The century-old Merriam Theater, which the Kimmel Center acquired last fall, has a handsome old interior – as well as painfully cramped seats (which some patrons have to walk through offices to reach), poor acoustics, outdated sound and light equipment, and dressing rooms that literally used to be stables. The new plan is for the Kimmel to partner with a developer to tear down the seven-story building currently housing the Merriam and completely revamp the place (saving the auditorium’s architectural details) while building a skyscraper above it.
Author: Matthew Westphal
Lost Giacometti Sketches Turn Up In Antiques Shop
The pencil drawings were among the effects of the famously crusty London dealer Eila Grahame, who died in 2010.
Santa Fe Opera Boss To Step Down After Ten Years
Charles MacKay, a local boy who started at the company as a teenaged parking lot attendant, departs after next summer’s season.
London’s Garden Bridge Officially Killed
More than £37 million of public money has already been spent on what was supposed to be a privately funded £200 million project, which was conceived by the actress Joanna Lumley and designed by Thomas Heatherwick. Private fundraising for the bridge stalled last year after London’s new mayor, Sadiq Khan, joined many city residents in opposing it and refused to commit any funding for its maintenance.
We May Not Know How New York’s ‘The Shed’ Will Turn Out Or What’ll Be Shown There, But Seeing Its Enormous Shell Glide On Rails Is Pretty Cool
“The gossamer-looking but gigantic structure [designed by Diller Scofidio + Renfro] still weighs in at 8 million pounds but glides on a half-dozen exposed steel ‘bogies,’ or wheels, six-feet in diameter, with tapered bearings so meticulously engineered that the system requires just six 15-horsepower motors – in effect, a Toyota Prius engine moving a behemoth as finely-tuned as a Formula One car.”
Actor/Playwright/Screenwriter Joseph Bologna, 82
He was best kown for his role as TV host King Kaiser in My Favorite Year and his Oscar-nominated script for the play-turned-film Lovers and Other Strangers, part of his half-century-long collaboration with his wife, Renée Taylor.
Controversial Director Of Bolshoi’s Banned ‘Nureyev’ Is Trapped In Russia, His Passport Confiscated
Kirill Serebrennikov, artistic director of the cutting-edge theatre The Gogol Centre, saw his travel documents seized when he was detained and his apartment was raided in May in what authorities said was an investigation into embezzlement of state funds. Last month, his staging for the Bolshoi ballet of a full-length work about the life of Rudolf Nureyev was abruptly cancelled a few days before opening night.
SoundCloud Saved By Last-Minute $170M Investment
Rumors of the site’s imminent collapse had been floating for weeks, and 40% of its staffers were laid off in early July. “The [new] funding comes from two firms, The Raine Group – which also holds stakes in Vice Media and C3 Presents, the owner of Lollapalooza – and Temesek Holdings, a state-run Singaporean holding company with interests in several state-run Chinese companies. In addition, co-founder Alex Ljung will be stepping down as CEO, but remaining chairman.”
Top Posts From AJBlogs 08.14.17
Respect
I co-led an hour-long seminar this summer on the business side of being a composer. We covered a lot of topics: commissions, publication, recordings – the works. At one point, I mentioned … read more
AJBlog: Infinite Curves Published 2017-08-14
When Artificial Intelligence Software Comes Out Even Stupider Than Its Creators Had Hoped
Reporter Jacob Brogan talks with researcher Janelle Shane – who created a neural network to tell knock-knock jokes, only to have it become fixated on the Cow With No Lips joke – about “what’s going on under the hood, what her creations might teach us, and why it’s so funny when neural networks go bad.”