“Working closely with educators, [Yo-Yo Ma’s] Silk Road Project plans to craft an interdisciplinary curriculum based on the study of the eponymous ancient East-West trade route where ideas, cultures and goods freely mingled. The American Museum of Natural History and the Manhattan School of Music will also participate in the program.”
Tag: 03.19.09
Ambitious Las Vegas Arts Center Has Arts Leaders Hopeful
“In addition to this being a crappy time for Las Vegas generally, it is an especially crappy time for the arts in a town with a strangely ambivalent relationship to art–a town known for its aesthetic showmanship and for being a cultural lightweight. The backdrop to the arts community’s woes, meanwhile, is the impending start to construction of The Smith Center for the Performing Arts, a $465 million theater facility slated for Downtown Las Vegas’ Union Park development.”
Sorting Out The Daily Me
“There’s pretty good evidence that we generally don’t truly want good information — but rather information that confirms our prejudices. We may believe intellectually in the clash of opinions, but in practice we like to embed ourselves in the reassuring womb of an echo chamber.”
America’s Largest Children’s Theatre Cuts By 17 Percent
Children’s Theatre Company in Minneapolis “expects to reduce its fiscal 2010 budget by about 14 percent, largely in reaction to difficult economic conditions. The organization’s current-year budget of $12.3 million already has been trimmed by 3 percent.”
Las Vegas Approves Bonds To Build Arts Center
“Amid an economic downturn, the Las Vegas city council has approved financing on a $475 million performing arts center in a bid to add some elegance to the city’s notorious glitz. Construction could begin this spring on The Smith Center for the Performing Arts in downtown.”
George W. Bush Lands $7 Million Book Deal
Crown Publishing Group will release the volume, tentatively titled Decision Points, in 2010. “Instead of recounting his life story, [Bush will] write about a dozen personal and professional choices, including giving up drinking and picking Dick Cheney as his vice president.”
Atlanta Symphony Announces Cuts But Avoids Layoffs
The measures announced today, which will save more than $750,000, include 5% pay reductions for administrative staff (more for top officers) for the remainder of the season, unpaid furloughs beginning this summer, unspecified givebacks from music director Robert Spano and the conducting staff, and the continuation of a hiring freeze.
Globe & Mail, Toronto Star, La Presse Lead National Newspaper Award Noms
“The Globe and Mail leads the pack of finalists with 13 nominations in the running for the 2008 National Newspaper Awards, to be announced May 22 in Montreal. The Toronto Star has 10 nominations, followed by Montreal’s La Presse [the only francophone nominee] with eight. The Ottawa Citizen, Calgary Herald and Hamilton Spectator each collected four.”
Le Bruit Et La Furie: The French Love Faulkner
“He beat Flaubert, Stendhal, Baudelaire, de Beauvoir, Camus and Celine, and lost only to Proust. William Faulkner was the second most-cited author in a French magazine’s poll asking French writers to name their favourite books… Guardian columnist Agnes Poirier says ‘we love Faulkner because we consider him a revolutionary novelist – he experiments with narration like no other’.”
Launch Of Canada’s New National Broadcast Orchestra Delayed
When the CBC Radio Orchestra disbanded last November, conductor Alain Trudel announced a project to revive the group as an independent ensemble called the National Broadcast Orchestra. An executive director has been engaged, but, thanks to the sour economy, the NBO’s debut benefit concert this spring and the announcement of a season for next fall have been postponed.