The acoustics in Philadelphia’s Kimmel Center, home of the Philadelphia Orchestra, have been criticized ever since the center opened in 2002. The main concert hall was designed to be as acoustically adjustable as possible, but the orchestra still hasn’t managed to find the right combination to create a full, warm sound throughout the hall. Still, Philly Pops, a separate orchestra from the Philadelphia, has been tinkering as well, and they may have uncovered some important methods for improving the Kimmel acoustic.
Author: sbergman
LA Pins Cultural Hopes On New Theatre
“Next Thursday, the Nokia Theatre, a 7,100-seat venue billed as one of the most acoustically sophisticated spaces anywhere, will open” in downtown Los Angeles. “The Nokia is a centerpiece of the deliriously ambitious project called L.A. Live, which is nothing less than an attempt to tilt the city’s skyline to the south.” But can a single new venue, no matter how ambitious, really help to transform a city?
Saying Good-Bye To A Hyphen-Obsessed Past
“The new edition of The Shorter Oxford English Dictionary has done away with about 16,000 hyphens. The editors of the dictionary have decided, in an awesome display of ruthless language modification, that the conventions of hyphenation were arbitrary and needed simplification… There are many reasons for this, one of them being that the rules of hyphenation were just silly. The other is, of course, the slow elimination of punctuation that the digital age is necessitating.”
Seeing The Light
What is it that makes a landscape by JMW Turner so unmistakable, so recognizable? Most scholars would say that it was Turner’s “devotion to the idea of the central light source at the heart of the canvas, often shining over water, an idea he is thought to have originally derived from the 17th-century landscape painter Claude Lorrain.”
Fall Film Bonanza
Why has October become such a prime month for the release of great independent films? “Studio specialty divisions like Sony Pictures Classics, Miramax, Fox Searchlight and Paramount Vantage are in full stride this time of year, having used the bounce of film festivals in Toronto and New York to begin positioning their films for the Oscars.”
Latest On The Broadway Stagehands’ Talks
A lockout may be days or even hours away, but officially, the League of American Theaters & Producers is still talking to the union representing Broadway stagehands. Meetings are scheduled for this afternoon, even though an impasse appeared to have been reached Tuesday night.
Carnegie Hall Accused Of Nepotism
Carnegie Hall has tapped an architecture firm run by the son-in-law of its chairman, Sanford Weill, to design its $150m expansion. “Carnegie officials said they were impressed by a previous project by his firm: the design of the well-regarded new home of Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater, where the chairwoman is Mr. Bibliowicz’s mother-in-law, Joan H. Weill.” Ethical questions abound, and Carnegie Hall is being forced to defend its decision publicly.
Nobel Lit Prize To Lessing
Doris Lessing has been awarded the 2007 Nobel Prize for Literature. “Lessing is only the 11th woman to win the prize, considered by many to be the world’s highest accolade for writers, since it started in 1901. And she is the second British writer to win in three years, after Harold Pinter was honoured in 2005.” Lessing, who is 87, will receive $1.85m in prize money.
Busking For A Cause
Musicians with thriving professional careers are not often to be found busking on street corners. But David Juritz, “solo violinist and leader of the London Mozart Players (Britain’s longest established chamber orchestra), he has taken a leave of absence from his day job and is travelling around the world, busking to raise money for the charity Musequality, [which] is raising money for music projects in disadvantaged areas of the world, starting with South Africa and Uganda.”
Peace Breaks Out In St. Paul
“With a flurry of pen strokes and a group hug, the leaders of four of St. Paul’s major arts organizations put their signatures to a cultural armistice that they said would end nearly a quarter-century of sniping, bad blood and obstinacy. They called it a ‘master agreement,’ but the 34-page document is more akin to a peace treaty among the Ordway Center for the Performing Arts, the St. Paul Chamber Orchestra, the Minnesota Opera and the Schubert Club.”