Boston Mayor Tom Menino is trying to block the city’s historic opera house from slapping a new corporate name on its facade. Citizens Bank paid $4 million to buy the naming rights to the recently reopened venue, but the mayor and several other elected officials have objected, saying that the theatre should continue to be known simply as the Opera House. Furthermore, Clear Channel, which bought and renovated the venue with considerable assistance from Menino, says that it “owes” the mayor, and may be amenable to squelching the naming deal.
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Judge Ye Not So Ye Can Hear
Frank Oteri ponders the limitations of judgment on really hearing music: “I have long thought that the only way to be a receptive listener to music in a world where the Schoenberg/Cage emancipation of dissonance was a fait accompli is to engage in an emancipation of judgment. Such a stance not only liberates dissonance by also re-embraces consonance, any kind of timbre, rhythm or lack thereof, duration, you name it… Once we set up paradigms of good and bad, worthwhile and worthless, cool and uncool, we doom ourselves at best to being tomorrow’s Horatio Parker and, at worst, to being a mirror image of the very thing we claim not to let into our aesthetic purview.”
London Theatre Bucks Bombs, Posts Gains
London’s West End doesn’t seem to have suffered much in the wake of the 7/7 bombings. Attendance at West End shows is ahead of last year’s pace, and an immediate 6% drop in ticket sales in the days after the attacks was short-lived.
Why The iPod Fails At Classical Music
“Classical music fits badly into the Walkman world, and even worse into the iPod world. For one thing, the technology doesn’t suit it very well. Try listening to an opera on an iPod, and you’ll discover the software puts a gap between tracks, which is pretty annoying if you’re trying to enjoy the dramatic flow of an opera scene. And just try searching for your favourite Beethoven trio on iTunes, which is designed to search for “song” and “artist”, and copes badly with keys and opus numbers. But the very conception of music embodied in the iPod is bound to seem odd to a classical music lover.”
The Continuing Saga Of Gilbert And George
The artistic duo known as Gilbert and George can occasionally seem less like artists than like impish schoolchildren, even thirty years into their impressive career. “For more than three decades Gilbert and George have made a profession out of being naughty. Their art has dealt with politics of all types: economic, social, sexual. Combining photography with performance, they have embraced pornography, pandemic diseases like AIDS, vaudeville and scatology.” Their act seems to be wearing well: their recent exhibition at the Venice Biennale was a huge hit, and many of the works from that show have already been snapped up by major museums.
Save This House
“In a last-ditch effort, a consortium of preservation groups has assembled a plan to save the Ennis House, a striking 1924 building by Frank Lloyd Wright in the Los Feliz Hills above Los Angeles. The National Trust for Historic Preservation, together with the Frank Lloyd Wright Building Conservancy and the Los Angeles Conservancy, has created a foundation to raise the millions of dollars needed to rehabilitate the house, which suffered critical damage in a 1994 earthquake and again in heavy rains last winter.”
Going Cheap – A Chance To Conduct A Big Orchestra
The City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra has put itself up fo sale on eBay. The winning bidder will have the opportunity to conduct the orchestra. “It will be interesting to see whether it will be bought by some terribly serious budding conductor who sees this as their break, or someone completely inexperienced who wants to be charitable towards us.”
Anne Sofie von Otter At 50
The soprano is aware of her voice changing: “A little bit. I’m not 20 any more. I can hear it. But I don’t think it’s a bad thing. It’s a little broader than it used to be, has more volume in the lower and middle registers. The vibrato changes too. Everything is a bit bigger, a bit slower, but not in an embarrassing way. I’m enjoying using my voice in a different way. I’m using more of it and I am enjoying that. Ten or 15 years ago, using the mass of the voice didn’t interest me. Then I was looking for a thinner, more instrumental sound. I did a lot of baroque music and Mozart. I’m still doing baroque and Mozart but not as much, and therefore I can use my voice in a different way.
Dodging Trouble In Pittsburgh
The Pittsburgh Symphony is in a tricky situation. It’s running deficits again, ticket sales aren’t up to snuff, and the orchestra is in the unenviable position of trying to remain in the top world ranks following the departure of renowned music director Mariss Jansons. Oh, and the musicians, who took a big pay cut a few years back, are due an unheard-of 25% raise this fall, the result of a contract which pegs their salaries to orchestras in New York, Philadelphia, Chicago, and Cleveland. Still, subscriptions are up, and previous deficits have been wiped out by last-minute contributions, so no one’s panicking yet.
PBT Called Arrogant, Dishonest
The editors of one of Pittsburgh’s two daily newspapers are underwhelmed by the Pittsburgh Ballet Theatre’s decision to replace its live orchestra with recorded music, and accuse the organization of shoddy business practices and arrogance. “Subscription sales started in February. But when the board decided in June to roll tape, it did not tell the public until August. And there still is no official refund policy for victims of the bait and switch. This, after customer outrage last year terminated the Premiere Circle Seating program. The board had choreographed an extra licensing fee for subscribers of $150 to $250 for the privilege of keeping their choice seats.”