“Plans for a £90m refurbishment of London’s Royal Festival Hall have been unveiled, with the news that £73m of the total sum has been raised so far… The Arts Council have given £25m to the project, while Heritage Lottery’s donation is £20m.” The aim is to give the hall an entirely new look, and in the process, create a world-class acoustical venue for London, which despite multiple tries, has never managed to build one.
Month: April 2004
San Antonio: Back From The Brink?
The San Antonio Symphony’s bankruptcy reorganization plan was approved by a federal judge this week, allowing the orchestra to move ahead with plans for a new season. Bankruptcy may be in the past, but so are many of the SAS’s old musicians, who have moved on to new jobs in new cities. Still, hopes are high for a rejuvenated ensemble. “The new operating plan includes a slimmed-down budget with a shorter season and lower pay and benefits for musicians. It also features a new management team and increased emphasis on marketing, sales, corporate sponsorships and decreased telemarketing expenses. The proposed budget for 2004-05, based on a 26-week season and 72 musicians, lists operating expenses of about $5.5 million.”
Martins Proposes New Lincoln Center Dance Company
“Peter Martins, the ballet master in chief of New York City Ballet, has suggested creating a modern dance company at Lincoln Center that would be the first new cultural organization there since Jazz at Lincoln Center was established in 1996. The company would replace New York City Opera as the ballet’s co-tenant at the New York State Theater, if the opera troupe succeeds in building a new home at the World Trade Center site or elsewhere.”
Broadcasters Protest FCC
“The Screen Actors Guild and the American Federation of Television and Radio Artists (AFTRA) have joined the likes of Viacom and Fox Entertainment Group — as well as liberal bastions such as the American Civil Liberties Union — in challenging the constitutionality of the FCC’s condemning singer Bono’s use of an expletive last year on the televised Golden Globe Awards.”
Recreating A Shakespeare Experience (With Critical Success)
Mark Rylance has made a big success of the Globe Theatre in London. “In the mid-’90s, the whole Globe experience – building and costumes made by 16th-century methods; no scenery, lighting or assisted sound for actors, productions as close as possible to Shakespeare’s directions – smacked, many said, of an Olde England “theatre experience”. But Rylance has proved his critics wrong and pulled off a remarkable success story. Most of the Globe’s productions have met critical acclaim, and it sells an astonishing 90 per cent of its seats during its summer-only season.”
Dancing In New York – Most Work For Free
“Dance/NYC recently reported that over 8,600 people work for local dance organizations on a volunteer basis—77 percent of the entire workforce in the professional dance community. Substandard conditions exist because dancers and management are unlikely to challenge them. They tend not to think of art as work or artists as workers.”
To Dance – Portrait Of A Miserable Life
The economics of the dance world are depressing. Pay is poverty-level low, the physical demands are crippling, and success is measured in teaspoons. After looking at the New York dance world, it’s a wonder anyone would devote their life to it.
Getting Your Hands Around The Meaning Of “Obscene”
“Abruptly, the FCC is frantically following its mandate to bar “obscene, profane and indecent language” from “radio communication.” Those adjectives seem more like a rhetorical flourish in the U.S. Code than specific categories, but the difference between indecency, obscenity, and profanity has become a real question. It’s almost impossible to prove that broadcasts on public airwaves are obscene by the statutory definition.”
Testing The Art Of The Free Market
The new Savoy Opera in London is a grand experiment in the business of art, writes Norman Lebrecht. “The revolution was, unseen, in the bottom line. This was opera without subsidy, opera with an entrepreneurial spirit – opera as it used to be, organised by resourceful enthusiasts for an audience that consisted not of bow-tied aesthetes and glams in gowns but, in the main, of working men and women who might otherwise have been watching farce in Whitehall, a musical on Shaftesbury Avenue or a DVD at home. After sixty years of public support for the arts and a general recognition that they are a jolly good thing, here was a genuine attempt to test the market and see what sort of people, and how many of them, might go to the opera if it was brought to them at a guaranteed professional standard and at a reasonable price.”
The Paper DVD
A new DVD made of paper can hold five times more data than the current model. “The disc is 51% paper and could offer foolproof security, said officials. Since a paper disc can be cut by scissors easily, it is simple to preserve data security when disposing of the disc.”