Nashville officials have begun to plan what is being described as a “cultural cluster” for the downtown neighborhood which will soon play host to a new concert hall for the Nashville Symphony. The thinking is that while a concert hall alone can be good for a neighborhood, a vibrant collection of entertainment options is better, and if all goes as planned, the new concert hall could anchor a thriving district which would include a minor league baseball park, the Country Music Hall of Fame, and a massive entertainment complex. Of course, these things cost money…
Tag: 03.18.04
Detroit Mayor: Save The Arts School!
“Detroit Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick made a brief appearance at Wednesday’s Detroit Public Schools board meeting to encourage district officials to reconsider plans to close the Communication and Media Arts High School. The school is scheduled to close and merge in January 2005 with the Detroit High School for the Fine and Performing Arts in a new, $120-million building off Woodward near Orchestra Hall… Dozens of parents, students and teachers said they feared the new school’s academic structure will not be as stringent as CMA’s. Currently, 95 percent of CMA graduates go on to higher education; 85 percent go on to 4-year colleges.”
Privatizing The Arts In L.A.
Los Angeles mayor James Hahn has sent a letter to local arts groups informing them that he plans to slash the budget of the city’s Cultural Affairs Department and transfer the money to “basic services” such as public safety and street repair. The exact dollar amount of the mayor’s cutback hasn’t been specified, but current budget projections show a cut of nearly 60%. In place of direct subsidies, Mayor Hahn is creating a council of wealthy Angelenos to encourage private donations to the arts.
The New People-Friendly NEA
Only a decade ago, the letters ‘NEA’ would bring a scowl to the face of conservative US politicians, and images of urine-soaked crosses to the minds of the general public. The arts endowment’s budget was gutted during those years, and many assumed that the country’s tradition of federal support for the arts had finally been killed off. But this year, the decidedly conservative Bush administration called on Congress to sharply increase the NEA’s budget, and the taint of controversy seems to have vanished in the hands of the endowment’s soothing new director, Dana Gioia. “The NEA’s turnaround has been achieved, in part, through high-profile tours of unassailable works and by reaching out to traditionally underserved areas, including Southern states.”
Small Orchestra Struggles, Part LXXVI
“Plagued by poor ticket sales and high costs, the Long Island (NY) Philharmonic has canceled the last two concerts of its 25th anniversary season, its second cancellation within four months. What should have been a year of celebration has become a time of trial, with missed payroll deadlines and a $250,000 deficit in the orchestra’s $2.1 million budget.”
Robot Wars In The Orchestra Pit
“The conflict between theatrical producers and the musicians’ union, which a year ago shut down Broadway for four days, has reared its head again. The arena this time is Off-Broadway, where the new musical The Joys of Sex has provoked a standoff with Local 802 of the American Federation of Musicians. When it was performed at the New York International Fringe Festival in 2002, The Joys of Sex had three musicians in the pit. For its transfer to the 499-seat Variety Arts, producer Ben Sprecher and composer David Weinstein decided to augment the score with a Sinfonia, an electronic music-making device. Local 802 adamantly denounces the Sinfonia as a ‘virtual orchestra machine’ and has refused to sign a production agreement with Sprecher.”
Playing Hot Potato With A Concert Hall
A Maryland concert hall scheduled to open next summer is running into roadblocks from politicians who are not overly eager to take responsibility for covering cost overruns. Strathmore Hall, which was budgeted to cost $100 million and will become the second home of the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra, is supposed to draw the adjoining metropolitan areas of Baltimore and Washington, D.C. together in suburban Montgomery County, but so far, county and state officials can’t agree on who should be responsible for unforeseen costs at the site. The county has asked the state for an additional $3 million in assistance to finish the project, but state budget analysts say that they’ve already contributed more than $44 million, and the county needs to pick up the slack.
More Troubles For Kazaa
Kazaa Media Desktop is the leading piece of file-trading software of the moment, and as such, it is at the center of the firestorm over illegal copying and swapping of copyrighted songs and movies. But Kazaa’s legal troubles apparently don’t end with the long list of industry heavies and political bigwigs who want to shut it down: now, a Romanian man is claiming that he wrote the source code for Kazaa, and is suing the company for his share of the profits.
Be The Smartest Person On Your Block! (On Paper, Anyway…)
Handing out diplomas is big business these days, and not just for the colleges and universities that actually expect you to go to class to earn one. “Diploma mills,” online companies which churn out fake diplomas, either purporting to be from real, prestigious schools, or from obscure schools which aren’t actually schools at all, have become a major problem for employers seeking to verify the credentials of job applicants. Now, two members of the US Congress have “asked the [Government Accounting Office] to investigate the matter after reports surfaced last summer that a high-level employee in the Homeland Security Department claimed to have three degrees from a suspected diploma mill.”
Fears Abound As Passion Comes To Germany
German officials are warning that Mel Gibson’s controversial epic, The Passion of the Christ, could stir up anti-Semitism in the country when it opens on 400 screens today. In contrast to America, where Catholic bishops embraced the film and declared it to be a vivid but accurate representation of Jesus’s last days, “German Catholic leaders called the film problematic, and the German Bishops’ Conference said: ‘We urgently warn against using the suffering of Jesus as an instrument for anti-Semitism.'”