The tension is continuing to build at the Colorado Springs Symphony, where the musicians have labeled their management’s talk of a bankruptcy filing as “blackmail,” and the music director has threatened to resign if Chapter 11 becomes reality. None of the involved parties denies that the CSS is in real fiscal trouble, but it’s a matter of perception: orchestra execs contend they are doing their best in a bad economy, while the musicians claim that management created the problem and is now trying to avoid culpability.
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Who’s Next? Arts Groups Have No Idea.
A startling new report from an Illinois group reveals a near-total lack of planning on the part of arts organizations nationwide for replacing their top executives. “Three out of four non-profit arts organizations report having no succession plans, even though nearly three-quarters of their aging top managers say they plan to quit within five years.” And while it may be true that arts groups don’t have the budgets to carefully groom successors from within, as is the norm in the corporate world, the recent rash of hasty executive departures from orchestras and museums points up the lack of foresight.
Heppner Ready For A Comeback
It has been a year since Canadian tenor Ben Heppner shocked a Toronto audience by cracking several notes and then calling a halt to his recital mid-aria. Heppner, long considered the most talented operatic tenor in a generation, has spent the last 12 months struggling to find out what it was that caused his voice to suddenly abandon him. He’s cagey about specifics, but the answer appears to have been found in the side effects from a medication he was taking. He is scheduled to return to New York’s Metropolitan Opera next month.
Heppner Ready For A Comeback
It has been a year since Canadian tenor Ben Heppner shocked a Toronto audience by cracking several notes and then calling a halt to his recital mid-aria. Heppner, long considered the most talented operatic tenor in a generation, has spent the last 12 months struggling to find out what it was that caused his voice to suddenly abandon him. He’s cagey about specifics, but the answer appears to have been found in the side effects from a medication he was taking. He is scheduled to return to New York’s Metropolitan Opera next month.
Clear Channel Pulls Out Of Netcasting
The nation’s largest corporate radio conglomerate, Clear Channel Communications, has told its stations that they must individually bear the cost of broadcasting their signals over the internet, causing 150 of them to yank their webcasts entirely. The cost of streaming a traditional radio signal has become increasingly prohibitive with courts issuing rulings mandating payments to musicians and actors whose work appears on the streams.
Dance Summit Of International Artistic Directors
Artistic directors of dance companies around the world are gathering this week to talk about the state of the art. “Figures from the Bolshoi, the Royal Ballet and companies from Chile to Portugal are taking part in the think-tank to address how to develop new “classics” alongside the tried and tested favourites audiences always want to see. The three-day symposium will ask whether the companies are losing their individuality as they all perform the same Swan Lakes, Nutcrackers and Coppelias.”
More Arts Programming? With These Ratings?
Okay – so all the critics are complaining about the BBC’s lack of arts programming. But over on BBC4, the so-called culture channel, there appears to be nobody home… “While the main terrestrial channels calculate their audiences in the millions, BBC4 has to talk in thousands, tens of thousands and – if they are lucky – occasionally hundreds of thousands.” With ratings like these, how do you justify more of this programming?
Learning About The Holocaust From Films
“Unfortunately we live in an age where people learn their history from feature films. This has not served our memories well. It may be too much to ask film makers to tell the most complete, unwholesome aspects of a story. But it’s worse when they focus instead on a more palatable, yet unrepresentative slice. The risk is in misleading the audience, trivializing the horror, and reducing the madness into something mundane.”
A Great Threat To Modern Culture
“The current artistic culture, which is replete with references, borrowings and parody, has collided with a corporate and legal culture that is bent on protecting intellectual property. If Andy Warhol were working today, he would be facing litigation from Campbell’s soup, Church & Dwight (the makers of Brillo pads) and every corporation whose logo he appropriated. ‘Virtually all art builds on previous work, either overtly or covertly’.”
Great Architecture Requires Great Clients (Where Are They?)
Why does it seem so difficult to muster forces to create great architecture in America? “Citizens are the consumers of architecture. How are they educated to appreciate and judge what they must necessarily inhabit and, as taxpayers and clients, often buy? Primary and secondary schools rarely mention architecture or urbanism at all, except in the most elite or innovative schools. The general public’s lack of even the most basic education in architecture and urbanism makes for ill-informed, ill-prepared clients. With admittedly a few exceptions, asking members of those groups to judge inspired architecture is akin to asking people with a third-grade education to select the next winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature.”