The San Francisco Conservatory is entering a new era with a new building. “The new building, designed by the San Francisco architectural firm Simon Martin-Vegue Winkelstein Moris with the involvement of acoustician Lawrence Kirkegaard, will mark a huge expansion for the Conservatory. The plans call for a building nearly twice the size of the existing facility, with no fewer than three performance spaces and a wealth of new classrooms, practice rooms and teaching studios. And all at a cost of only $80 million.”
Category: music
NY Phil & Carnegie – Calling Off The Marriage
“The much-heralded union between America’s oldest orchestra and its most prestigious concert hall – announced for the 2006-07 season – would have created a gigantic nonprofit corporation with an endowment of around $350 million. But there were problems from the beginning, both legal (Lincoln Center had indicated that it would seek to hold the Philharmonic, its tenant for the past 41 years, to a contract that ran until 2011) and aesthetic (the merger would have greatly diminished the variety of programming at Carnegie Hall).”
Philly Opera – Blasting Out The Half-Price Tickets
The Opera Company of Philadelphia finds its season subscriptions on the decline. So it’s trying something new – four days before a performance, the company releases remaining tickets at half-price. “The availability of half-price seats is made known through periodic e-mail ‘blasts’ much in the fashion of last-minute airline deals. The question remains whether opera fans are the type who will make last-minute plans. Last week’s Il Trovatore opening sold 100 half-price tickets on 24-hour notice.”
NY Phil, Carnegie, Call off Merger
Carnegie Hall and the New York Philharmonic have decided to call off their proposed merger. “Rumors that the deal was unraveling had been circulating in recent days after weeks of growing doubt about whether the boards of these two proud organizations would ultimately sanction the move. Lincoln Center officials said today that they were pleased to have the orchestra remain. `If you were to capture our feelings about this, they could be succinctly stated: Welcome home. All is forgiven. We have a lot to discuss.”
Let It Skate – Rolling Along With Rodolfo And Mimi
How about a “La Boheme” on roller skates? “The populist impresario Raymond Gubbay, who has a track record of bringing new audiences as well as new tricks to opera, unveiled plans for a £2m production of Puccini’s work at the Royal Albert Hall in February.”
Black Artists Score All Spots On US Top Ten
For the first time ever, all the artists on Billboard’s Top Ten chart are African-American. “Nine of the ten are rappers, plus one track by R&B singer Beyonce and reggae star Sean Paul.”
Reconsidering Prokofiev
A new biography of Prokofiev suggests that a re-evaluation of his life and work is in order. “Even as the collapse of Communism has made it easier for us to understand Prokofiev’s life, so has the collapse of the postwar musical avant-garde removed any remaining obstacle to a full appreciation of his music. One need no longer apologize for enjoying such pieces as the First Violin Concerto or Romeo and Juliet, or pretend that they are anything other than modern masterpieces, great works of art that are “popular” in the best sense of that much-maligned word. That they were written by a man who succumbed to temptation—and paid the price for it—need not make us love them less.”
Carnegie Establishes Education Center
Carnegie Hall gets a $24.7 million gift to extablish a music education center. It is the largest single donation in the hall’s history. “We think we can make a difference in music education. When you think about how audiences are declining, or you go to concerts and see the age of the audience, you’re looking at a major void.”
Thinking Too Small In KC?
Kansas City’s massive new performing arts center will be many things to many local arts organizations, or at least that’s the assumption. Among the individual components of the PAC will be a concert hall for the exclusive use of the Kansas City Symphony. The orchestra is grateful for having been included, but complaints are mounting about the small size of the hall, and some KCS staffers are wondering if the orchestra could ever hope to make money, or grow as an organization, in a hall with only 1,200 seats.
Mozart, Muti, and the Movie Man
Mozart will be 250 years old in 2006, and plans are underway for a massive celebration at Milan’s famed La Scala opera house. Music director Riccardo Muti plans to mount a new production of the Austrian composer’s comic classic, Cosi Fan Tutte, with none other than Spanish film director Pedro Almodóvar in charge of the staging. “Muti’s choice suggests a change of attitude by the maestro, who has been accused of trying to block attempts by the general manager of La Scala, Carlo Fontana, to popularise the repertoire.”