Conductor Mark Elder re-ups as music director of the Hallé Orchestra in Manchester. “Elder, music director since 2000, is now acknowledged as the conductor who has probably established the closest rapport with the Hallé since Sir John Barbirolli led it to glory in the postwar years. He has won critical acclaim for his concerts in the Bridgewater Hall and for his recordings on the Hallé’s own label.”
Blog
Inside The Philadelphia Orchestra’s Contract Talks
The Philadelphia Orchestra’s negotiations over a new musicians’ contract is contentious. Management wants to cut costs: “Among the options on the table is slashing the minimum salary for musicians by 10 percent, to about $95,000. Another is reducing the orchestra’s size by 10 percent.” The orcehstra also wants to do away with practices such as “paying players 701/2 and older both their $100,000-plus salaries and their $50,000-plus pensions. Management says there are 13 players in that category.”
A Pension Plan For Artists
Artists often live in poverty, and old age is tough. Now there’s a new plan to help out. “The Artist Pension Trust invites up-and-coming artists to contribute 20 pieces of their work to a tax-protected fund over a 20-year period on the theory that some of the art will appreciate significantly. All the artists will share the profits, even if their initial promise never translates into increased value. It’s a way of taking advantage of the capitalistic nature of the market and mix in a healthy dose of socialism to create a hybrid form.”
Conlon Give Up Paris Opera For the Road
Conductor James Conlon is giving up being chief conductor of the Paris Opera for a life of guest conducting. “A stocky and energetic 54-year-old, he says that he feels wistful about leaving Paris, but that he is happy to trade administrative duties for the freedom of wandering America (and occasionally Europe) as a guest conductor.”
Understanding Jasper Johns
“Jasper Johns might have initially looked like a pop artist, but there was always something deeper going on. And if, over the past half-century, Johns has deepened what was already a pretty complex painting game, he has also mystified us. If, at the end, he is painting anything, it is the process of the mind at work, filled with stray thoughts, its affinities and enthusiasms. A mind led by curiosity, and haunted by its own past, from which it cannot extricate itself.”
Dodd Quits Institute Of Contemporary Art
Philip Dodd is resigning after seven years as director of London’s Institute of Contemporary Art. “What I have done is accept that the walls between art and science, culture and economics, art and politics have collapsed. I have tried to work in the rubble of those walls and accept that the distinctions between those things don’t exist any more.”
Liverpool Dissipates Cloud
Liverpool has abandoned plans to build the Cloud, a 10-storey globe that “would have been the ‘Fourth Grace’ on the city’s Pier Head, joining three others landmarks, including the Liver building, known as the Three Graces. But yesterday the public sector partners involved in the scheme said it was “no longer viable” due to rising costs, design changes and potential planning problems. The structure, designed by Will Alsop, whose work includes the Peckham library in London, caused controversy in December 2002 when promoters announced it had won an architectural competition.”
Pondering The English National Opera
“What is going on at the English National Opera? Is this much-loved company, having been wracked by disasters – the troubling resignation of an admired general director two years ago; a deficit of £1.3m for 2001-2; an emergency rescue package from Arts Council England; a chorus on strike – getting back on track? Or are stormy times just around the corner? The answer depends on who you ask.”
America – Where We’re Encouraged To Do Anything But Read
Why aren’t we reading more, asks Carlin Romano? Our media encourages us not to. “We’re left with a general media environment in which the readerly commit a kind of cultural suicide in pursuit of the less readerly. In magazine and newspaper offices across the country, well-educated editors stuff their publications with pieces about trash movies, hip-hop hotties, reality-TV spinoffs, and ingénue profiles — then go home and read a book. As print people drive their hordes toward nonprint media, TV folks — supposedly a dimmer breed — cleverly ignore the competition, rarely acknowledging what’s in the local papers and almost never devoting a minute to a nonpresidential book.”
Did Dr. Seuss Take The Fun Out Of Reading?
“When you can point the finger at televisions, and now computers, as the obvious hijackers of the reading habit, why focus on a favorite book? Because the arrival of the cat marked the moment when the traditional line between primer-reading and pleasure-reading began fading rapidly—and along with it a crucial prerequisite (as well as product) of being a real reader: a sense of privacy…”