Cell phones have become such a nuisance at stage shows that they’ve spawned their own mini-art form – the pre-curtain anti-cell phone announcement… They’re often as amusing as the shopw itself.
Blog
Atlanta Opera Founder Leaves After 20 Years
Atlanta Opera director and founder William Fred Scott leaves the company. “Scott stepped in near the beginning of the Atlanta group’s life, and helped build it into a $5.4 million organization. His departure comes at the end of a revolution that promises major changes in Atlanta’s cultural landscape.”
Forsythe Company Rises From Frankfurt Ashes
Last year, William Forsythe watched as his Frankfurt Ballet was dismantled after it lost financial support. Now he’s back with the Forsythe Company. “Such is Mr. Forsythe’s reputation that his new company is already booked all over Europe and beyond. At 18 dancers, it is half the size of his old company, although Mr. Forsythe says he may hire guest dancers to help perform his larger works. All but one of the new company’s dancers come from the Frankfurt Ballet.”
La Scala’s New Artistic Director
La Scala has chosen a new artistic director. “Frenchman Stephane Lissner, of Paris’s Theatre de la Madeleine, has been given a four-and-a-half year contract. Musical director Riccardo Muti quit on April 2, citing the “hostility” of fellow employees after a series of rows. His post has yet to be filled. The president of the orchestra quit last week, giving no explanation. Mr Lissner’s appointment was welcomed both by the musical establishment and unions representing the opera’s 800-strong workforce.”
Sir John Mills, 97
Acting great Sir John Mills has died at the age of 97. “He died at home in Buckinghamshire on Saturday morning after a chest infection that lasted several weeks. His films included Great Expectations in 1946 and War and Peace in 1956 and he won an Oscar in 1971 for playing a village idiot in Ryan’s Daughter.”
Music Director Vs. Flutist
Flutist Dawn Weiss has played flute for 25 years in the Oregon Symphony. But new music director Carlos Kalmer sent her a letter last fall complaining of her “technical errors, poor pitch control, lack of leadership, choppy phrasing, failure to connect rehearsal corrections to performances, and an ‘airy and unpleasant’ sound quality.” Weiss worked on the issues, but Kalmer wasn’t satisfied. “And so a tense drama began, pitting a prominent musician in the orchestra against her conductor. After receiving the letter, Weiss pressed ahead with an improvement program. And when her efforts failed, she decided to break with symphony protocol and brought the warning letter she received and her story to The Oregonian last week.”
Barnes Doubles Admission Price
The Barnes Collection is doubling its admission price to $10 in June. “The increase, the Barnes’ first since 1995, puts its ticket prices at or below those of other major art institutions in Philadelphia and nationally. The Barnes said the price increase was necessary because of its ‘precarious financial situation, inflation, and the rising costs associated with operating our facilities and maintaining the collection’…”
Brian Eno On A Definition Of Culture:
“Culture is everything we don’t have to do. Eating is necessary, but cuisine is culture. Clothes must be worn, but couture is culture. Haircuts and Shakespeare and early Saxon burial poetry all pose some kind of unnecessary order, he said, that we accept because it stimulates our most distinctive faculty. Imagination is the only thing we’re really good at. What we’re doing [when we’re engaging with cultural objects] is exercising that part of our mind that makes it possible to imagine things being ordered differently, and most importantly, to imagine what’s in other people’s minds. . . . If something is possible in art, it’s thinkable in life.”
New Beat For Corporation For Public Broadcasting
“Typically one of the quietest bureaucracies in Washington, the quasi-governmental Corporation for Public Broadcasting has been unusually active in recent weeks. CPB this month appointed a pair of veteran journalists to review public TV and radio programming for evidence of bias, the first time in CPB’s 38-year history that it has established such positions. PBS officials were unaware that the corporation intended to review its news and public affairs programs, such as “The NewsHour With Jim Lehrer” and “Frontline,” until the appointments were publicly announced.”
Bellevue Museum To Reopen With Crafts
The museum world was shocked when the Bellevue Art Museum (in a suburb of Seattle) suddenly closed two years ago, only a couple of years after it had opened a fancy new Steven Holl building. Now the museum has reconsidered its mission and is reopening as a crafts museum. Will it work?