DANCE
http://www.artsjournal.com/dance
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Channel Islands Ballet Cancels Performances The Channel Islands Ballet in Southern California told its dancers last week it has a $150,000 debt and can't afford to pay them. "While two performances have been canceled, the company's board of directors is still hoping the money can be raised by April 1 so the troupe can finish the remainder of the season, which ends in June. The company had planned for two more performances in May and June." Los Angeles Times 03/02/03

MEDIA
http://www.artsjournal.com/media
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Cable TV Prefers Alphabet Soup To Real Names The Learning Channel, The History Channel, Black Entertainment Television - they're all proper names for their respective cable networks. But those networks have been abandoning the names for letters. It's a matter of branding. "If you think about a lot of brands and how they are successful - Tide or Cheer - it's because they have simple, short names that people can remember." Nando Times (AP) 03/02/03

Movie Soundtracks - The Sounds Of Success More than 2 million copies of the "Chicago" sountracks have been sold. The connection between movies and soundtrack success has long been strong. "Big movies and big soundtracks always feed off each other as we've seen in the past from Top Gun to Titanic. Certainly a big soundtrack can extend the life of the movie." Sydney Morning Herald 03/03/03

MUSIC
http://www.artsjournal.com/music
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Lost Beethoven Concerto Is Performed A lost Beethoven oboe concerto got a performance this weekend. "Two Dutch Beethoven enthusiasts have pieced together the musical clues, put them into 18th-century orchestral context and reconstructed the second movement of the only oboe concerto Beethoven ever wrote. The slow, melodic Largo movement of the Oboe Concerto in F Major was performed Saturday night in Rotterdam and billed as a 'world premiere' - even though the full concerto was performed at least once before, 210 years ago." Nando Times (AP) 03/02/03

The Closing Of A New-Music Friend The closing of the new-music label CRI in January changed the classical music landscape. "CRI, for many listeners, was not just an entree into new music but appealed to an anarchic way of listening: adventurously, without expectations, and individually, as an explorer of sound unfettered by what authorities (critics, professors, pompous friends) dictate. Young listeners, tired of whatever music they were weaned on, could find music on CRI that was, by virtue of being the forgotten avant-garde of 20 years before, far more foreign and fascinating than the newest of the new." Washington Post 03/02/03

Touring Orchestras - A Guaranteed Money-Loser "It now costs about $1 million a week to send an orchestra on an international tour - maybe more. A million dollars might do if you're talking about a standard 100-player orchestra. But some orchestras need more." And the presenter of an orchestra is guaranteed to lose money too. "If we sell every seat in the Kennedy Center Concert Hall, we are guaranteed to lose up to $50,000 per concert. However, if it's a really special orchestra, our losses will go up dramatically. It's quite a business." Washington Post 03/02/03

Prokofiev - Great Music, Lousy Timing Prokofiev's legacy has been marred by contradictions. "He produced some of the sprightliest, most ingenious and most enduringly popular music of the 20th century. Yet Prokofiev's career was also, in the brisk summation of music historian Francis Maes, 'a succession of misjudgments,' marked by flawed calculations on the artistic, personal and political fronts." San Francisco Chronicle 03/02/03

San Antonio - The Costs Of Losing A Symphony Orchestra What will it mean if the San Antonio Symphony goes out of business for lack of money? "A symphony orchestra is like the canary in the mine. If the bird stops singing, it's a good bet the air isn't safe for anybody to breathe. To be blunt, if the San Antonio Symphony goes silent, you'd be well advised to update your résumé. Appropriately valuing the symphony means rejecting the big lie — that's what it is — that San Antonio is too poor and lowbrow to afford a luxury like a symphony orchestra. The issue isn't money. The issue is values." San Antonio Express-News 03/02/03

Why Is The Philadelphia Orchestra Missing Out On Recording? There was a time that the Philadelphia Orchestra dominated classical recording. Not anymore. Even projects that seem like naturals for the orchestra are going elsewhere. It's not that recording companies are going out of their way to exclude the orchestra, writes David Patrick Stearns. But maybe the orchestra hasn't made a strong enough case for itself as a candidate to record... Philadelphia Inquirer 03/02/03

PUBLISHING
http://www.artsjournal.com/publishing
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Can Menaker Rescue Random House? Newly-hired Random House chief Daniel Menaker is "charged with preserving the glow of literary prestige around the imprint, which published William Faulkner, Robert Penn Warren, Truman Capote and a long shelf of 20th-century American classics. But to do it he also needs to revive its editors' flagging morale while proving that he can work well reporting to Ms. Centrello and that he can keep important authors." Is he really up for the job? The New York Times 03/03/03

