Author: Matthew Westphal

Back From Triumphant Visit To Cuba, Minnesota Orchestra Signs New Contracts With Osmo Vänskä And Musicians

Just 17 months ago, as the lockout dragged on and Osmo resigned as music director, it seemed just possible that the MinnOrch could shut down entirely. Now Osmo is signed through 2018-29 and the musicians through 2019-20, donors have pledged $6.5 million in new money to fund it all, and – get this – negotiations were completed with no lawyers involved.

John Luther Adams Is Crowdsourcing A Sound Installation For the Met Museum’s New Building (The Old Whitney)

“Soundwalk 9:09 … will ask NYC wanderers to email field recordings from the blocks separating what Adams calls the ‘Big Met’ and the new building. When the collection period ends on July 31, Adams will begin molding the recordings into a piece that will last exactly as long as its title, nine minutes and nine seconds. ‘I find the breath of the city itself, that roar, really beautiful, like the roar of the sea,’ Adams says.”

Which Large World City Has The Most Bookstores Per Capita? (It’s Not Paris, London, New York, Or Moscow)

“With a population of 2.8 million people within the city limits, there are 25 bookstores for every 100,000 people … The closest [competitor] is Hong Kong, which has 22 bookstores per 100,000 people.” Says one bookstore manager, “Books represent us like [big hint redacted]. We have a culture very rooted in print.”

When A Wacky Fringe Theater Company Starts Granting Real MFAs

“In the fall, the four-year-old Pig Iron School for Advanced Performance Training” – operated by Philadelphia’s Pig Iron Theatre Company – “and the University of the Arts’ Ira Brind School of Theater Arts will launch one of the country’s only accredited graduate degrees in devised performance, which is created collaboratively by performers rather than written by a playwright. That means, among other things, students can take out federal loans to learn to stage intergalactic gay extravaganzas.”