Finnish conductor Osmo Vänskä has signed a four-year contract extension with the Minnesota Orchestra, which will keep him in Minneapolis through the 2010-11 season. In his two years as music director, Vänskä has considerably expanded the orchestra’s national and international reputation, leading it on a high-profile tour of Europe and embarking on a project to record the complete cycle of Beethoven symphonies. Vänskä’s name has recently been popping up on the wish lists of other top orchestras in more glamorous cities, which spurred the Minnesota management to pursue the extension.
Tag: 06.04.05
Two More Leaving Walker
Two more top officials at the Minneapolis-based Walker Art Center have resigned to take other jobs, leaving the museum – one of the flagships of the Twin Cities’ arts scene – with something like a leadership vacuum months after opening a massive addition. “Major building programs often trigger staff turnover, experts said, but it is rare for so many important players to depart simultaneously, especially when the project has gotten national rave reviews, as the Walker has.”
More Books, Less Interest
The continuing decline of reading for pleasure in America is well documented, but doesn’t seem to have been matched by a decline of available reading material – quite the contrary, in fact. “The number of new titles published last year, 195,000, increased by 14 percent over 2003, according to a new report… The biggest chunk of the increase was in adult fiction.” But with fewer adults than ever buying and reading new fiction, the strategy on the part of publishers seems more than anything like a desperate attempt to throw as many titles as possible against the wall, and hope that one or two might stick.