In Quebec - A Fight To Keep A Book On The Shelves In Quebec, from 1993 until last summer it was illegal to publish biographies of "persons living or dead without permission from the subject or his or her heirs." So for seven years there were virtually no biographies published in Quebec. Just before the law's reapeal, though, a writer got stuck on the horns of the law, and the matter is now in court... Toronto Star 03/02/03

Library-Builder Extraordinaire "From Fiji to Florida to Fresno, Calif., Andrew Carnegie built 2,509 libraries between 1881 and 1917, mostly in America, the British Isles and Canada. To this day, Carnegie's free-to-the-people libraries remain Pittsburgh's most significant cultural export, a gift that has shaped the minds and lives of millions." Pittsburgh Post-Gazette 03/02/03

THEATRE
http://www.artsjournal.com/theatre
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Spacey's Plans For The Old Vic Saying he was "born to run the Old Vic" Theatre Kevin Spacey talks about his plans for when he takes over next year. "He exudes a passionate enthusiasm mixed with a kind of awed delight as he contemplates his task when he becomes the troubled theatre's artistic director in the autumn of next year; but there's a lot for him to do before then." The Telegraph (UK) 03/03/03

Broadway Musicians Set Strike Deadline Broadway musicians have set a strike date of Thursday after talks with producers failed to lead to a new contract. "The parties continue to be very far apart, and there's not going to be a settlement tonight. We have set a strike deadline for Thursday midnight March 6." Nando Times (AP) 03/02/03

The Cost Of Music On Broadway The musicians' dispute with Broadway producers over how many musicians must be hired for a show centers on the cost of musicians. But "most people are misinformed about the world of Broadway pit orchestras. They're not as expensive as you might think (only $1-$6 of a $75 ticket goes to the musicians), and successive contract concessions have whittled their size to a fraction of their Golden Era heyday. There used to be 30, 40, even 50 (musicians) in the pit at a Broadway show. Now the (size) is as small as three. 'Phantom' is probably the biggest show on Broadway, and it has only 26." Orange County Register 03/02/03

VISUAL ARTS
http://www.artsjournal.com/visualarts
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Did American Investigation Of Nazi Looted Art Fail Its Task? A Clinton commission investigating Nazi-looted art, did not do an adequate job, and overlooked solid leads, says some scholars. "Objections to the panel's work were so strong that some staff members said they contemplated writing a minority report. Their comments, and similar ones from leading experts in the field, were not publicly expressed when the commission reported its findings. Now critics say the commission was a lost opportunity to determine how much nazi looted art flowed through America. The New York Times 03/03/03

Free Museum Admission Fails To Attract Low-Income Visitors A report says that free admission to British museums has resulted in hordes of new visitors, but that the policy had failed to attract lower-income visitors. "Its figures show the Natural History Museum in London attracted 72% more visitors last year compared with 2001, the Science Museum had 101.4% more visitors and the Victoria & Albert Museum had 111% more. However, numbers visiting the British Museum fell 4.14% last year." BBC 03/02/03

Dali Sprung From NY Jail A Salvador Dali drawing that hung in New York's Riker's Island jail in the presence of round-the-clock guards, was stolen this weekend. "The audacious thief was apparently not only brazen enough to confiscate Dali's sketchy rendering of Christ on the cross from a locked display case in the lobby of the men's jail, but he or she also managed to leave behind a schlocky, B-rate copy that at least three correction officers were puzzled to find upon reporting to work yesterday morning." The New York Times 03/02/03

A Crafty Theft How did A Salvador Dali come to be hanging in a jail? "As the story goes, Dali was due to appear at Rikers for a talk with the prisoners, but he took ill. With reporters waiting in the lobby of his hotel, Dali, famously reluctant to disappoint the press, took India ink to paper and created a gestural evocation of the Crucifixion." The New York Times 03/03/02

Amerterdam's Stedelijk Museum In Turmoil Amerterdam's Stedelijk is the city's modern art museum and once was considered "one of the most dynamic museums" in Europe. But its director left the museum in January and the general director is also leaving. Closure for building work scheduled for this year has been put off for a year, and the city council has decided to privatize the museum. And there are proposals to move the Stedelijk to a new site on the outskirts of Amsterdam... The Art Newspaper 02/28/03

Tower Of London Wall Collapses "Part of the moat wall of the Tower of London has collapsed, and hundreds of feet of Georgian cast-iron railings have been removed, during contentious building works intended to improve the setting of one of the most popular tourist attractions in Britain." The Guardian (UK) 03/03/03

Destroying Treasures Of History Is Wrong - No Matter Who's Doing It Two years ago the world stood apalled as the Taliban blasted the historic Bamiyan Buddhas into oblivion. Though the regime commited many atrocities, somehow the destruction of the centuries-old statues stirred fresh outrage. Now the US is planning to bomb Iraq, site of many historical/archaeological treasures. Is this not outrageous also? Newsday 03/02/03