Product Placement – Musicians’ Suits That Wick The Heat

Players in the London Symphony have been testing out new concert clothes. “Marks & Spencer have been testing their special new high-tech dinner suit on players performing with Glyndebourne Festival Opera in Sussex over the summer. Made from Coolmax, a breathable fabric previously used only in high performance sportswear, the suits move moisture away from the body to the outside of the material in a process that is often described as wicking.”

Check-up: Cuno’s First Year Running The Chicago Art Institute

James Cuno has made an impact in his first year running the Chicago Art Institute. “He has been at the institute just over a year, which once was thought too little time for any head of a major art museum to make felt his or her presence. But recent thinking in the profession has tended toward making changes rapidly during the first year, while a director enjoys the strongest trustee support, and that’s the way a number of former institute curators proceeded in directorships elsewhere, with mixed results.”

Music Returns Slowly To N’Orleans

Musicians are slowly returning to New Orleans. “Yet the birthplace of jazz remains a shadow of its once vibrant self — where music poured from block after block of the French Quarter and beyond late into the night. Since Hurricane Katrina, the crowds are smaller, the streets darker, the venues limited and pay for musicians often minimal.”