“Dominique Perrault, best known for designing the French National Library in Paris, and his team beat 10 other entries to design the new building for the Mariinsky Theater in the most important architectural event in Russia in 70 years.” But not everyone is happy with Perrault’s dome-based design, which involves a lot of black marble and gold glass, and looks a bit like a half-inflated hot air balloon. Most of the concerns are of the practical variety: how do we clean it, will all the snow collapse it, and how much will it cost to build?
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Spoleto USA Packs ‘Em In
“Spoleto USA says the just-ended 2003 festival was the highest-grossing ever, with ticket sales surpassing those of the previous record year, 2001. The Charleston, South Carolina-based festival, which ran from 23 May to 8 June, says in a press release that it sold $2.5 million worth of tickets and half of its performances sold out.”
How Does A City Become An Orchestra Magnet?
Why do some cities attract regular visits from touring orchestras, while others almost never see anyone but the hometown band? The answer is largely about money and resources, and it explains why many medium and large cities across America missed out on, say the Philadelphia Orchestra’s recent tour, while small college towns like Lincoln, Nebraska, packed a hall to enjoy the Fabulous Philadelphians. The fact is that, if your city has a decent-sized concert hall that’s going unused a lot of the time, and some spare funds to pay the orchestra’s costs, you have a better chance of landing a touring orchestra than a big city with a thriving music scene where the performance spaces are already booked.
Temirkanov Walks Out On French Opera Production
Yuri Temirkanov, the well-regarded music director of the Baltimore Symphony and the St. Petersburg (Russia) Philharmonic, has walked out on a production of Tchaikovsky’s opera, Queen of Spades, which he was to have conducted at the Opera National de Lyon in France. Temirkanov isn’t talking about his departure, but his translator says that he was infuriated by what he considered to be distracting and unnecessary staging, and changes to the original Pushkin storyline. Temirkanov issued a statement after his departure, saying that the Lyon production “does not correspond in any way to my own cultural heritage, nor my love and my understanding of the work of Tchaikovsky and Pushkin.”
Baltic Director Resigns
“The man behind the Baltic – Europe’s newest contemporary arts complex – has quit as its director. Sune Nordgren steered the centre for contemporary arts in Gateshead, through it’s first turbulent year… The £46m project transformed the former Baltic Flour Mills, a disused 1950s grain warehouse, into an international contemporary arts venue.” Nordgren is heading home to Norway, where he will become the director of the National Museum for Art, Architecture and Design.
Hogwarts Students Not Welcome Here
The Harry Potter series has been banned again, this time in Australia, where a Christian college is concerned that “the books promoted wizardry as normal – not a message to which students should be exposed.” Since Harry’s wizardry is not only not normal, but, in fact, fictional, one might be tempted to dismiss the Maranatha Christian College as a bunch of fundamentalist yahoos, but the school is only the latest in a long string of institutions worldwide which have discerned some grave threat to followers of Jesus in the works of J.K. Rowling.
But CDs Are Still $18, Hmm?
Who would have thought that a 20-cent price cut could make such a difference? In the month since the (legal) digital music service Listen.com cut the price of its downloads from 99 cents to 79 cents, it has nearly doubled the number of songs it sold. The price cut was initially a response to the much-ballyhooed new download service offered by Apple, but Listen.com (which is owned by RealNetworks) wound up with 11 million songs downloaded from its servers in the month of June.
China’s Great Wall Crumbles In Obscurity
Chinese officials are scrambling to deal with the discovery that large chunks of the famous Great Wall are no longer standing, and more will likely be gone in the near future. “Of the portion built during the Ming Dynasty, less than 20 percent is still intact. A probe of 100 sections drew the alarming conclusion that a third of the structure has already vanished.” Survey teams were shocked to find “local farmers living along the Great Wall simply unaware of what it is. They witnessed bricks being carted away by people to build houses, sheep corrals and pigsties. One 1,000-meter section in Hebei Province, which neighbors Beijing, vanished in the space of a year after locals took stones and foundation materials for repairs.”
Zinman, Davis, Conlon Reportedly Top PSO’s Wish List
As the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra moves closer to hiring a new executive director, its list of candidates to replace Mariss Jansons as music director is slowly narrowing. No one expects a decision before next spring, but some intriguing names have emerged as serious candidates, while others have fallen by the wayside. Reported to be at the top of the PSO’s list of potential MDs are David Zinman (formerly of the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra,) Sir Andrew Davis (who led Toronto in the 1990s,) and James Conlon, whose reputation is firmly established in Europe, but has yet to take on the top job at a North American orchestra.
Classical Recording – Disfunctional Scarcely Describes It
Even when recording a classical artist seems to make economic sense, it’s not happening anymore at the big recording labels, writes Norman Lebrecht. And of course there’s no tolerance for developing new talent or helping to make careers. So what’s a talented young violinist to do?