Blog

California In Verse (If Anyone Wants The Job)

“California is in the market for a new poet laureate. With an official state dirt, a state fossil and a state tartan, we need a state bard. And as a blue state, it’s our obligation to demonstrate that airport bookstore thrillers and bodice-rippers are not the alpha and omega of literature and that just because poetry usually comes in slim volumes with even slimmer royalty checks doesn’t mean it don’t kick heinie.”

33 Wannabes Left Hanging

The work stoppage at the St. Louis Symphony came at the worst possible time for dozens of hopeful players who had spent the weekend piling into the city for two auditions scheduled to be held this week. The auditions were canceled after the musicians and management could not come to a contract agreement, and the orchestra is reimbursing the auditionees for their travel expenses. The SLSO musicians were willing to allow the auditions to go on as scheduled, but that would have required the audition committee to be paid a small gratuity, which the orchestra’s managers refused to allow.

Does Anyone in Florida Like Music?

In the wake of the Florida Philharmonic’s bankruptcy and the demise of Miami’s lone classical radio station, many observers have been wondering aloud whether South Florida really just doesn’t have any use for the form. Now, more evidence for the affirmative: the Palm Beach Chamber Music Society is slashing its current season by a third, and may close up shop completely before fall 2005. Poor ticket sales and sluggish donations are cited as the major reasons for the society’s problems. A lack of local product may also be a factor – the internationally known Miami String Quartet decamped for Ohio last year, and many local performers have left town with the Philharmonic’s shutdown.

Deficit Forces Cuts In Salt Lake

Utah-based Ballet West has announced its intention to make big cuts in its performance schedule and company size in order to compensate for three years of red ink. The company “will drop its poorly attended fall repertory program, and begin its 2005-06 season with The Nutcracker next December. Other cuts include a reduction from 40 to 35 dancers, and a trim to artists’ contracts from 38 weeks to 35.”

The Golden Age (In 1905)

The best year for theatre? How about 1905, suggests Dominic Dromgoole. “What made the plays of this moment hit the target so often? Historically, these dramatists occupied a unique moment, precariously balanced between traditional structures and modernism. Ibsen began a process of stretching and distorting the sturdy Victorian play, disturbing its traditional scaffold of strong narrative and regular crisis and resolution. Others took it further. The old form wasn’t sufficient for expressing the miasma of little moments they saw and heard around them. They took the four-act form and filled it with the lazy chaos of life and the confused mess of the inner self.”

B(allet)=MC Squared

The Rambert Dance Company is producing a new work based on Einstein’s theory of relativity. “The work is the inaugural choreographic piece from Rambert artistic director Mark Baldwin and was commissioned by the Institute of Physics. A professor of physics is working with Baldwin to advise on the technical aspects of the work.”

The Sad Story Of Tacoma Actors Guild

Last month, after 26 years in business, Tacoma Actors Guild suddenly closed its doors. “By December, TAG had only $30,000 in the bank, enough to cover a single two-week payroll. But when the bank heard about the indefinite closure and layoffs in the newspaper, it froze the $30,000 against the $165,000 note. Staffers refused to work without pay, and the Christmas play ended abruptly, its set left standing onstage.”

What’s Wrong With The Way We Teach Music?

“In the music education of our young, listening—truly active processing and internalizing of sound—is not valued. And we are paying the price for this when audiences—and the composers they all too often come to dread—are not able to hear what is before them. In its passive stead, audiences seem more tuned out than in, experiencing a general wash of comfort or discomfort seemingly tied neither to thought nor feeling, process nor program.”