, and romantic appeal of re-establishing cultural ties with the Old World, that remains unclear.

[. . . ]

In an interview Thursday, Nigel Redden [executive director of Spoleto Festival USA] said the whole notion of reunification is something of a misnomer. The festivals have always been separate organizations, with different administrators, boards, fund-raising strategies, and so on. In the past, they did indeed share artists -- chamber musicians, the Westminster Choir, and even some operas. That may recommence, but a merging of the two organizations has never been a part of their history.

"They have always been quite different organizations," he said.

Read the rest of this article at Charleston City Paper.

A report in yesterday's Post and Courier implied that the new director of the Festival of Two Worlds Foundation, the Italian sister of Charleston's Spoleto Festival USA, was going to scour the Holy City's theaters searching for a good place for an opera in the 2008 festival:

He [Giorgio Ferrara] said there are also plans to produce an opera at Spoleto, which will be held May 23 to June 8. "I will visit all the theaters in Charleston to see what will fit and how we can collaborate," Ferrara said.

Strange thing, though. The article doesn't reference anyone from Spoleto Festival USA, not Nigel Redden, the executive director, not even one of the public relations people.

So I called Spoleto to see if there's anything to this. Paula Edwards, director of marketing and PR, told me yesterday that she didn't know anything about it, but would get back with me today. When she did, nothing had changed. There will not be any collaboration with the Italian festival this year. Perhaps in the future, Edwards said, in an effort -- really -- to say who knows? Hell might freeze over, too.

The P&C article reported on Mayor Joe Riley's efforts to reach out to the Festival of Two Worlds Foundation after the death of Maestro Gian Carlo Menotti and his son Chip Menotti, who was given the heave-ho by the Italian government after running the Umbrian arts festival into the ground financially.

Riley seems to be making highly visible overtures to that city's mayor and Ferrara, but what it means in terms of material gain for the American festival and for the city of Charleston and its art lover seems unclear at this point. Maybe Ferrara was talking about putting on an opera with Piccolo Spoleto in 2008. That's something Riley can make happen. And that would be very interesting indeed for everyone, even Spoleto.

See update below for more on Piccolo Spoleto

An Italian delegation came to Charleston on March 31 to talk about bringing two cities and their respective international arts festivals -- Spoleto USA and the Festival of Two Worlds in Spoleto, Italy -- back together again after years of division, according to a press release issued Friday, March 28.

The news comes more than year after Gian Carlo Menotti, founder of both festivals, died at the age of 95. It also comes after Menotti's adopted son, Chip, was replaced as head of the Festival of Two Worlds by the Italian Culture Ministry, because he was botching up the once-venerable festival's finances. He has since been replaced by Giorgio Ferrara as chairman.

The Italian and American festivals split in 1993 after years of feuding between Menotti and the festival's American board of directors. Since Menotti's death, there has been speculation that the two festival would once again merge. It looks like that speculation is taking one step closer to being reality.

The meeting will cover the development of the collaboration between the two cities and the two Festivals, with the Spoleto Festival USA which has been taking place in Charleston for 32 years, founded by late Maestro Gian Carlo Menotti in 1976. Menotti chose this city for the beauty, the importance in history and the special atmosphere. [. . .] The presence of Maestro Giorgio Ferrara will be particularly significant, because the reactivation of the collaboration that in the past used to distinguish the two Spoleto Festivals is strongly wished for, for the mutual advantage and satisfaction of both Charleston and Spoleto.

From Charleston City Paper

Natural Light is key to the philosophy of "patient-centered" hospital design

My first trip to a hospital came after I discovered my arm had a new right angle.

It was 1979. I was five years old. I'd dropped out of a tree and snapped the bones in my right forearm. I don't remember if I was in a lot of pain, but do remember asking my mother if I was going to die.

While the emergency room did a lot for my arm, it did little for my state of mind. The hospital smelled funny. It was gloomy and dingy and strange. I've since forgotten most of the details, but I do recall this: the buzzing of fluorescent lights and the feeling that I was in a place where bad things happened.

I wanted to get out. Soon.

It's a commonplace experience. We get sick, go to the hospital, dread our time there. Hospitals scare us. They're big and impersonal and boring. They force us to focus on things we'd rather ignore: illness, chaos, death.

