A poll of critics from Europe and North America named Amsterdam’s favorite band no. 1 in its list of the globe’s 20 best symphony orchestras. The U.S. has seven orchestras on the list (with Chicago, Cleveland and L.A. at nos. 6, 7 and 8); Germany has four (including the second-place Berlin Phil), and Russia has three.
Author: Matthew Westphal
WNET To Open Studio At Lincoln Center
New York’s flagship public television station will produce arts programming in a new glass-walled studio on the ground floor of the newly-renovated and expanded Alice Tully Hall, which opens early next year.
Yo-Yo Ma Musical America‘s 2009 Musician Of The Year
The musically peripatetic cellist takes the honors on the 10th anniversary of his Silk Road Project. Other Musical America “Of The Year” winners include Marin Alsop (Conductor), Christopher Rouse (Composer), Stephanie Blythe (Vocalist) and the Pacifica Quartet (Ensemble).
Kimbell Art Museum Plans Extension By Renzo Piano –
“The Kimbell Art Museum in Fort Worth will unveil preliminary plans today for a $70 million addition designed by Italian architect Renzo Piano. The plans call for a separate two-level building west of the original 1972 structure, a revered design by the late Louis Kahn. Final blueprints should be in hand by late 2009 or early 2010, with construction to begin shortly after and opening expected in 2012.”
– And It’s Going In Front of Louis Kahn’s Original
“As anticipated, or dreaded, the Renzo Piano-designed facility is going to be built on the west lawn, directly in front of the existing building.” But he’s leaving 180 feet between them – and creating the sort of entrance Kahn wanted. “Kahn did not understand Texans’ desire to park as closely as possible to a door, so almost all of the Kimbell’s visitors enter by way of the parking lot and through what is ostensibly the garage door of the museum. Piano is going to fix that.”
Gustavo Dudamel Says Life Hasn’t Changed All That Much
Only four years after he first led a professional orchestra, the boy wonder of conductors has two big music director jobs and a DG contract. But the 27-year-old says his life isn’t so very different now – he’s always conducted a lot, he’s just doing more of it outside Venezuela. He’s never intimidated, either – except for this one time in Vienna …
‘The Chelsea Hotel Of The Mad’
Mark Harris looks at the place of Bellevue Hospital in the popular imagination of New York and the country at large – and at how the reality of the hospital and its image relate to and affect each other.
Academy Releases 15-Film Shortlist For Documentary Oscar
Leading the pack is the post-Katrina doc Trouble the Water, the odds-on favorite; other semifinalists include Werner Herzog’s trip to the Antarctic, the Philippe-Petit-skywalks-the-Twin-Towers film, and Errol Morris’s examination of Abu Ghraib.
– And Andrew O’Hehir Says It’s A ‘Goddamn Travesty’
Of the Documentary Oscar shortlist, Salon.com’s “Beyond the Multiplex” columnist fumes, “Margaret Brown’s wonderfully nuanced and profoundly personal film about the racially segregated Mardi Gras traditions of Mobile, Ala., The Order of Myths, was left off, as was Laura Dunn’s gorgeous The Unforeseen, which I’ve described as the Chinatown of Texas real-estate documentaries. Those were two of the best examples of American filmmaking to be seen on screen all year … It’s a complete and total goddamn travesty, is what it is.”
When Tenors Go Bad
The Cape Town Opera has fired tenor Richard Mbovane after he was caught on camera – twice – stealing electronics from a store in Berlin, where the company was touring.