This week, the St. Louis Symphony Orchestra will perform a benefit concert to aid the victims of the Asian tsunami. The event is notable because the SLSO is still technically on strike. (Or locked out, depending on whom you ask.) However, anyone hoping that the concert could lead to a reconciliation between musicians and management will probably be disappointed: the benefit, which was organized entirely by the musicians, won’t be held at the orchestra’s home at Powell Symphony Hall, and the official SLSO web site contains no information on the benefit.
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Live Nude College Students
Boston has always been a cutting-edge college town, and the student-run publications put out by the Hub’s universities have long been the envy of the world. So what’s the latest trend in student publishing? Well, in a word, porn.
Frankly Suburban
“If Fallingwater in Pennsylvania is Frank Lloyd Wright’s greatest work, then a house he designed in this Cleveland suburb is one of his most livable. Owner Paul Penfield has opened up the Louis Penfield House to guests after spending four years restoring it to the architect’s original vision. It is one of three Wright houses in the United States — and the only one outside of Wisconsin — that allows visitors to spend the night.”
Atwood: A Remote Control Book-signing Device
Margaret Atwood is tired of traipsing around North America signing books. So she’s “developing a remote book-signing machine that will allow readers to get their novels autographed without the author having to traipse to bookshops across the globe. The idea occurred to her while undertaking gruelling tours with Oryx and Crake last spring.”
Babes In The (Chinese) Wood
Touring China with a symphony orchestra is a tricky undertaking, but doing so with a youth orchestra has to be considered a Herculean task. But last month, Toronto’s Royal Conservatory Orchestra spent 18 days touring the world’s most populous nation, playing in conditions that would make professional orchestras blanch, adapting to culture shock after culture shock, and generally having the time of their lives. William Littler went along for the ride…
Nobody Cares If They Can Act, Right?
“It’s been a rough couple of years for Broadway musical revivals, with a series of high-profile financial failures, including Gypsy, Man of La Mancha and Wonderful Town. What each of those shows had in common were stars like Bernadette Peters, Brian Stokes Mitchell and Donna Murphy, all of whom had respected theatrical résumés but lacked lasting box office punch. Theater fans might have cared, but the general public, it seemed, did not.” So the producers of two of this year’s most anticipated revivals are going outside the traditional theatre world for stars, hiring jazz singer Harry Connick and sitcom actress Christina Applegate in an effort to boost ticket sales.
Name-Brand Tragedy
When celebrities donate their abundant cash to charitable causes like tsunami relief, it’s usually assumed that they are calling attention to their own regular-guy generosity as much as genuinely trying to help out. But does the motivation even matter? “Is this charity-plus, a kind of righteous one-upmanship with public relations benefits? Or is it smart fund-raising, recognition that in a society saturated with pop culture even tragedy sells better with a name brand attached.”
Even With A Turkey That You Know Will Fold…
Whose fault is it when a theatrical production bombs? Actors tend to blame directors, who have ultimate control over what goes on onstage. Directors fault bad casting, uneven acting, and lack of money for flops. And when all else fails, everyone can always get together and blame the writer.
America’s Newest Orchestra Has A Season
“The Boca Raton Philharmonic Symphonia has announced the schedule for its inaugural 2005-2006 season, and a very impressive one it is. The new chamber orchestra, composed largely of former Florida Philharmonic members, will offer five concerts that serve up a bracing and imaginative mix of the familiar and adventurous.”
NaNoWriFreaks
The 35,000 people who participated in the 2004 edition of National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo, as it’s popularly known) are a unique bunch. Call ’em obsessive, call ’em overly ambitious, call ’em hopeless dreamers, they don’t mind. Just don’t ask them to leave their keyboards – for anything – when November rolls around.