Players of the Charlotte Symphony have gone on strike. “The talks have gone on in the wake of a $650,000 deficit that the orchestra generated last season – the first red ink in seven years. When the group’s management announced the deficits in July, it cited a drop in donations, a decline in income from its endowment fund and a surge in health-insurance costs as prime causes.”
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CD Price-Cut Is Desperation Play
Not hard to figure out why Universal is cutting CD prices. “After years of gouging customers, the recording industry is desperate. Sparked by Napster, and continued through such file-swapping services as Kazaa, Morpheus, and Grokster, the free-music revolution has left the major labels reeling and hemorrhaging. And CD prices, which despite promises to the contrary have steadily increased through the years, turned off even those who weren’t inclined to sit at their computers downloading their favorite tracks. Now, with CD sales already down almost 16 percent this year – after a 9 percent decline in 2002 – the industry is so rattled it has had to resort to something it has arrogantly avoided for years: a move that will benefit, instead of undermine, music consumers.”
Orchestras In Uncertain Times
The new orchestra season begins. But “don’t be surprised if you see orchestras, including the Baltimore Symphony and Philadelphia Orchestra, reopening labor contracts, well before expiration dates, in search of budget savings. Such measures, once unthinkable, may soon be common as organizations struggle to get their houses on solid ground. And all the usual things, like cut-backs in performances and costly repertoire, will continue, too. But let’s not get overly gloomy. At least not yet.” There are some bright spots…
911 – Same Old Hollywood
Who said pop culture was forever changed after 911? “If you see a movie now, there’s no longer any question that it originated after the Twin Towers came down. And this past summer, it seemed like there were whole movies that stood as direct arguments against all those things we believed back in the fall of 2001. Movies will become less frivolous? ‘Charlie’s Angels 2: Full Throttle.’ Movies will become less violent? ‘Bad Boys 2.’ It’s not important that those movies weren’t smash hits. They did well enough, and what’s more important is that Hollywood believed, post-9/11, that such movies were what American audiences wanted.”
Foster To Head Yerba Buena
Kenneth Foster has been appointed director of San Francisco’s Yerba Buena Center. “Foster, 52, comes to the Bay Area from Tucson, where for the past nine years he directed UA Presents, the University of Arizona’s performing arts program. There his duties paralleled those he will take up at Yerba Buena: programming leadership, audience development, fund-raising, budget oversight and staff management.”
A Plan For An American National Theatre
A new national theatre is being proposed for the site of the World Trade Center. “The national theater would cull the finest offerings from the country’s regional stages and present them in the performing arts center that Daniel Libeskind, the master-plan architect, has called for at the World Trade Center site. The complex would include three theaters: one with 800 seats, one with 700 and one with 400. The backers envision 15 productions a year, five on each stage, each running six weeks.”
Dance In The Face Of Tragedy
On September 11, 2001 the dancers of American Ballet Theatre were in Kansas City. They decided to perform anyway. “They begin to move. Each step they take is a step that dancers have taken for 300 years. Every step binds them to centuries of tradition and, by extension, to all the women and all the men who struggled to create what is lovely. At the close of the nation’s most dreadful day, they give us a stay against reality; in the wake of devastation they give us Order. In the wake of brutality they give us Grace. In the wake of horror they give us Beauty. In the face of senselessness they give us meaning. These wraithlike creatures are spiritual warriors. What the terrorists sought to take from our world is precisely what they return to it.”
Chicago Art Institute Director Resigns
James Wood announces he will leave. “The Art Institute has begun planning to build its first major new wing in 15 years, designed by Renzo Piano and expected to cost nearly $200 million. Mr. Wood said that it would be wise for a single director to oversee the final planning, construction and opening of the new wing, and that therefore he had to decide whether to leave now or stay on the job until at least 2008.”
Simone Young In Hamburg
Simone Young is the first woman to hold a leading position in a major European opera house. “After a sudden — and sensational — announcement by Opera Australia last year that the company would not renew Ms. Young’s contract, she accepted the top positions at Hamburg, a trifecta of sorts: music director and general manager of the opera, and director of the Hamburg Philharmonic State Orchestra. She has big plans for Hamburg, where she has negotiated a contract starting in August 2005 that puts her in charge of the purse strings.”
City Lights At 50
San Francisco’s City Lights is one of the world’s most famous bookstores. “The shop and publishing house were founded by the poet Lawrence Ferlinghetti and the publisher Peter Martin in 1953. It became famous as the home of the beats in the 50s and 60s – the place where you bought Allen Ginsberg, Jack Kerouac and Neal Cassady – and it has never lost its countercultural image, although tour buses no longer pause outside to show visitors the ‘beatniks’, as they did 40 years ago. Situated in the North Beach area, surrounded by cafes, Chinese restaurants and strip clubs, City Lights has managed to survive despite the growth of the big chains and internet bookshops.”