Conductors of international stature regularly flit from job to job, leaving little mark on any one city in which they might alight for a week or two. But for conductors of smaller ensembles who make their careers with a single ensemble in a single town, the roots put down can run deep. So what happens when one of those ensembles dies for lack of money? Enter Ruben Vartanyan, the 69-year-old music director of the newly bankrupt Arlington Symphony in suburban Washington, D.C. “There is a move afoot to resurrect the symphony in a more modest form… But the odds are long. Funding is scarce. And the work to rebuild could be enormous. The old conductor, though, is available.”
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25 Music Critics In One Concert Hall? Is That Legal?
The Columbia School of Journalism has released a list of 25 arts journalists who will be taking part in an NEA-sponsored Institute in Classical Music and Opera this October. “Participants will attend performances at all major New York concert venues, including Carnegie Hall and the Metropolitan Opera. They will write reviews and take part in writing workshops led by critics and editors at the New York Times, the New Yorker and other major publications, study music history with professors at NYU and Columbia, and meet with leading decision makers and thinkers in the field of classical music.”
PSO Looks To Its Musicians For Fiscal Relief
The musicians of the Pittsburgh Symphony got an astonishingly mammoth raise this season, the result of a backloaded contract negotiated by a management team that his since left the building. And now, with a financial crunch on the horizon, the PSO’s current managers are hoping the musicians will be willing to take their raise back a notch. A proposed new three-year deal, which would replace the current contract, would shave $6,000 off the minimum salary, but restore the higher wage beginning in fall 2006, and preserve it through the 2007-08 season. The musicians will vote on the revised deal tomorrow.
Finally, Black Ink In Philly
In what will be seen as a major turnaround for a troubled organization, the Philadelphia Orchestra has announced a balanced budget for fiscal 2004, following several years of deficits and a contentious contract negotiation with its musicians which very nearly ended in a strike. The orchestra also announced that it played to 89% of its hall’s capacity, and that its ongoing endowment campaign has passed the $100 million mark.
Giller Shortlist Released
Canada’s Giller Prize, which awards $40,000 for the best homegrown novel, got new life this month when a major bank stepped up to sponsor the competition. Now, the five-author shortlist has been released, and there are a few surprises. Well-reviewed author Joseph Boyden was left off, and some of the finalists are not terribly well-known. But now the prognosticating can begin, and nearly 100 libraries across Canada will be participating in a “Guess the Giller” contest over the next several weeks.
Vancouver Fest Unveils New Cinema
The Vancouver International Film Festival launches tonight, and the centerpiece won’t be a movie, but the “luxurious, state-of-the-art, 175-seat theatre” that is making its debut at the festival this week. “In addition to providing practical opportunities for year-round programming as well as working space for filmmakers, a film archive and artistic partnerships, the centre is important symbolically in that it gives cultural and physical prominence to the serious type of cinema the society offers.”
Vindication Of An Architect – 169 Years Too Late
“When the National Portrait Gallery reopens next July after a six-year, $216-million renovation, the new space will represent a triumph for preservationists, for artists, for historians — and for Robert Mills. Mills, the original architect, was taken off the project after a rival designer convinced Congress that Mills’ plan in 1836 for a fireproof building — a major preoccupation for a city in which the British had burned the White House 22 years earlier — would not work… Now restorers have peeled away 169 years of history and found that Mills was right.”
Judging Professors By Their Online Q-Rating
When the web site, RateMyProfessors.com, was launched six years ago, most academic insitutions viewed it as an occasionally hurtful but harmless outlet for student opinion. But the site, on which students at colleges and universities around the world can evaluate their teachers’ performance with impunity, has grown to the point that it is now affecting class enrollment at some schools. Professors and administrators hate the site, and lawsuits are regularly threatened against its owner. But the site is far from a vitriolic free-for-all, with positive comments outnumbering negative ones, and a group of volunteer “student administrators” assigned to keep an eye on verifiable claims.
Brooks Lashes Out After Sony Snub
Filmmaker Albert Brooks is accusing Sony Pictures of cowardice in refusing to release his latest work, saying that studio execs are terrified of public reaction to the title, Looking for Comedy in the Muslim World. Brooks insists that, despite the title, the film satirizes “American ignorance of the Muslim world and [does] not touch on religion.” Sony argues that it passed on the film “on its merits,” and says that Brooks is “manufacturing controversy.” Sony raised some liberal hackles a couple of years back when it declined to release Michael Moore’s controversial documentary, Fahrenheit 9/11.
Unknown Lowry Painting To Hit The Block
“A previously unseen LS Lowry painting is expected to fetch around £500,000 when it is sold in November. The Footbridge will be seen in public for the first time before it goes up for auction at Christie’s in London. The painting shows an industrial scene with Lowry’s trademark matchstick figures rushing through the snow. It was sold to a private collector 60 years ago and has not changed hands since. Lowry, who died in 1976, was known for depicting northern England.”