“With two weeks left before season-opening rehearsals, contract talks between the San Antonio Symphony Society and musicians are on hold after the musicians rejected management’s offer to cut more than $8,000 from last year’s base salary to around $23,000, a level the musicians say they cannot live on.”
Author: Matthew Westphal
Netflix To Split In Two
“In the wake of a rapid decline in Netflix’s stock price last week, [Netflix CEO Reed] Hastings is taking a bold step by separating the DVD and video streaming services. The DVD-by-mail service will now be called Qwikster, and the streaming service will maintain the Netflix brand. That’s right: the new business (streaming) will keep the existing name.”
Conductor Kurt Sanderling, 98
“Kurt Sanderling, who led the Leningrad Philharmonic and the East Berlin Symphony Orchestra under Soviet rule and won admirers in the West later in his career as a guest conductor for orchestras in London, Los Angeles and elsewhere, has died” – two days short of his 99th birthday.
Your Walk Is Like Your Fingerprints
“Airport security may soon have a new way to check your ID: watching the way you walk. It seems footsteps are as unique as fingerprints, and can identify people with 99.8 per cent accuracy.”
Your Nose Knows More Than You Knew It Knew
“[Our] noses are in fact exquisitely sensitive instruments that guide our everyday life to a surprising extent. Subtle smells can change your mood, behaviour and the choices you make, often without you even realising it. … The big mystery is why we aren’t aware of our nasal activity for more of the time.”
Modern Dance Takes Up Science As Subject Matter
“Indeed, the marriage between science and dance would seem about as likely as that between Arthur Miller and Marilyn Monroe. But opposites attract, as the physicists know, and it is perhaps not so odd that scientific thought should intrigue the contemporary choreographer.”
Darcey Bussell Reveals Dance Photography’s Secret Trick
“Images of the ballerina leaping through the air were sometimes aided by a carefully concealed trampoline.” (Shocking.)
Scandalized Georgia Mayor Shuts Down Production Of Rocky Horror Show
The original, staged version of this deathless camp classic has been around since 1973. But the show is still too outré for Carrollton, Ga. mayor Wayne Garner. After seeing some rehearsal footage on a Facebook page, Garner has cancelled the rental of a city-owned theater to a young company producing the musical.
Flaming White Boy Visits Burning Man
Seth Stevenson: “And this is when my brain melted a little. … A giant metal octopus rolling across the sand, with actual hot flames spewing out of its tentacles. … Lasers careened across the sky. Choking dust storms howled into our eyes and noses. Everyone was in aviator goggles, and knee-high leather boots, and fur vests.”
Despite Recession, Kansas City Opens Glittering New Arts Center
“The Kauffman Center for the Performing Arts, a $326 million concrete-and-glass clamshell overlooking downtown, … was designed by the prominent architect Moshe Safdie and paid for with private donations. The building, people here say, reflects the willingness of Kansas City residents to open their wallets if it means raising the national profile of the city’s arts scene.”