Month: April 2004

45 of 64 Musicians Vote Not To Renew Schwarz In Liverpool

Two thirds of the musicians of the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic voted to not renew music director Gerard Schwarz’s contract. “A final decision on whether to renew Mr Schwarz’s contract will be taken by the 11-strong board of directors following the review. The issues that musicians have disagreed with Schwarz about are said to include programme planning and repertoire choice. There has been some concern over the new umbrella job title of musical director.”

When Dance Companies Play Away From Their Strengths

The North Carolina Dance Theatre rarely gets to New York. It’s a company run by prominent Balanchinites and they have staged much of the master’s work. But not this time. Why, wonders Tobi Tobias, “did this energetic and engaging troupe ignore this heritage and offer a program comprising three pieces of middling worth only obliquely related to classical dancing?”

Learned Aggression

“A surprising natural experiment, reported in Public Library of Science Biology, an online journal, suggests that the level of violence in baboon society is culturally determined. Cultural transmission of behaviour has been seen in many animals besides humans. But until now, it has concerned what foodstuffs are good to eat, how to make and use tools, and how to communicate (many bird songs, for example, have learned regional dialects). Cultural transmission of, for want of a better word, manners, has never before been observed outside Homo sapiens.”

No Sale For Hamlet

“A rare copy of Shakespeare’s Hamlet failed to sell on Wednesday because no one was willing to pay the minimum price set by the seller’s estate. Christie’s had estimated the 1611 edition of the classic tragedy — the last such copy in private hands — would fetch $1.5 million to $2 million.”

Broadway Producers: Actors Should Make Less For Road Tours

Broadway producers have proposed to actors that they lower their pay in national touring companies. “Over the last several years, the road has changed dramatically. Today, low-cost non-Equity and nonunion touring companies and alternatives to theatre such as ‘Riverdance,’ etc. are everywhere. This competition has meant fewer opportunities for us, league producers, to produce. That’s why there are fewer jobs and fewer workweeks for Equity members. If we cannot produce, you cannot work.”

Saving Titanic

Efforts are beginning to save the wreck of the Titanic as an underwater museum. “Hundreds of tourists and salvagers, explorers and moviemakers, have assailed the Titanic since the team of American and French scientists discovered its resting place more than two miles down. Partly as a result, the vessel, the world’s most famous shipwreck, is rapidly falling apart. ‘The world’s oceans are the museums of the deep. It is in the interest of all peoples to protect and conserve both wrecks of recent history as well as submerged sites of antiquity’.”

How Will LA Make A Downtown That Works?

Civic boosters for years have been trying to transform Grand Street downtown into a proper city center. Yet another plan as emerged – this one to cost $1.3 billion. Will it succeed? “Paris has its Champs Élysées. New York has its Rockefeller Center, Times Square and Central Park. Now, Los Angeles will have at its center a grand boulevard and urban park.”