Category: today’s top story

“Following a trend that can be traced back to the 1990s and beyond, classical music is confronting an increasingly unsustainable combination of escalating costs, sagging philanthropy, aging audiences and declining attendance.”

Susan Philipsz “is the first person in the history of the award to have created nothing you can see or touch. Instead, she sculpted her prizewinning work in sound – indeed from the sound of her own voice, singing a Scottish lament over the river Clyde in her hometown, Glasgow.”

“The orchestra asked to break its collective bargaining agreement with its players in the Louisville Federation of Musicians Local 11-637. The move comes just weeks before the orchestra’s 75th anniversary year.”

“Three hooded thieves stole a truck containing 28 pieces of art including works by Picasso, Colombian artist Fernando Botero and Spanish sculptor Eduardo Chillida, Spanish police said Thursday.”

“In an unusual move that may alter the contemporary dance landscape in New York, the boards of Dance Theater Workshop and the Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane Dance Company voted unanimously Wednesday to merge their organizations, forming a combination producing and presenting entity to be called New York Live Arts.”

“Today, after a few hours of pressure from the Catholic League and various conservatives, it decided to remove a video by David Wojnarowicz, a gay artist who died from AIDS-related illness in 1992.”

Virtually everyone asked praises Mark’s achievements in founding the company and raising its standards and profile over 36 years. Yet some in the organization grew weary of what the board’s executive committee described in a letter as “Peter’s history of difficulties in working relations with staff, musicians and board leadership.”

Mary Zimmerman: “[In Chicago] it all feels scaled. Here I have the Goodman, Lookingglass and Northwestern University. … This is where people I work with live.” Robert Falls: “I love having an active life in New York as a director, but only because I feel I have a home here” – without the commercial and scheduling pressures of New York.

“Over the past 35 years, Blier has become a guru of song, the man who patiently guides singers past their vulnerabilities, who coaxes them to scrutinize and express some tiny grain of meaning in the text, who homes in pitilessly on glints of fake feeling. A mixture of therapist, teacher, impresario, and pianist-for-hire, he co-founded the boutique organization New York Festival of Song in 1988 (with the conductor and pianist Michael Barrett), and researches, programs, produces, and plays in every concert.”

“Rare is the human backside that hasn’t found solace and support in Mr. Day’s most famous creation, a molded polypropylene shell fastened to an enameled bent tubular steel base that has become familiar seating in schools, churches, offices, auditoriums, home patios, kitchens, dens, bedrooms and basements around the world.”