“London’s Kings Place opens today — giving the city a new arts venue and fulfilling the dream of its creator Peter Millican.” Millican, an organic farmer and amateur violist, put up the lion’s share of the £100m to build what critics are calling “a superb and elegant space, more beautiful than many of London’s music venues.”
Author: sbergman
New Boss For Newly Stable Auckland Phil
A month after receiving a financial rescue package from the local city council, New Zealand’s Auckland Philharmonia has named 36-year old German conductor Eckehard Stier as its next music director.
So You Want To Be An Artist
The Times of London is asking a group of leading artists to explain how they got their start, how they learned to balance authenticity with success, and what aspiring artists should expect to encounter. The answers are diverse and fascinating: “I never knew I wanted to be an artist – it was just a sort of burden that I was born with… I find the hardest bit is generating ideas – sitting there and thinking things through makes me feel lazy if I don’t come up with stuff.”
The New British Invasion
“West End dramas and musicals are again the rage in New York, an American opera has a UK director – and a Brit is running the Museum of Modern Art… In fact culture, in the broader sense, blown in from England has never been held in higher esteem.”
Writers: Stop Writing About Writing!
“Whenever a novel starts with the character of a writer sitting in a Hampstead kitchen, struggling to finish a novel, I throw the book straight in the bin… Kafka once advised writers to sit in a room and wait for the world to reveal itself to them. Right now, I’d rather get out and explore.”
A New Music Evangelist Assesses The Scene
“Holland’s long-time modern music champion, Reinbert De Leeuw… and his players [in the Schoenberg Ensemble] have forged remarkable bonds with a veritable who’s who of European modern music masters,” and literally changed the way the world listens to new music. “Wonderful things are happening and there’s much more variety in musical life than there was 40 years ago. We had to fight for it. Now there’s a much more favourable climate.”
A Future Dance Star Emerges In London
“Adam Linder, 25, won The Place Prize for dance 2008 for his contemporary duet Foie Gras, a critique of modern mass consumption. He was the youngest of 20 choreographers chosen from 174 hopefuls to compete for the £25,000 award.” And just like that, a quiet kid from Australia became one of the hot new personalities of the international dance world.
Not Great, But Still Important
Philip Kennicott writes that the much-despised but vigorously defended 2 Columbus Circle, originally designed by architect Edward Durrell Stone, has been transformed from “a building that was hard to love… into a building that is hard to hate. The defense of 2 Columbus Cir. might not have been so passionate if Stone’s work wasn’t under general assault around the country.”
Did Rothko’s Art Suffer In His Last Years?
“Everyone knows what we are supposed to feel before the transcendent beauty of a Rothko – amazement, awe and revelation.” But Laura Cumming writes that the collection of late Rothkos on show at Tate Modern are “dispiritingly ordinary… compared to the riches of the previous decade.”
Using Depression To Create Art
British artist Martin Creed’s work has evolved considerably in the roughly two decades since he first came to public attention. “[One] way of talking about the change in Creed’s work is to say that he was once depressed, but he is no longer… His melancholia somehow allowed objects the freedom to speak for themselves.”