“Musicians at the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra are understood to have voted for Gerard Schwarz to be ousted from his position as musical director. Maestro Schwarz was brought in three years ago to turn fortunes around at the cash-strapped orchestra, which was then £2.5 million in debt.”
Tag: 04.16.04
45 of 64 Musicians Vote Not To Renew Schwarz In Liverpool
Two thirds of the musicians of the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic voted to not renew music director Gerard Schwarz’s contract. “A final decision on whether to renew Mr Schwarz’s contract will be taken by the 11-strong board of directors following the review. The issues that musicians have disagreed with Schwarz about are said to include programme planning and repertoire choice. There has been some concern over the new umbrella job title of musical director.”
When Dance Companies Play Away From Their Strengths
The North Carolina Dance Theatre rarely gets to New York. It’s a company run by prominent Balanchinites and they have staged much of the master’s work. But not this time. Why, wonders Tobi Tobias, “did this energetic and engaging troupe ignore this heritage and offer a program comprising three pieces of middling worth only obliquely related to classical dancing?”
Learned Aggression
“A surprising natural experiment, reported in Public Library of Science Biology, an online journal, suggests that the level of violence in baboon society is culturally determined. Cultural transmission of behaviour has been seen in many animals besides humans. But until now, it has concerned what foodstuffs are good to eat, how to make and use tools, and how to communicate (many bird songs, for example, have learned regional dialects). Cultural transmission of, for want of a better word, manners, has never before been observed outside Homo sapiens.”
Bolshoi Dancer Loses Damage Suit
Bolshoi prima ballerina Anastasia Volochkova, who was fired in September for being too bulky to be lifted by her dancing partners has lost her damages claim for £575,000 against the chief of Moscow’s Bolshoi Theatre.
Saving Titanic
Efforts are beginning to save the wreck of the Titanic as an underwater museum. “Hundreds of tourists and salvagers, explorers and moviemakers, have assailed the Titanic since the team of American and French scientists discovered its resting place more than two miles down. Partly as a result, the vessel, the world’s most famous shipwreck, is rapidly falling apart. ‘The world’s oceans are the museums of the deep. It is in the interest of all peoples to protect and conserve both wrecks of recent history as well as submerged sites of antiquity’.”
A New Star In Brooklyn
“With the completion of the Brooklyn Museum’s new entrance pavilion, the city has gained one of the most attractive public spaces to be found anywhere in town. It will be fascinating to watch as the neighborhood discovers how to use it.”
Open House Brooklyn
“After a protracted identity crisis, the Brooklyn Museum has decided that local, not global, is the direction it should take. Rather than struggling in vain to put itself on the map for a Manhattan audience, it is joining the campaign to make a gentrified Brooklyn the place to be. The museum points to its new front entrance on Eastern Parkway as evidence of this grassroots connection. So, too, is “Open House,” which, in its casual way, posits Brooklyn-ness as a cultural ethnicity.”
Down On The People’s Opera
“It is not surprising that the latest venture from Raymond Gubbay, the man who brought opera to the Albert Hall, has attracted the sneers of the experts. Savoy opera, intended to offer (relatively) cheap, accessible productions of the classics in the West End, has been accused of undermining London’s other opera companies by skimming off the easy stuff and offering less than perfect performances, with cheap labour in the form of young, largely unknown singers. It is the antithesis of what the purists, regardless of the viability of the product, appear to believe opera ought to be.”
The Last Regent
One of the last grand hotels in central London is in danger of being torn down. “The 89-year-old, French baroque Regent Palace – built and still run as a “people’s palace” hotel only 30 seconds’ walk from Piccadilly Circus – would be replaced by a modern block of offices and shops under a £400m scheme put forward by the crown estate.”