“Broadway touring shows sod 12.4 million tickets during the 2003-04 season and earned over $700 million in revenue. Nearly 200 theatres nationwide housed the Broadway tours for engagements usually ranging from a few days to a few weeks. The 12.4 million tickets matches the number sold during the previous season and ranks as the highest total since the 1998-99 season.”
Blog
Millennium Dome To Become Concert Facility
London’s Millennium Dome will reopen as a “first class” concert facility. “The £758m Dome was built as a Millennium project and opened in 2000. Intended as a symbol of the new, brighter Britain and funded by more than £600m of lottery money, the dome was mired in controversy from its inception.”
Digital Anxiety – Publishers Worry About Google Project
Publishers are uneasy over Google’s plan to digitize books. In a May 20 letter, the Association of American University Presses (AAUP) blasts Google’s so-called Print for Libraries program for posing a risk of “systematic infringement of copyright on a massive scale.”
Classical Music Finds Home On The Web
“Classical music has become a booming sub-culture on the World Wide Web. In this decade alone, hundreds of classical sites have surfaced, like green shoots after a warm spring rain. Encyclopedic, all-you-want-to-know sites cater to beginners and music professionals. Internet radio sites range from South Africa to South Florida (like Miami’s Beethoven.com). Sites offer everything from collections of viola jokes — the knock-knock jokes of the music world — to basic night-at-the-opera diary entries.”
Odd Choices For Cliburn Semifinals
“The list of semifinalists in the Van Cliburn International Piano Competition, announced near midnight Tuesday at Fort Worth’s Bass Performance Hall, had one jaw-dropper after another. What was the jury thinking?”
Preserving What Legacy?
Nicolai Ouroussoff is unimpressed by New York’s preservation board decision to save two brownstones next to the Whitney Museum. “Essentially, for the sake of preserving a humdrum brownstone facade on Madison Avenue, the commission embraced a substitute design for the museum that transforms a generously proportioned public entrance into a more confining experience. The architect, Renzo Piano, drafted the alternative – which would save that brownstone, while demolishing another – when the museum realized that the addition was in danger of being voted down by the commission. Aside from weakening a promising design, the commission’s stubbornness proves that it is unable to distinguish between preserving the city’s architectural legacy and embalming it.”
Fundraising For Joshua
The Tate gets a £400,000 grant towards purchase of an important Joshua Reynolds painting. “It is the centrepiece of a forthcoming exhibition of his work at Tate Britain. The Tate has until July to raise the extra £3.2m needed to save the work from being sold, possibly abroad.”
Classical Brit Winners
Katherine Jenkins wins Classical Brit album of the year. “Welsh performer Bryn Terfel won the prize for male artist of the year, while US conductor Marin Alsop won the female award. Belfast-born flautist Sir James Galway was given a prize for his outstanding contribution to music, 30 years after his solo career began.”
Ismail Merchant, 68
Ismail Merchant, half the creative team of Merchant Ivory, has died at the age of 68. “Along with his creative partner James Ivory, he made such acclaimed period films such as Howards End, A Room With A View and Remains of the Day. Merchant Ivory won six Oscars since the pair’s famous partnership began in 1961 with German-born screenwriter Ruth Prawer Jhabvala.”
Slatkin Back In London
Leonard Slatkin, who recently ended a mixed tenure as music director of the BBC Symphony, has been named principal guest conductor of London’s Royal Philharmonic Orchestra. Slatkin was also recently named principal guest in Los Angeles, and he will continue as music director of Washington, D.C.’s National Symphony through spring 2008. His name also tends to pop up whenever high-profile American music director openings are discussed.