Plus, they're expensive. Heart-bypass surgery, for instance, requires a long convalescence. The longer it takes, the more it costs.

When the Ashley River Tower, the Medical University of South Carolina's new heart, vascular, and digestive disease hospital, opened on Feb. 4, it got a lot of attention from newspapers around the state, and justifiably so.

It's big -- 641,000 square feet with 156 single-patient rooms, including 32 beds in a state-of-the-art intensive care unit. It's new -- a team of local and international architects designed it to reflect the neighboring urban landscape, with elegant curves echoing Charleston's nautical history. And it has a whopping price tag -- about $400 million, including all the equipment. It's the first of five proposed facilities.

What really got the attention of reporters and editors, though, was the role of visual art in the facility: MUSC amassed one of the largest collections of art by local and regional artists on permanent display -- paintings, drawings, photographs, sculptures, pottery, and even traditional Lowcountry sweetgrass baskets -- with the rationale that it will help sick people feel better faster.

More than 850 works were purchased with the help of Mark Sloan, director of the Halsey Institute of Contemporary Art. Organizers placed art on every floor, every patient room, and in every waiting area in the hospital believing they would reduce stress and facilitate healing.

It was a no-brainer news story.

Still, I had more questions than answers.

MUSC wanted to showcase the work of local and regional artists, build a facility unmistakably grounded in a distinct place, and support art by educating the public. And, of course, there was the feel-good, New Age-y mantra of artful healing. That all sounds terrific, but why?

I personally believe art helps people, especially sick people and their families. Perhaps, as doctors straightened my crooked arm with a plaster cast, some aesthetic beauty, natural light, and smart interior design would have made my first hospital trip less dreadful for my mother and me.

But hospitals are in the business of medicine, not art. Why spend the time and effort searching, buying, collecting, and presenting hundreds of works of art? Why go to great lengths to launch an intense fund-raising campaign that exclusively targeted private sources?

What's the whole story behind the Ashley River Tower?

It turns out that ART, as MUSC's new tower is called, is among a new breed of hospital popping up around the country. These structures have been shorn of the Bauhaus severity of postwar America, in which hospitals, like the one I went to in 1979, were pretty much big concrete boxes with some windows in the front more suitable for religious ascetics and Spartan warriors than people in need of medical care. Benefitting from 30 years of sociological research and architectural innovation, these new buildings are being conceived with the patient in mind -- more natural light, more natural decor, and, importantly, more art in patient rooms, waiting areas, everywhere.

This is not just about the meeting of art and medicine. Research does indeed show patients benefit from exposure to nature and beauty during recovery. But there's another dimension here, and that is how art is being used in smart and sophisticated ways to help solve major economic and management problems that hospitals face in the 21st century -- soaring health care costs, patient satisfaction, fiercer competition, staff retention, 76 million baby boomers.

As we enter into a new age of building design, hospitals are increasingly turning to art. The Ashley River Tower has far more than a nice collection that helps people; medical experts and building designers are hailing it as a new architectural standard of patient care and cutting-edge hospitality.

Given the recent posts about state money and Jennifer's post on sports, I was intrigued by this blog entry by a Michigan blogger, dedicated arts lover, and talented critic.

He points out that every theater person ought to be writing thank-you letters to the owners of the Detroit Pistons and the Detroit Red Wings. It was due to their lobbying efforts that the expanded sales tax on services was not extended to entertainment services such as athletic games and the theater.

Given a recent comment that theater belonged to the wealthy elite (despite the fact that a ticket to an athletic event is typically far more expensive than a theater ticket), I found this paragraph interesting:

State House officials tried to paint their efforts to expand the sales tax as an effort to tax "luxuries." But since when is attending a theater performance or a sporting event a luxury? I don't know how often our state elected policitians attend a professional theater performance, but looking at the audiences last Friday night at The Zeitgeist and Saturday night at the Marygrove Theatre, I saw primarily working class people, young people and members of the sought-after creative class. (In fact, the leader of a large group of students from Wayne County Community College Saturday night explained to me that he chose that show in part because of the affordable ticket price.)

Nowhere did I see the snooty rich, the people who fit the image our politicians were trying to create in order to get the public to buy in to their budget plan.