Seattle Museum Expands Staff "Gearing up for an expansion downtown that will more than triple its gallery space by 2007, the Seattle Art Museum has created a new curatorial position and hired a conservator of sculptors, installations and other objects." The hires are part of a larger strategy to raise SAM's profile and enourage donations to enrich the museum's collection. Seattle Post-Intelligencer 01/05/05
Posted: 01/05/2005 6:22 am
Art Amidst The Ads Amid the inescapable glut of billboards and oversized wall advertisements in New York City, a giant 1300-square-foot digital video screen is garnering attention. And it isn't selling anything. "Operating on the notion that New York deserves art where it least expects it, SmartSign Media is presenting a month-long exhibition of images from Magnum Photos, the legendary photojournalism collective." The images appear on the giant screen which wraps around Port Authority, the city's main bus terminal. New York Daily News 01/05/05
Posted: 01/05/2005 6:08 am
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No Quick End In Sight To St. Louis Strike The St. Louis Symphony officially asked its musicians yesterday to return to work under the terms of their old contract while negotiations continue for a new agreement. But due to unusual funding terms of the previous agreement, any "play-and-talk" scenario would have the musicians playing for far less than the weekly pay rate they had been receiving, a plan which the musicians have rejected. Still, the SLSO's top exec is claiming that the offer of a paid return to work proves that the stoppage is a musician-called strike, not a management-imposed lockout. St. Louis Post-Dispatch 01/05/05
Posted: 01/05/2005 5:20 am
- 33 Wannabes Left Hanging The work stoppage at the St. Louis Symphony came at the worst possible time for dozens of hopeful players who had spent the weekend piling into the city for two auditions scheduled to be held this week. The auditions were canceled after the musicians and management could not come to a contract agreement, and the orchestra is reimbursing the auditionees for their travel expenses. The SLSO musicians were willing to allow the auditions to go on as scheduled, but that would have required the audition committee to be paid a small gratuity, which the orchestra's managers refused to allow. The New York Times 01/05/05
Posted: 01/05/2005 5:10 am
Does Anyone in Florida Like Music? In the wake of the Florida Philharmonic's bankruptcy and the demise of Miami's lone classical radio station, many observers have been wondering aloud whether South Florida really just doesn't have any use for the form. Now, more evidence for the affirmative: the Palm Beach Chamber Music Society is slashing its current season by a third, and may close up shop completely before fall 2005. Poor ticket sales and sluggish donations are cited as the major reasons for the society's problems. A lack of local product may also be a factor - the internationally known Miami String Quartet decamped for Ohio last year, and many local performers have left town with the Philharmonic's shutdown. South Florida Sun-Sentinel 01/05/05
Posted: 01/05/2005 5:02 am
A Final "Tristan" For The Disks? EMI's Abbey Road Studio is hosting "a gargantuan, million-dollar recording of Wagner's 'Tristan und Isolde,' put together as a now-or-never enterprise for the tenor Plácido Domingo but also as a last, heroic stand from a classical CD industry so crushed by economic pressures that many consider it in terminal decline." It may be the last ever recording of the Wagner epic. The New York Times 01/05/05
Posted: 01/04/2005 8:00 pm
A Music Camp's Controversial Modernizing Plans Large-scale changes are underway at Interlochen Music School, where faculty dismissals and program changes have riled some fans of the school. The school's board chairman says that the changes are essential because "declining enrollment, fewer applicants, higher cancellations and fewer returning campers were threatening the camp's reputation and even survival. At the same time, the student-staff ratio last summer was two to one. 'That is not a sustainable ratio'." The New York Times 01/05/05
Posted: 01/04/2005 7:50 pm
A Website Where Musicians Get The Money A new UK music website promises to "democratize" how music is distributed. "TuneTribe is offering unsigned artists and acts with existing record deals an 80% share of royalties instead of the traditional 15% offered by majors such as Sony and EMI. Bands can set the price for downloading their own music, with the benchmark set at 79p a track by iTunes." The Guardian (UK) 01/05/05
Posted: 01/04/2005 6:46 pm
St. Louis Symphony - Strike Or Lock-Out? Are musicians of the St. Louis Symphony on strike or have they been locked out? Drew McManus goes looking for answers... Adaptistration (AJBlogs) 01/04/05
Posted: 01/04/2005 6:19 pm
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Pioneer Of Comic Art Dies Comic artist Will Eisner has died at 87. Eisner revolutionized the world of newspaper comics in the 1940s with his popular serial, The Spirit, and is believed to have published the first full-length graphic novel in 1978. Toronto Star 01/05/05
Posted: 01/05/2005 6:26 am
- An Artist & A Fighter "In addition to having the hand and eye of a gifted artist, Will Eisner... had an amazing insight into the human condition and the heart of a true club boxer. He was tough, game and always moving, packed a powerful punch and never quit... He carried two concealed weapons -- a wry, deadpan sense of humor and a lightning wit -- both of which held no respect for pomposity or rank." Washington Post 01/05/05
