“One week after the box office opened to the public, the [Toronto-based] world premiere stage production of The Lord of the Rings has generated $7 million in sales. Allowing for the $3 million (all figures Cdn) in group sales and the $1 million in Internet advance, that still means nearly $500,000 worth of tickets have been sold every day, an astonishing figure for a show that doesn’t open for nine months.”
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CTC Finishes One Drive, Starts Another
The Minneapolis-based Children’s Theatre Company, which won the Tony Award for best regional company in 2003, has completed a $27 million capital campaign four months ahead of schedule, and announced a special “encore” campaign aimed at raising another $3 million by year’s end. The fundraising has been largely targeted to cover construction costs on CTC’s new expanded home, designed by architect Michael Graves. The extra fund drive will seek to bolster the company’s endowment.
Has The File-Swapping War Already Been Lost?
Defenders of traditional copyright law might have the law on their side in the battle against file-swapping and free music, but that won’t be enough to win what is basically a Quixotic war of principle being fought against simple progress, says Joshua Ostroff. The latest battle has seen courts ruling that “sampling” of other artists’ work is illegal, an absurd notion that has done nothing to stop the widespread practice. Such crackdowns might temporarily set back the advance of new media practices, but audio enthusiasts are firmly convinced that nothing can be done to stop the changes already in motion in the music industry.
Is The Canadian Art Market Ready For Its Close-Up?
“The major anticipation over this spring’s auctions of high-end Canadian fine art is less about the sale of a specific work (or three) and more about whether the market will continue to show the unprecedented buoyancy it’s had in the last nine or 10 years. Over the next seven days, the three major auction houses — Vancouver’s Heffel Fine Arts tonight, Toronto-based Sotheby’s (in association with Ritchie’s) on Monday and Joyner Waddington’s of Toronto next Tuesday and Wednesday — are putting almost 1,000 lots, worth a total estimated at CAN$12.5 to CAN$16-million, under the hammer… In a sense, this spring’s auctions will be a test of the maturity of the market.”
PBS Shoots Back
The outgoing president of PBS used an appearance at the National Press Club this week to fire back at conservative critics of the public broadcaster. Pat Mitchell’s insistence that PBS “does not belong to any one political party” comes in the wake of revelations that the Republican chairman of the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, which is supposed to shield PBS from political meddling, had hired a consultant to monitor supposed left-wing bias on a few select PBS programs.
Art Under The Microscope
Princeton University has unveiled a new exhibit of the kind of art rarely seen by average museumgoers. “The 55 pieces in the exhibit are all the products of scientific research, or works of art that incorporate the ideas or tools of science… The art includes a neon image of a virus infecting human cells; multicolored, magnified ants; an image of colliding galaxies; and a close-up of the genitalia of a spider. There’s even a line drawing of Albert Einstein in a bustier.”
OSM Strike Drags On
How serious is the strike at l’Orchestre Symphonique de Montréal? In the two weeks since the OSM’s musicians walked off the job, the two sides have not met at the bargaining table even once. Still, things have taken a slight turn towards compromise, and negotiations could resume later this week. Meantime, the musicians are keeping busy not only with picket lines, but with the usual free concerts designed to drum up support and keep connections to the larger community open.
Paper To Pols: Bail Out The Ballet
Ballet Arizona needs $380,000 in operating funds to make it through this season, in which the company has been homeless as Phoenix’s Symphony Hall undergoes a remodeling. And though Arizona is generally a fiscally conservative place, the state’s largest newspaper is calling for both public and private money to be directed to the ballet, which has mounted an impressive fiscal turnaround in recent years. “The Phoenix metropolitan area is growing up, ready to be a player on the world economic stage. For that role, we need stellar groups like Arizona Ballet… In the long term, we must develop a sturdier financial base for the arts in this region.”
Vox Populi Comes To The Concert Hall
One of the most frequent complaint about modern classical music is that it ignores what the audience wants to hear in favor of intellectual calisthenics too difficult for most ears to comprehend. But the California-based Pacific Symphony shouldn’t be hearing any complaints when it unveils its next commission, if only because the composer will have been chosen by audience vote. “The composer who captures the most audience ballots will walk away with a $5,000 commission for a work the Pacific Symphony will perform next season… The idea, conceived by symphony president John Forsyte, was a big hit in its first incarnation two years ago, attracting more than 200 submissions from composers around the world.”
You Get What You Pay For
The Cleveland Chamber Symphony has come up with a unique way to fund a major new commission – it’s offered to pay composer Dennis Eberhard by the measure, and just to make things interesting, “individuals and organizations may purchase one or more measures of Eberhard’s score for $25 apiece… Contributors to the commissioning project will receive a printed copy of their measure or measures, and they will be invited to a gala premiere celebration. In addition, they will have a chance to meet with Eberhard while he is composing the work to discuss its development.”