“University of Chicago President Don Michael Randel’s decision, announced last week, to leave next July to become president of the New York-based Andrew W. Mellon Foundation has import for more than scholars in Hyde Park. Randel will be heading the leading funder of the humanities among U.S. philanthropies. The humanities always have scratched for foundation support but usually could count on a handful of old reliables. According to a 2004 report by the Foundation Center and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, five foundations accounted for a quarter of the $335 million in grants to the humanities in 2002, the most current year for such data. Mellon was the leading provider that year, with $25.9 million in grants (representing about 12 percent of its total giving), as it was for much of the prior decade.”
Tag: 08.04.05
Doesn’t That Bank Already Have A Ballpark, Anyway?
Boston Mayor Tom Menino is trying to block the city’s historic opera house from slapping a new corporate name on its facade. Citizens Bank paid $4 million to buy the naming rights to the recently reopened venue, but the mayor and several other elected officials have objected, saying that the theatre should continue to be known simply as the Opera House. Furthermore, Clear Channel, which bought and renovated the venue with considerable assistance from Menino, says that it “owes” the mayor, and may be amenable to squelching the naming deal.
London Theatre Bucks Bombs, Posts Gains
London’s West End doesn’t seem to have suffered much in the wake of the 7/7 bombings. Attendance at West End shows is ahead of last year’s pace, and an immediate 6% drop in ticket sales in the days after the attacks was short-lived.
The Continuing Saga Of Gilbert And George
The artistic duo known as Gilbert and George can occasionally seem less like artists than like impish schoolchildren, even thirty years into their impressive career. “For more than three decades Gilbert and George have made a profession out of being naughty. Their art has dealt with politics of all types: economic, social, sexual. Combining photography with performance, they have embraced pornography, pandemic diseases like AIDS, vaudeville and scatology.” Their act seems to be wearing well: their recent exhibition at the Venice Biennale was a huge hit, and many of the works from that show have already been snapped up by major museums.
Save This House
“In a last-ditch effort, a consortium of preservation groups has assembled a plan to save the Ennis House, a striking 1924 building by Frank Lloyd Wright in the Los Feliz Hills above Los Angeles. The National Trust for Historic Preservation, together with the Frank Lloyd Wright Building Conservancy and the Los Angeles Conservancy, has created a foundation to raise the millions of dollars needed to rehabilitate the house, which suffered critical damage in a 1994 earthquake and again in heavy rains last winter.”
Anne Sofie von Otter At 50
The soprano is aware of her voice changing: “A little bit. I’m not 20 any more. I can hear it. But I don’t think it’s a bad thing. It’s a little broader than it used to be, has more volume in the lower and middle registers. The vibrato changes too. Everything is a bit bigger, a bit slower, but not in an embarrassing way. I’m enjoying using my voice in a different way. I’m using more of it and I am enjoying that. Ten or 15 years ago, using the mass of the voice didn’t interest me. Then I was looking for a thinner, more instrumental sound. I did a lot of baroque music and Mozart. I’m still doing baroque and Mozart but not as much, and therefore I can use my voice in a different way.
Dodging Trouble In Pittsburgh
The Pittsburgh Symphony is in a tricky situation. It’s running deficits again, ticket sales aren’t up to snuff, and the orchestra is in the unenviable position of trying to remain in the top world ranks following the departure of renowned music director Mariss Jansons. Oh, and the musicians, who took a big pay cut a few years back, are due an unheard-of 25% raise this fall, the result of a contract which pegs their salaries to orchestras in New York, Philadelphia, Chicago, and Cleveland. Still, subscriptions are up, and previous deficits have been wiped out by last-minute contributions, so no one’s panicking yet.
PBT Called Arrogant, Dishonest
The editors of one of Pittsburgh’s two daily newspapers are underwhelmed by the Pittsburgh Ballet Theatre’s decision to replace its live orchestra with recorded music, and accuse the organization of shoddy business practices and arrogance. “Subscription sales started in February. But when the board decided in June to roll tape, it did not tell the public until August. And there still is no official refund policy for victims of the bait and switch. This, after customer outrage last year terminated the Premiere Circle Seating program. The board had choreographed an extra licensing fee for subscribers of $150 to $250 for the privilege of keeping their choice seats.”
Is US&O’s Financial Ship Starting To Turn?
The Utah Symphony & Opera’s embattled CEO, Anne Ewers, insists that the troubled organization is well on its way to recovery, despite huge deficits and an in-house revolt this past season that saw the orchestra’s musicians mount a public campaign to expose what they saw as mismanagement. Ewers’s offered to reduce her own salary by $25,000 to help the US&O cut expenses, and overall, the organization spent $250,000 less in the 2004-05 season than it had the year before. Other measures designed to stabilize the group include an end to the regular practice of engaging substitute musicians to fill out the orchestral ranks, and a mandatory $10,000 gift for each of the US&O’s 40 board members.
Cellist Donald White, 80
The first black musician to play in the Cleveland Orchestra has died. Donald White, who was hired by music director George Szell in 1957, played 39 seasons in Cleveland, and participated in a groundbreaking tour of the American Deep South in the 1960s, during which the orchestra threatened to cancel concerts if White was barred from segregated venues. He died this past weekend, aged 80.