Posted: 01/05/2005 6:25 am
Well, All Those Mars Crashes Were Sort Of Artistic When one thinks of NASA, one probably doesn't think of art, but performance artist Laurie Anderson would beg to differ. Anderson recently became the agency's first-ever artist-in-residence after being offered "$20,000, plus unlimited access to the Johnson Space Center in Houston, the Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore and more, to create a new work." The result is "a 90-minute flow of electronic music, personal musings and melodic stories that meander from the nesting habits of gay penguins and her favourite haiku... to the latest advances in robotics and photos from the Hubble Space Telescope." The Globe & Mail (Canada) 01/05/05
Posted: 01/05/2005 5:56 am
Renzo Piano, Man About Town Renzo Piano is the architect of the moment in New York, with several high-profile projects on the books. "For an architect who had never designed a building in New York before these projects emerged, Mr. Piano is suddenly spending a lot of time here. So why is an architect celebrated for three decades, starting with his collaboration with Richard Rogers on the Pompidou Center in Paris, finally having his New York moment?" The New York Times 01/05/05
Posted: 01/04/2005 8:13 pm
A Diva's Demise (And Return) In This month's Opera News, soprano Andrea Gruber details her out-of-control career in the 1990s. "I took those drugs, and things spiraled out of control from there. I may have had a voice at that time, but I had no technique. And when you take enough drugs, you’re completely numb. You can’t breathe properly. I wound up pushing so hard on my throat that my cords would swell, and I had to take cortisone to get the swelling down. So there I was with no technique, and I was stoned out of my gourd, and they were shooting me up with cortisone. One day I’d be in great shape, and things would work, and the next day I couldn’t phone it in. Try having a career when one day you’re phenomenal and the next you’re not hirable — you can’t be put on the stage.” OperaNews 01/05
Posted: 01/04/2005 5:53 pm
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The Golden Age (In 1905) The best year for theatre? How about 1905, suggests Dominic Dromgoole. "What made the plays of this moment hit the target so often? Historically, these dramatists occupied a unique moment, precariously balanced between traditional structures and modernism. Ibsen began a process of stretching and distorting the sturdy Victorian play, disturbing its traditional scaffold of strong narrative and regular crisis and resolution. Others took it further. The old form wasn't sufficient for expressing the miasma of little moments they saw and heard around them. They took the four-act form and filled it with the lazy chaos of life and the confused mess of the inner self." The Guardian (UK) 01/05/05
Posted: 01/04/2005 6:50 pm
The Sad Story Of Tacoma Actors Guild Last month, after 26 years in business, Tacoma Actors Guild suddenly closed its doors. "By December, TAG had only $30,000 in the bank, enough to cover a single two-week payroll. But when the bank heard about the indefinite closure and layoffs in the newspaper, it froze the $30,000 against the $165,000 note. Staffers refused to work without pay, and the Christmas play ended abruptly, its set left standing onstage." Tacoma News-Tribune 01/04/05
Posted: 01/04/2005 6:04 pm
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Saving An Indie Underdog, With Help From Goliath "The Boyd Theatre, Philadelphia's last movie palace, is to be saved under a deal that will allow Clear Channel to stage concerts, musicals and Broadway-sized productions there, [the city's mayor] is to announce today... Clear Channel emerged in the fall of 2003 as the angel that would help Goldenberg rescue the once-grand art-deco theater." Philadelphia Inquirer 01/05/05
Posted: 01/05/2005 6:14 am
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Deficit Forces Cuts In Salt Lake Utah-based Ballet West has announced its intention to make big cuts in its performance schedule and company size in order to compensate for three years of red ink. The company "will drop its poorly attended fall repertory program, and begin its 2005-06 season with The Nutcracker next December. Other cuts include a reduction from 40 to 35 dancers, and a trim to artists' contracts from 38 weeks to 35." Salt Lake Tribune 01/05/05
Posted: 01/05/2005 4:57 am
B(allet)=MC Squared The Rambert Dance Company is producing a new work based on Einstein's theory of relativity. "The work is the inaugural choreographic piece from Rambert artistic director Mark Baldwin and was commissioned by the Institute of Physics. A professor of physics is working with Baldwin to advise on the technical aspects of the work." BBC 01/04/05
Posted: 01/04/2005 6:39 pm
Musicians Protest Bourne's Tour Plans Musicians are protesting choreographer Matthew Bourne's decision to tour his latest ballet outside of London using a 1980s-era recording rather than live musicians. "It smacks of, ‘It’s all right for audiences outside of London to put up with a recording, but London audiences shouldn’t have to accept that’." The Times (UK) 01/05/05
Posted: 01/04/2005 6:31 pm
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