In an era of fiscal crisis at most American orchestras, the San Diego Symphony has had the unusual luxury of sitting back and waiting to find the perfect person to lead them in a time of newfound wealth. The orchestra received an unexpected and unprecedented $120 million gift last year, and now they may have scored something of a coup in the baton-waving department, reaching an agreement with Jahja Ling to be the orchestra’s next music director. Ling is the director of the Cleveland Orchestra’s summer festival, and a former music director of the Florida Orchestra. San Diego had previously offered the position to up-and-comer David Robertson, who declined the job.
Tag: 04.05.03
Theatrics Of War
“Sticks and stones may break your bones, but words can really kill you. Words, metaphors, stories, can convince complete strangers that they have an obligation to disembowel you. Before anyone makes a smart bomb, they have to be persuaded, by smart words, that they should. Words create what Shakespeare called an “imaginary puissance” that can have lethal consequences. An imaginary garden, with real tanks. If you doubt that literature can ‘cry havoc, and let slip the dogs of war’, consider four words enshrined in every library in the English-speaking world: ‘God fought for us’.”
Is Too Much Video Creeping Onstage?
“The artistic power of cinema has had beneficial effects on theatre – in, for example, a greater economy and fluidity in writing and staging – but the dark side has been that stage productions now seem to be apologising for not being films, like someone changing their appearance to look like a rival in love. Modern art has encouraged the use of ‘mixed media’, but the extended use of video in theatre always feels like a defeat. The point of theatre is that the performance is created as we watch.”
Do Politics Keep Plays Offstage?
Irish playwright Gary Mitchell finds that it’s difficult getting his plays performed because they’re set in Ireland, and they include political themes. “There are political reasons that prevent certain plays and films from being performed. Would a script about Jesus written by a born-again Christian be produced today? Would a political play written by a member of the Monster Raving Loony Party or the Conservative Party be turned down because it was dreadful – or would it be because the politics of the piece were not popular, or conflicted with the sensibilities of the theatre’s board, or the agenda of the artistic director?”
But It’ll Be Real Pretty When It’s Done!
“The Denver Art Museum’s new wing is like pieces of a jigsaw puzzle strewn on a table, waiting to be assembled. Some of the pieces: It’s still unknown how much the 146,000-square-foot wing will cost, though money in hand would suggest a price of at least $70 million. Museum officials won’t say how much they have raised (or want to raise) in a capital campaign to augment bond money approved by Denver voters in 1999. There isn’t a precise start date for construction, other than late June or early July. The opening date – first 2004, then 2005 – now hovers in 2006.”
In Defense of Bureaucracy
When an LA Times columnist derided the California Arts Council as being of little use to real artists last week, arts advocates were stung by the attack. Laura Zucker defends the industry’s reliance on large support and fund-raising staff: “The creation of art doesn’t happen in a vacuum. It is impossible to separate grants aimed at making art from those that support staff, fund-raising efforts, marketing and technical upgrades. If a wonderful work of sculpture goes unseen because there are no curators to discover it, no access to exhibition space or no marketing plan to advertise and promote the exhibition, what has been accomplished?”
Barenboim, Said, And A Vision Of Peace
For several years now, Israeli conductor Daniel Barenboim and Palestinian intellectual Edward Said have been using their personal friendship to search for larger methods of bridging the gap between their two fundamentally opposed peoples. But perhaps more powerful than Barenboim’s music or Said’s words is their joint realization that these things alone are not enough to change the course of the Middle East. Instead, they believe in humanizing each other, for all the world to see. “What is striking about these two friends… is how different they are. Not because one is an Israeli, one a Palestinian – they are, as individuals, temperamentally opposed: one, easy, expansive, the other, Said, more cautious, despite his outspokenness.”
Poets Against War
“By definition, wars are deadly and destructive. In Western societies at least, it takes little moral courage or imaginative reach to oppose such qualities. In aiming their fire at such easy targets as the warmongers who inflict horror on the innocent, many poets invite an interrogation: Do you accept that some wars may be necessary? If so, how do you choose which ones should be fought?” A new collection of anti-war poetry spends more time on the answers than one might expect, and as a result, actually packs a political punch at a time when many mainstream artists have been cowed into keeping their pacifist sensibilities to themselves.
Finally, Stepping Out Of Grammy’s Shadow
Outside of Canada, few have heard of the Juno Awards, and even at home, the ceremony honoring the best in Canadian music is often derisively referred to as “Grammy Jr.” But this year, the Junos may be ready to make an international mark, with artists like Avril Lavigne, Nickelback, and Celine Dion representing a new crop of Canadian singers who have found spectacular success worldwide. But will the stars and the national pride be enough to get Canadians to watch the traditionally low-rated broadcast?
What Are You Gonna Do? Garnishee Their Work-Study Wages?
For years now, the recording industry has carped about the money they lose through illegal downloading and file-swapping, and consumers have yelled back that if the industry didn’t set the prices for CDs and DVDs artificially high, fewer people would need to go the piracy route. But the industry ratcheted up the rhetoric considerably last week when it began to go after a few select college students who have swapped large amounts of digital music and video online. Katie Dean compares the tactic to the American military’s ‘shock and awe’ campaign in Iraq, since the plan isn’t meant to recover financial losses for the industry. In point of fact, it is intended to scare the bejeezus out of college students.