“If the Chicago owners of the Hyatt Regency New Orleans and their Crescent City partners can pull together $716 million in financing, New Orleans will have a 200,000-square foot National Jazz Center, a 20-acre jazz park featuring live music performances and an under-the-stars amphitheater and band shell. The complex will be home to the New Orleans Jazz Orchestra and the centerpiece of a larger plan to refurbish the hurricane-battered Hyatt Regency New Orleans and erect new government buildings.”
Blog
Sun-Times Gets A New Books Editor
Cheryl Reed is the new Chicago Sun-Times books editor: “I’m hoping in these pages to cultivate a community of readers, to celebrate good books whether they have a high profile or none at all. I want to highlight good storytelling, not just beautiful language, but books that enthrall and captivate, that keep you up at night poring over their pages.”
Barenboim After Chicago
What will Daniel Barenboim do after leaving the Chicago Symphony? “I will play more piano. I always knew that with this job [as music director], I would have a limited amount of time to play the piano. But I won’t have to do that anymore. You know my rhythm here with chamber music and recitals, which I do because otherwise I don’t play for too long. Do I want to overextend myself and play, or take the necessary risk and not play for too long? I don’t want that anymore.”
Detroit – An Orchestra Adrift?
“Four years into the search to replace music director emeritus Neeme Järvi, the Detroit Symphony hasn’t selected a successor and a decision may be six months or a year away, perhaps longer.” While “the orchestra has given committed and expressive performances, yet the scent of unfulfilled potential lingers like a summer cold.” Here’a a list of potential music directors.
LACMA’s New Helmsman
The LA County Museum of Art’s new director has a lot of balancing to do. “Inside LACMA, board members and staffers say they’re counting on Michael Govan to lead growth and to build the reputation of an institution that hasn’t had an art specialist at its helm in a decade. Outside the museum, arts leaders say the biggest challenge will be winning and keeping donors — the formidable Broad, for instance — without handing them the keys to the museum.”
Brand: Refiguring The Getty
Michael Brand is making his mark as director of the Getty Museum. “He’s haggling with Greeks. He’s dickering with Italians. He’s looking to fill a couple of big jobs while waiting to see who his new boss will be. And most of all, he’s trying to nudge the institution toward equilibrium after the most scandal-marred, morale-sapping year since the late J.P. Getty started showing off his art collection three decades ago.”
Reason To Forge
“Accounts of art forgers tend to talk up their subject as “the greatest” swindler of all time: the most efficient, the most reckless or the one who got away with it most frequently. The forgers themselves seem to nurse a certain fatal egotism too. Some claim an almost supernatural affinity with the artist they copy.”
Be The Neighborhood
Making art accessible to poor and minority audiences is like the weather: everyone in the arts talks about it, but almost no one really does much about it. Part of the problem is the lack of proven methods of engaging low-income communities. The answer, as demonstrated by a successful project in theatre-rich Minneapolis, may be that arts groups will only become palatable to underserved communities when they make a concerted effort to embed themselves in those communities, rather than condescendingly offering an “escape” from the outside.
Poetry’s Richest Prizes Handed Out
Poets Kamau Brathwaite and Sylvia Legris were honored with $50,000 awards at Canada’s annual Griffin Prize dinner last night. “This year’s Griffin competition, the sixth, attracted 444 submissions from 20 countries.”
Let The Pointless Speculation Begin! (er, continue?)
“Industry pundits and Tony voters are all over the place with their predictions” regarding who will take top honors for best musical in this year’s awards show. This type of speculation is nothing new, of course, but with this year’s race being as close as it apparently is, “some theater people wonder if the balance will be tipped by how the industry feels about the people behind each show.” In an industry as insular as Broadway, that could make for some very hurt feelings.