Kansas City music critic Paul Horsley touched a nerve last week when he penned a column blasting the city’s political elite for being culturally clueless and watering down an ambitious plan to build a massive new performing arts center. Some Kansas Citians were offended at the suggestion that they could use a little more height in their brows, but most of the reader response was vociferously positive. Still, Horsley says that no matter how many arts fans protest the scaled-back PAC plan, his sources indicate that the decision to scrap the original project has already been made behind closed doors.
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Rebirth In Silicon Valley
When the San Jose Symphony folded back in 2002, a new orchestra, Symphony Silicon Valley, quickly rose in its place. But the new ensemble was nothing like the full-scale professional operation that the old one was, even though many of the musicians were the same. These days, though, the new orchestra seems to be coming of age, and a recent grant from the San Jose Symphony Foundation should go a long way towards solidifying Symphony Silicon Valley’s position in the community.
Denmark’s Dance Master
“Stepping back in time is an experience much more available to actors and musicians than it is to dancers, most of whose history lacks a written literature and has vanished, step by step, into the mists of fading memory. Except in Denmark. There, the 19th-century ballets of August Bournonville are part of daily dancing life… When Bournonville retired in 1877, his half-century dominance of Danish ballet threatened to diminish slowly. We can thank one of his dancers, Hans Beck, who documented the step designs in the early 1890s, for giving succeeding generations the basis for preserving Bournonville’s training program and, with it, the means to dance his ballets properly.”
The Great Governor-General’s Book Hunt
Canada’s Governor-General’s arts awards are some of the most prestigious in the country, and the literary awards in particular are most coveted. But when the current Governor-General, Adrienne Clarkson, took office, she was shocked to discover that the official residence’s library was missing an alarming number of award-winning titles, thanks in part to the sticky fingers of some of her predecessors. Clarkson and her husband made it their personal mission to rectify the problem, and as Clarkson prepares to leave office, the residence once again has the only complete collection of Governor-General Award recipients.
Twisting History To Suit A Good Storyline
Musicologist Joseph Horowitz has made plenty of waves with his new book which traces what he sees as the decline and fall of classical music in the U.S., and why that decline was inevitable. But Greg Sandow isn’t wholly convinced by Horowitz’s story, well-told though it may be: “Is this really history, the way a real historian would write it? Or has Mr. Horowitz instead staged a passionate morality play, in which he uses history as his casting office, providing him with heroes and villains?… This book is best understood not as analysis or history but as a cri du coeur.”
Keeping Classical Music “Special”
It seems absurd to think, in this age of endless entertainment choice, that classical music is truly falling off the map, as so many self-styled experts claim. The real problem may actually be the opposite: “the challenge for classical music ahead is not that people constantly fired upon by the mass-marketing budgets of commercial music won’t know how to relate to Brahms and Ravel. The danger, rather, is unexpected: that there is so much classical music around in this golden age of choice that it is ceasing to be special.” So what’s the solution? Try a little personal connection, and give your customers a sense that they’re truly important to you.
Is The Orchestral Sky Actually Falling?
“All over the Western world, the alarm is sounding that classical music is in trouble. Orchestra subscription sales are dropping widely, in some cases by as much as two percentage points a year. Ensembles are not balancing their budgets. Audiences are getting older; young people are turned off by classical music… So, at least, goes the refrain. Is it true that people don’t want classical music anymore? Or is it just a question of how to give it to them? And is it even possible – heresy of heresies – that they are being given too much of it?”
Pataki: No Controversial Art Allowed At Ground Zero
One day after a New York tabloid published an inflammatory screed against what it called the anti-American art being displayed by two future museum tenants of Ground Zero, New York Governor George Pataki warned that he would not tolerate any art that could offend families of 9/11 victims being displayed on the site. “While saying that he respected artistic expression, Mr. Pataki invoked the solemnity of past battlegrounds in promising to preserve the hallowed ground in Lower Manhattan and ensure that no one will come away feeling offended by the reborn site… Mr. Pataki’s demand, which was denounced by several arts groups and Democrats as a violation of free speech, is the latest episode in a series of public disputes and flash points for the redevelopment of Lower Manhattan.”
An Odd Target
Holland Cotter finds all the bluster about controversial art at New York’s Drawing Center to be quite the tempest in a teapot. “In fact, the Drawing Center is noted for its rigorous formal, as opposed to ideological, mission. Since its founding in 1977, it has focused on two things: presenting museum-style shows of traditional drawing, whether in the hands of Rembrandt or Agnes Martin or 19th-century Shakers; and expanding, largely through contemporary art, the definition on what ‘drawing’ as a medium is.”
Harry’s Kids Grow Up
The sixth Harry Potter book will hit shelves this fall, and doubtless it will sell millions of copies. But it’s been seven years since Harry first burst upon the scene, and the legions of devoted young readers that made him such a phenomenon are seven years older as well – many of them heading off the college, in fact. So how do you keep your newly adult audience interested in what is, after all, a children’s book series? You can age the hero, of course, but subtly increasing the complexity of the storyline will help, too. And you can always count on good old-fashioned reader loyalty…