“The city’s development department said Tuesday that the opera’s 19th-century home on the former East Berlin’s Unter den Linden boulevard will now reopen at the beginning of the 2014-2015 season. It says work is progressing well but a hard winter and the need to take unexpected extra measures to reinforce the building site caused a roughly six-month delay.”
Category: music
Can Bankruptcy Solve Philadelphia Orchestra’s Problems? Yes, Says Board Chairman
Richard B. Worley: “We have a plan to revive the orchestra, but we need relief from contractual entanglements that threaten our existence. … And as much as we regretted this decision, running out of money and going dark was a poor alternative.”
Can Bankruptcy Solve Philadelphia Orchestra’s Problems? No, Says Musicians’ Leader
John Koen: “The orchestra is not insolvent – its assets well exceed its liabilities, as even the board has admitted in court filings … We believe the management chose bankruptcy to escape provisions of our contract that it doesn’t like, and that it did so heedless of the cost to the orchestra’s reputation.”
When Mahler Took New York
“It was Mahler’s freshly imagined interpretive style of orchestral performance, its special qualities of instrumental blend, dynamic nuance and rhythmic plasticity that both inspired the musicians of the Philharmonic and mesmerized New York audiences all those years ago.”
Sacramento Opera Safe For Another Season
“The Sacramento Opera announced Friday that it will present a 2011-12 season. Urgent pleas in the last two weeks secured $135,164 from donors. The company canceled most of its 2010-11 season because of an $85,000 budget shortfall.”
Yes, Buskers Must Audition To Play In The New York City Subways
“The sounds of accordions and harps rang out in Grand Central Station on Tuesday morning at the annual tryouts for ‘Music Under New York.’ The program, run by the Metropolitan Transportation Authority (M.T.A.), allows Subway buskers to play in key locations underground and use amplification in their busking acts.”
Those Touring Orchestras? Not Always Who They say They Are
“A close look at these groups shows a pattern of creative marketing — even truth shading — concerning credentials and identities. At the least, audiences often do not know what they are getting, even though visa regulations require the groups to be “recognized internationally as outstanding” and to have had three-quarters of the same players for at least a year. Many of these groups are in fact pickup ensembles or have little reputation, even in their home countries.”
San Francisco Builds A Home For Jazz
The San Francisco center, “is stand-alone, but it’s not going to be a monument or a citadel of culture. Those Beaux Arts buildings (nearby) are beautiful, but we want to have a building that looks like a jazz building, so you can see the building is alive.”
Oregon Symphony Gets A Rave In The New York Times, And Still They’re Upset?
Critic Allan Kozinn “generated some heat within the orchestra when he … wrote that [current music director Carlos] Kalmar had ‘maintained’ the orchestra ‘admirably’ after taking over from James DePreist. As followers of the orchestra know, Kalmar has done more than maintain the orchestra.”
Free Bob Dylan From The Bobolator Cult!
Ron Rosenbaum: “Bob Dylan has a big birthday coming up (70), and it occurred to me that one of the best presents we could give him would be to extricate Bob from the treacly, reductive, crushing embrace of the Bobolators. (My name for those writers and cultists who still make Dylan into a plaster saint, incapable of imperfection.)”