The Florida Philharmonic is no more, but South Florida has a new orchestr – the Boca Raton Philharmonic Symphonia. “The 29-member chamber orchestra will be made up almost entirely of former Florida Philharmonic Orchestra members. The ensemble is slated to present five concerts in the 2005-06 season.”
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Stolen Art – A Long (Expensive) List
The Scream joins about $5 billion worth of art that has been stolen and not recovered. “Most often, high-profile works of art are never recovered, insurance experts say. According to the Art Loss Register, which tracks stolen art worldwide, among the missing are 467 works by Pablo Picasso and 289 by Marc Chagall.”
Toronto Fest: Week Of 100 Premieres
The lineup for this year’s Toronto Film Festival is set. “As reported in the trade magazine Variety last week, two-time Oscar-winner Kevin Spacey’s much anticipated Bobby Darin biopic, Beyond the Sea, will make its world bow Sept. 11 at the Toronto festival, which this year is hosting a grand total of 100 world premieres.”
Fear For Condition Of Munch Paintings
Not much progress in the Munch painting theft. The Oslo museum had had plans to upgrade security, but those plans hadn’t been carried out. Meanwhile, witnesses say the thieves treated the paintings with violence as they were stealing them: “I saw the robbers kick, wrench and hit the paintings in order to loosen them from the frame. They didn’t treat the paintings well and unfortunately I believe that the odds are high that the pictures were damaged or destroyed.”
Rowling: Edinburgh Should Be World City Of Literature
JK Rowling has thrown her support behind the city of Edinburgh’s campaign to get UNESCO to name it the first World City of Literature. “It seems eminently sensible to me to recognise this, along with the contemporary literary life here, with a permanent title that can inspire and inform other places around the world.”
Royal Academy Under The Microscope
London’s Royal Academy is in trouble, and the outside world is peering in. Many are wondering if “a management structure that was created in the 18th century seems ill-suited to meet the challenges of today’s fiercely competitive London art world. Is an academy of 80 artists up to the job of running a staff of 200 and an annual budget of £18 million?”
Athens Breaks The Stadium Mold
Athens’ Olympic stadium, designed by Santiago Calatrava, has been a big hit, breaking with a dismal Olympic tradition. “The Athens approach—making an architecturally bold, camera-ready stadium an Olympic focal point—is less an anomaly than a sign of things to come. In the past, many host cities simply added a few thousand new seats to the biggest stadium they had; others used the games as an excuse to build a new home for a local pro franchise, as Atlanta did for the Braves with the less-than-exciting Turner Field. But these days, every potential host city’s Olympic plan seems to include an attention-getting stadium designed by a well-known firm.”
London Symphony Cancels American Tour
The London Symphony Orchestra has canceled its fall American tour. Consisting of 15 stops in the United States and Canada, the “Music of Hollywood” tour apparently was canceled due to sluggish ticket sales.
Gigging The UK
Live music is thriving in the UK. In all, an estimated 1.7 million gigs were staged across England and Wales last year in pubs, clubs, restaurants, etc. The study was conducted in advance of a new law that will require venues to get licenses for presenting live music.
Birtwistle: We’re In A State Of Crisis
Harrison Birtwistle is turning 70. George Loomis asks him if it isn’t a good thing that “composers are now free to do their own thing without the pressure of writing in a certain style? ‘Actually, it shows we’re in a state of crisis,’ he says, arguing that if you look historically at the subject of creativity, something always appears for people to rally around, as they did with cubism and serialism. ‘Right now we need something to come how do they say it in baseball? out of left field’.”