Kent Nagano won’t officially become music director of l’Orchestre symphonique de Montréal until fall 2006, but the unusually soft-spoken maestro is already making his presence felt. Compared with the imperious Charles Dutoit, whose 23-year tenure at the Montreal helm ended in bitter fashion two years ago, Nagano is a decidedly new kind of director for the OSM, promoting a studious and humble approach to music-making, even as he speaks of the importance of building trust with audiences and begins to reshape the sound of the orchestra itself.
Blog
The Great Textbook Price Debate
Ask any college student or professor, and they’ll tell you that textbook prices are horrendously inflated, and that publishers are taking advantage of a captive group of consumers with no choice but to buy the books at whatever price. But the publishers insist that the problem is overblown, since students can frequently use the same book for multiple semesters, and most college bookstores will buy back used textbooks for up to 50% of their original cost.
New Jersey Symphony Exec Bolts For Scotland
“Just days after his one-year anniversary on the job, New Jersey Symphony Orchestra president and CEO Simon Woods announced he will leave, effective July 1, to become chief executive of the 113-year-old Royal Scottish National Orchestra, based in Glasgow, Scotland… The news is devastating for NJSO, which is groaning under a $19.5 million debt, in part due to subscription sales that have declined 41 percent in four years. NJSO also is struggling to regain public credibility following the 2003 purchase of 30 rare Italian string instruments from New Jersey philanthropist Herbert Axelrod, who was sentenced in March to 18 months in federal prison for an unrelated tax fraud scheme.”
The Intellect Behind The Wall
At his core, Saul Bellow was a teacher, but he was never much for disciples or devotees of his own work. “Bellow had himself well shielded from aspirants. Get in line: wives, children, students, writers, editors, lovers, biographers. I don’t mean this cruelly; it was part of Bellow’s genius. He reminded many people of their incompleteness, perhaps because he knew of his own. There was a rawness to him, almost like a wound, underneath the genteel polish and fiendish wit. His feathered fedora and striped shirts, his elegant manners and silken voice were enameled surfaces, under which he was, like his characters, at sea, the imposing intellect unable to ever lay down any reliable anchor – and not for want of trying, not for lack of greatness.”
Ground Zero Arts Center Plans Put On Hold
New York City’s $500 million campaign to rebuild Ground Zero has officially kicked off, but buried in the celebratory press conference was a disturbing change of plans: “As originally planned, the $500 million would help finance a memorial and a museum complex as well as [a Frank Gehry-designed] performing arts center, to be shared by the Joyce Dance Theater, which specializes in dance, and the Signature Theater Company, an Off Broadway group. But now the performing arts center will be part of a ‘second phase.'” Worse, officials at the Joyce and Signature groups appear to have been left uninformed about the change of status for their new home.
Post-Classical (And How We Got Here)
Why has classical music been on the decline in America? Joseph Horowitz tells a history aimed at suggesting some reasons. “History with a moral is by definition suspect. But Horowitz, for all the enthusiasm with which he espouses his various musical causes, is for the most part an impressively fair-minded historian who takes care to avoid superimposing contemporary agendas on past events. One need not always agree with his interpretations of those events in order to profit from his account of how European classical music took hold in a new world with sharply different cultural priorities—as well as from his speculations regarding its prospects of survival in the 21st century.”
The Copyright Debate, Part DCCCLXXVII
Too often, the debate over copyrights, file sharing, and new media seems intractable, with those for and against expanded consumer rights dug in and disinclined to even listen to the other side. But there are real thinkers participating in the debate, from musicians to lawyers and everyone in between. And as the issue of downloadable media slowly begins to sort itself out, more and more musicians are coming to the conclusion that the only people hurt by currently illegal file-trading practices are “people who are so rich they never deserve to be paid again.”
Boston, Philly, New York, Cleveland, Chicago… & San Diego?
Three years ago, the San Diego Symphony received a $120 million gift from a local couple, and instantly, the ensemble was vaulted from the lower ranks of full-time American orchestras to… well, where the vault ends is still unknown. The SDS is fiscally secure for the future, to be sure, and salaries have risen, as have budgets. But can money – even that unbelievable amount of money – really catapult an orchestra into the upper ranks? San Diego’s CEO thinks so, and is even speculating about a future in which the SDS is mentioned alongside America’s fabled Big Five orchestras.
For That Price, Could We Get Some Decent Speakers?
Most attendees at rock concerts in the U.S. probably don’t spend a lot of time thinking about audio quality – after all, you just plug in the mics and guitars and crank the amps up to eleven, right? Actually, there’s a lot more to it than that, and George Varga writes that some of his most recent experiences suffering through concerts that “sounded as if they were either being performed from inside trash compactors in overdrive or through a giant car stereo with busted woofers… are symptomatic of a troubling decline in audio quality at concerts across the nation – a trend made more annoying by the concurrent rise in ticket prices.”
US Poet Laureate Gets A Second Term
Ted Kooser – who last week won a Pulitzer Prize – has been appointed to a second term as US Poet Laureate. “Kooser’s idea was to offer a free weekly poem to U.S. newspapers. The second poem, Jonathan Greene’s “At the Grave”, was posted Thursday. The Library of Congress said 24 newspapers signed up within the first few days of the project. The library gives the poet an office and expects a few readings and lectures in return. Kooser is due to lecture at the library on May 5. He receives a stipend of $35,000 for each term.”