“Via the website www.artsincrisis.org, companies can submit online requests, and Kennedy Center officials [including renowned Mr. Fix-It Michael Kaiser]… will offer help via e-mail, by phone, by live Web chats or by visiting the arts groups.”
Author: Matthew Westphal
‘The LSD Of 2009’: Hollywood To Ramp Up Digital 3D
“After the 3-D commercial triumphs of 2008 – among them the Hannah Montana concert film, Journey to the Center of the Earth, and Bolt – Hollywood is readying more than a dozen 3-D titles for release in 2009, not all kiddie fare.”
Max Neuhaus, 69, Pioneer Of Sound Installation Art
After beginning his career as a percussion soloist who played Cage and Stockhausen, he came to prominence as “a sculptor who worked with nonmusical sound instead of traditional materials such as clay or steel.” (One of his installations can still be heard on a traffic island in Times Square.)
Miami City Ballet Cuts Jobs Of Eight Corps Members
“Too many ballerinas and not enough money to pay them all,” company artistic director Edward Villella wrote in a letter to the laid-off dancers. “This is not a reflection on your work… The board is convinced that such extreme measures are necessary if the company is to survive.”
Detroit Int’l Jazz Festival Features Hometown Music For 2009
Over the last two years, North America’s largest free jazz festival “has showcased Detroit’s jazz tradition alongside those of Chicago and Philadelphia. But the 2009 festival – the 30th anniversary of the event – is all about the home team.”
Jazz Saxophonist Hank Crawford, 74
“[A]n influential alto saxophonist and arranger who toured with rhythm and blues innovator Ray Charles and jazz organist Jimmy McGriff,… Mr. Crawford was best known for the plaintive, bluesy quality he brought to the alto saxophone.”
Minnesota Man Punches Russian National Ballet Dancers
An evidently inebriated 28-year-old allegedly attacked three members of the troupe and a security guard in the lobby of a Minneapolis hotel. The culprit was apparently angry that the visiting dancers were speaking a foreign language; during the assault and in the squad car afterwards, he also made “homophobic and racially based remarks.”
Israel’s Sephardic-Moroccan Orchestra Fires Its Musicians And Closes
The Andalusian Orchestra, a 2006 Israel Prize winner, preserves and renews the art music of the Sephardim of Morocco. Well, it did: After months of fruitless negotiations for an increase in their very low pay, the musicians went on strike a few days ago. Then they found out – from the media – that management had disbanded the orchestra in response.
Koolhaas Firm To Design Arts Center In Taipei
“The [Office for Metropolitan Architecture] design encompasses three theaters – two that seat 800 and one that holds 1,500 – all of which feed into a central cube clad in corrugated glass that unites their stage accommodations so that the theaters can be used separately or in combination.”
Mothballed Mendelssohn Scores, Rediscovered And Revived
Nearly a third of Mendelssohn’s music has lain in storage for 150 years, unpublished and unheard. Stephen Somary has been leading a project to track down, edit and revive these lost works, and he unveiled 13 of them, all chamber works, in a concert this week. “Most were delightful if not ground shaking,” writes Allan Kozinn.