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Scottish Opera May Put Its Hand Out

Scottish Opera is facing a shutdown. But the company is considering asking for donations to help it stay active. “The company is debating whether to launch a fundraising drive that would appeal for donors to keep productions up and running. There were fears that, amid headlines of crisis and cutbacks, opera backers might feel their cash would go into a black hole. But regular supporters have already come forward asking how they can help, and a few have sent cheques for hundreds of pounds.”

Jazz In Montreal

The 25-year-old Montreal Jazz Festival is one of the world’s great music festivals. “The festival’s sense of its own history is one. As large an enterprise as the event has become — 500 concerts, 10 indoor stages, another 12 on the downtown streets around Place des Arts, attendance approaching two million — it tempers its penchant for grandiosity with a strong sentimental streak.”

The Amazing Tillie, The Wonder-Dog/Artist

“The 5-year-old Jack Russell is an artist who has had her paintings exhibited in New York, Los Angeles and Europe. She recently opened a gallery and store in the Williamsburg section of Brooklyn, the borough’s epicenter of all things artsy and hip. Her intense, instinctive scratch marks — in red, blue, yellow and black — have drawn comparisons to abstract artists Jackson Pollock and Cy Twombly.”

Marlon Brando, Civil Rights Champion

Marlon Brando might have been a great actor, but Native Americans of the Pacific Northwest remember his important role in defending Indian fishing rights. “The Indians who once stood in protest with Brando during Washington’s ‘Fish Wars’ of the 1960s, remembered him not as acclaimed movie star, but as a sensitive defender of civil rights. Marlon Brando was the first person of non-color to step forward to help us. Marlon Brando was ahead of his time.”

Chicago – Recapturing The Millennium

“Chicago’s reputation for innovative architecture has languished in recent decades, its silhouette blighted by undistinguished glass and steel office buildings, monolithic concrete condominium towers and ubiquitous three-storey brick apartments. Conceived in 1997 and intended as part of the city’s celebration of the new century, Millennium Park was aimed at recapturing the spirit of innovative design that had brought Chicago architectural glory.”

The Rap On Rap In School English Classes

“Since his death eight years ago, there has been a stampede to include Tupac Shakur on American college syllabuses: not just the “we take anyone” community colleges, but institutions such as Harvard and Dartmouth solemnly cogitate on the inner meaning of Tupac’s lyrics and the printed volume of his verse, The Rose that Grew from Concrete. Universities can get away with putting Hit ‘Em Up alongside Othello. Undergraduates are adults; school pupils are not. A huge fuss has been kicked up this year since education authorities put The Rose that Grew from Concrete on summer readingsyllabuses for sixth- and seventh-grade children.”

Stolen Statue Epidemic

“According to art recovery experts there is an epidemic in stolen statuary in England and Wales that is being fuelled by the increasing demand for salvage to feed the boom in home and garden renovations. Gangs of thieves, who study magazines such as Country Life to locate their spoils, find the lead and stone figurines, iron benches and sundials easy plunder.”

SF Opera – System Failure In America

Why did Pamenla Rosenberg withdraw from running San Francisco Opera? “What Rosenberg overlooked when she returned to the US after years working in two of Germany’s most avant-garde opera houses was that a European-style artistic policy depends on European-style consistency of funding – some thing the US opera community can never provide.”