“The orchestra musicians voted [unanimously] to take a ’10 percent cut of our weekly salary for the next seven weeks that had been canceled,’ said [violist Amy] Hess. ‘Then the dollar amount of everyone’s cut will be distributed to the extra and stage band of musicians, to help make up for the work they wouldn’t have been paid for.'” – Chicago Tribune
Tag: 03.19.20
Hay Literature Festival Cancelled, With Future In Doubt
“Organisers will struggle to recoup the large infrastructure costs they have already committed to, as 70% of the festival’s income comes from ticket and book sales on site. In a statement on Thursday, the festival said the not-for-profit event was now in ‘immediate financial jeopardy’ and would need to raise funds in 10 days to ‘plot a sustainable route forward’.” – The Guardian
Metropolitan Opera Cancels Rest Of Season And Furloughs All Musicians And Stagehands
The company will pay its chorus members, orchestral musicians, and unionized backstage staff through the end of March but maintain their health insurance. Upper-level administration employees will take pay cuts ranging from 10 to 50 percent, and general manager Peter Gelb is forgoing his salary entirely. – The New York Times
Why It Matters So Much That Cannes Was Postponed And Not Called Off
“To take Cannes out of the equation for even one year would have massive reverberations throughout the world of international cinema. It is, simply put, the most important film event of the year, from which distributors flesh out their art-film slates, festivals take their programming cues and countries make their Oscar selections. Films that launch in Cannes are virtually assured a healthy run at smaller fests around the globe for a year or more.” – Variety
Cannes Film Festival Postponed But Not Cancelled
“The festival made the news public on Thursday, saying that ‘several options are [being] considered in order to preserve its running’ – its preferred one being a shift of the festival to the end of June.” – The Guardian
Music Moves To Streaming Live – But First To Figure Out What Works
On an individual level, innumerable artists and bands have rearranged tours or scrapped them altogether. With streaming still offering low royalty rates for artists, most musicians rely on essential revenue from touring. So can a livestreamed show be a feasible replacement for the real thing? – The Guardian
Online Gaming Platforms Fail To Keep Up With Surge Of Players
Nintendo Online was unavailable for almost nine hours on Tuesday, preventing users from playing games such as Mario Kart 8 online or buying new titles on the console’s online shop. Steam, a popular platform for PC games, reported its all-time highest number of concurrent users over the weekend, with more than 20 million people logged in at the same time, and almost a third of those were actively playing a game. – The Guardian
Be The Curator. New Online Tool Lets You Create Your Own Show
The charity Art UK, which lists every publicly owned oil painting on its online database and is in the process of adding every sculpture, has announced details of a new curation tool. It will allow members of the public to curate their own online shows, choosing from more than 200,000 oil paintings and 16,000 sculptures in UK galleries from the Shetlands to Scilly. – The Guardian
What It’s Like Performing For An Empty Hall
“When you’re on stage and projecting to an audience they are relating in various ways to what you are doing on stage. When I perform I’m always trying to invite them to respond in any way they can. When you’re doing it just for your musicians, you have a different approach, delving into the intricacies so much deeper…you’re not trying to project something when you’re so intimate. I actually felt very intimate there.” – Van
120,000 Film Industry Workers Laid Off
The film and TV industry worldwide has experienced a near-total cessation of activity, with thousands of largely freelance crew laid off at short notice with little or no financial compensation. Scores of productions, ranging from studio shoots such as the Avatar sequels and Fantastic Beasts 3 to independent films such as Paul Schrader’s The Card Counter, have been halted. – The Guardian