Blog

Grinding Axes In Minneapolis

This summer, the Minnesota Orchestra appointed a new president following a nationwide search, and expressed confidence that Tony Woodcock was just the man to lead the 100-year-old ensemble into its second century. But it seems that not everyone on the orchestra’s board was happy with the way things turned out. “In August, Eugene Sit, a 12-year member who was head of the executive-search committee, resigned,” claiming that “decisions were made by one or two people that should have been made by the board.” The chairman of the orchestra’s board has dismissed Sit’s allegation, pointing out that “out of nearly 60 votes, he could ‘count on one hand’ the number against Woodcock.”

Vassanji Wins The Giller. Again.

“M.G. Vassanji, who won the first Giller Prize in 1994, won for the second time — for his novel The In-Between World Of Vikram Lall — as the most celebrated literary prize in the country marked its 10th anniversary last night. Vassanji, a former physicist who grew up in East Africa, is the first two-time winner of the $25,000 fiction prize… The other finalists were John Gould for Kilter: 55 Fictions and John Bemrose for his first novel The Island Walkers.”

Time For A New Name For New Music?

Greg Sandow thinks it’s time to rename contemporary classical music. “I think we might need another term for what we talk about here. Our genre, obviously, is ‘new music’ — but what does that mean? The words themselves don’t say very much. There are all kinds of new music—new salsa, new merengue, new Christian rap, new Mariah Carey remixes. Which ‘new music’ do we mean? Well, new classical music, I guess.” But that’s not very accurate either…

Orrin Hatch – Senator, Musician, Composer

US Senator Orrin Hatch is a “musician and a songwriter and a producer—a member of ASCAP—and whose works have been recorded by Gladys Knight, Donny Osmond, Brooks and Dunn… One time I was kidding and I said that I even wrote a song during a boring committee meeting and I got an irate letter from one of my Utah constituents saying, ‘How dare you use your government time to write your lousy music,’ and I thought I’d better not make that claim any more’.”

Tilson Thomas Out Front Again

Since Michael Tilson Thomas took up the reins of the San Francisco Symphony nearly a decade ago, the group’s national profile has steadily increased, and the partnership between conductor and orchestra has led to several critically acclaimed projects designed to bring symphonic music back to cultural prominence. Next year, the SFS will launch a major new multimedia project designed to increase audience understanding of classical music. In addition to national TV broadcasts, “the project will also include the development of a web site and the creation of DVDs. The Symphony is working with Minnesota Public Radio to develop a radio series designed to air concurrently with the TV series.”

Still Striving For Perfection

In today’s instant-gratification world, it is difficult to accept that some things still take time. But in Philadelphia, the team behind the Philadelphia Orchestra’s 2-year-old Kimmel Center for the Performing Arts is still tweaking and adjusting the hall’s acoustics, striving to create one of the world’s great concert venues. “Almost two years after opening night, hundreds of millions of dollars since the orchestra started dreaming of acoustical perfection, Verizon Hall isn’t quite what it should be, Kimmel and orchestra leaders agree… And so the original acousticians for the hall, Artec Consultants, are being brought back for another round of work.”

Getting A Grip On Coetzee

J. M. Coetzee, this year’s Nobel laureate for literature has “successfully turned a temperament into a style. His novels cannot be pinned down to a history, be it apartheid South Africa or Bush’s increasingly authoritarian America. Yet it’s hard to believe that the Nobel committee, in coming to its judgment, wasn’t moved by the way Coetzee’s most astute writing speaks to this moment.”

A New, More Accurate Arts Formula

For years, arts supporters have used a mathematical formula to estimate the economic impact of theaters, orchestras, and art galleries on a given area. Trouble is, the formula’s accuracy is arguable at best, and many have stopped taking it seriously. Now, a pair of Canadian researchers is proposing a new way of measuring arts impact, without confusing it with cultural tourism. “What the study suggests is the possibility of actually identifying a predictable pattern of development around arts facilities — the researchers can already say specialty retailers follow restaurants, which follow the arts — that would take the guesswork out of government plans to use the arts as a tool of urban regeneration.”