The multiple-Grammy-winning company, which includes jazz labels Heads Up and Concord as well as classical label Telarc (home of the Atlanta and Cincinnati Symphonies), is eliminating half of its 52 staff positions and ending all in-house record production. Telarc will continue to manufacture and distribute recordings produced by others; the company’s founders and chief recording engineer have already launched new ventures with Telarc as a major client.
Author: Matthew Westphal
Cincinnati Symphony And Pops’ Recording Future May Be In Doubt
The orchestra “announced last month that it was suspending recordings as part of cost-cutting measures.” With the orchestras’ longtime label, Telarc, no longer producing records, “if the orchestra ever hopes to record again, it will have to explore new options, such as self-producing or recording for Internet download only, which other orchestras have tried.”
Recession Hits Artists Disproportionately Hard
“According to new research announced today by the National Endowment for the Arts, working artists are unemployed at a higher rate than other workers, and at a rate that is rising more rapidly than other professions. Presumably as a result, more artists are leaving their profession.”
Proposal: Let Artists Save The World Financial System
“Let’s do a job swap. We’ll put the corporate executives to work as artists while the artists run Wall Street.” Liz Lerman offers nine reasons artists are up to the task (e.g., “Artists do not expect to get anything if they do a bad job. Except maybe a bad review.”), and she observes that “in their new capacities as painters, poets, cellists and choreographers, our Wall Street executives might be experiencing a combination of culture shock therapy and ethical boot camp.”
UK Regional Theatre Staffers Consider Nationwide Strike
The BECTU union has requested a 5% pay increase for its members, while the Theatrical Management Association is calling for a pay freeze. With talks having broken down, the union has written all of its local representatives, asking “whether they would be willing to engage in a campaign of industrial action, up to and including strike action, to achieve an acceptable pay increase.”
Imelda Marcos, Photographer’s Muse
The famously acquisitive former First Lady of the Philippines is the subject of a five-photo series, “The Imelda Collection,” on display this weekend at the Pulse Contemporary Art Fair in Manhattan. Sample image: “She lounges in shark-infested waters on an inflatable raft belting out the song on the sheet music in her hand. On the tiny island behind her stands a giant gilt high-heeled shoe.” (Yes, she posed herself.)
The Battle Goes On At Wisconsin Chamber Orchestra
With a musicians’ strike just entering its sixth month, the WCO has cancelled two further concerts at the end of March. (Three youth concerts on March 18 will go ahead as announced.) The main issue is that management wants to cut the number of guaranteed rehearsals and performances per year from 75 to 45 or fewer, though the per-service fee would remain the same.
Despite Economic Turmoil, A New Shoestring Opera Company Is Born
“Last year, when [Rebecca Greenstein and Bryce] Smith were performing in a children’s cabaret, they realized that their summer calendars were wide open. So just as terms like ‘credit default swaps’ were becoming part of the language, they created the Opera Manhattan Repertory Theater, a company for young and emerging singers.”
Cirque du Soleil To Premiere Its Next Show In Chicago
The piece, to be titled Vaudeville, would be the troupe’s first attempt at a Broadway-style show; “The idea is to create a 90-minute hybrid of a Cirque circus-style show and a more traditional musical-theater production.” Cirque plans to rehearse the show in Chicago with an eye to opening in November; a run of six months at New York’s Beacon Theatre is anticipated for next year.
Playwright And Screenwriter Horton Foote, 92
“In a body of work for which he won the Pulitzer Prize and two Academy Awards, Mr. Foote was known as a writer’s writer, an author who never abandoned his vision even when Broadway and Hollywood temporarily turned their backs on him.”