The general consensus among critics is that this year’s Cannes Film Festival did not measure up to previous installments. Several writers went so far as to call it the ‘worst Cannes ever.’ Michael Wilmington isn’t buying, although he acknowledges that the field of main category entries was the weakest in quite some time: “I tend to take acerbic verdicts on Cannes, even seemingly well founded ones, with a grain of sel – because I hear them so often. Every single year – with the exception of 1997, the 50th anniversary annum – I’ve heard somebody at Cannes insist this was the worst fest ever. Often the nix comes from dilettantes who see no more than one or two movies a day while hunting the next party to crash or celebrity to schmooze.”
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Musicians Who Need A Push
It is notoriously difficult to fire an orchestra musician in the U.S. A strict tenure system and decades of tradition make it a tremendous challenge to remove a musician who is no longer pulling his/her weight, and more often than not, a music director is reduced to pleading with substandard musicians to simply retire, rather than force the organization to begin the long, drawn-out process of dismissing them. Ordinarily, the public never hears about such internal confrontations, but in Chicago, where the music director has often been heard to condemn the tenure system, an unusual number of recently announced ‘retirements’ have brought the issue to the fore.
Strathmore Gets A Boost
A $100 million concert hall going up in the Maryland suburbs of Washington, D.C. is 40 percent complete, but money has been an issue even during construction. But this week, $4.85 million in new pledges came in from wealthy supporters of the new hall, getting organizers close to their funding goal. The Music Center at Strathmore, when complete, will host a variety of musical ensembles, including the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra.
Amateur Poets Must Be Stopped!
Barney McLelland is sick to death of bad poetry being churned out by untrained hands in the misguided name of self-expression. “Numerous surveys, declining SAT scores, and classroom anecdotes have established that many… young Americans can barely read, cannot spell or do arithmetic, and know next to nothing of their own history; but they do not let mere ignorance get in the way of self-expression.” People are free to write whatever they like, of course, but just as we would not buy a handmade wood cabinet from an amateur, McLelland says we should stop encouraging every moron with a word processor to set his personal neuroses to verse.
Touring Expensive But Not Expendable
Major orchestral tours, such as the one just completed by the San Francisco Symphony, are massively complicated and expensive affairs, involving the transport of over a hundred individuals, instruments, and other equipment. Halls must be booked, tickets must be sold or their cost made up, and hotel rooms must meet the exacting standards of the musicians’ contract. Says critic Joshua Kosman, “You might think a project like that would be expendable, especially in these lean financial times. You’d be wrong.”
San Antonio Cuts Staff, Prepares For Chapter 11
“Unable to meet Friday’s payroll for musicians and staff, the San Antonio Symphony has laid off nonessential office workers and may file for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection from creditors next week.” The move comes less than a month after the SAS cut short its season to save money and allow its board a chance to attempt to keep the organization afloat. Prior to the shutdown, symphony musicians had agreed to be paid late, or not at all, for several weeks in an effort to rally the community around the embattled ensemble.
Warland Singers To Disband
“The Dale Warland Singers, a bedrock of Twin Cities culture for three decades and regarded among America’s most influential choirs, will no longer perform after the group’s namesake steps down as director following the 2003-04 season. Dale Warland, 71, told his singers Thursday night he is leaving the group, which he formed in 1972, to concentrate on teaching and guest-conducting opportunities around the country and spend more time with family. The singers, who had long braced themselves for Warland’s inevitable departure, were stunned to learn the choir is disbanding.”
Gideon Toeplitz: The Exit Interview
Gideon Toeplitz departed as managing director of the struggling Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra this weekend, and he is not terribly optimistic about the future of the PSO or the industry in general. “I’m concerned that the industry is looking for executives who are primarily fund-raisers and marketers. I’m concerned about that because the passion for music and the knowledge of music is, at best, secondary, or may not be there at all.”
Met Broadcasts – Stripping The Theatre Out Of Opera?
So the Metropolitan Opera’s radio broadcasts are endangered. That is sad news, writes John Rockwell. But along with the many benefits the broadcasts have produced, they have also distorted Americans’ sense of (and taste for) opera. Onne might suggest that “millions of American opera lovers have been tilted toward a perception of opera as a voice-driven auditory experience. For them, the best stage production is imaginary: it doesn’t so much adhere to the intentions of the composer as remain neutrally compatible with a listener’s own made-up stage pictures. And in the comfortable confines of the home or the car, the music is usually heard without libretto or titles, as a sensual experience in melody, harmony and a foreign tongue.”
History-Making Ballerina Dies
“Janet Collins, prima ballerina of the Metropolitan Opera House in the early 1950’s and one of a very few black women to become prominent in American classical ballet, died on Wednesday in Fort Worth. She was 86.” Critic John Martin once wrote of her, “She is not self-absorbed, but is dancing completely and wholesouledly for an audience. On the other hand, there is no air of showing off about it, no coyness or coquetry, but only an apparent desire to establish and maintain a communicative contact.”