“As MOCA’s development events manager, coordinating an average of 35 events a year, [Vanessa] Gonzalez is more rock ‘n’ roll chick than art geek, with her platinum hair, platform shoes, high-gloss lips and vanity plates that say ‘GR*UPIE.’ Over the past five years, she’s produced events that have made MOCA one of the hottest social tickets in town…. With the growing L.A. art scene, the museum’s membership has also shot up….”
Author: Laura Collins Hughes
Broadway Hosts Singles Event, No Carding Necessary
The League of American Theaters and Producers’ “Singles’ Night on Broadway” seemed to attract mainly older, straight theatergoers. “The crowd looked a lot like — well, a Broadway crowd. The Broadway audience, according to the league, is a little more than 60 percent female. Same here. More than half the Broadway audience is between the ages of 35 and 64. Same here, if not more so.”
Approaching 80, Masur Is Careful But Not Cautious
As Kurt Masur nears his 80th birthday and the end of his tenure with the London Philharmonic, he recently “seemed hardier than he had when visited in November in London, though still a bit fragile — a description that no one would have associated with this imposing figure a decade ago — and with a marked tremor in his hands. ‘I’m fine again,’ he said, ‘in the middle of my life again.'”
Classical Music Buyers Migrate To Downloads
Major orchestras, with or without major labels — sometimes without any label — are releasing their music as downloads, and audiences are buying. “Mark Berry, a spokesman for the budget label Naxos, said that digital distribution accounted for nearly 20 percent of that company’s revenue in 2006, up from about 8 percent the year before.”
Dance Theater Workshop Exec Director To Resign
“Dance Theater Workshop’s executive director, Marion Koltun Dienstag, is resigning next month, the organization said yesterday. … Her departure follows the resignation of the artistic director Cathy Edwards, a pioneering force in contemporary dance, who was replaced last year by Carla Peterson.” (third item)
Could NY Phil Tailor A Post For Barenboim?
Daniel Barenboim doesn’t want to be a fundraiser. That would seem to mean he can’t become Lorin Maazel’s successor at the New York Philharmonic — and, indeed, Barenboim has said he’s not interested. But what if the job were reconfigured to be entirely about music-making, not money?
Creative Activity In LA, Yes. Artistic, Not So Much.
Southern California’s “creative economy accounted for about 1 million in direct and indirect jobs, generating $140 billion in sales in Los Angeles and Orange counties,” says a new study, commissioned “in an effort to highlight the importance of arts education in schools, and to spur government officials to provide business incentives for arts industry employers.” Nonetheless, the arts “represented just 5.8% of creative activity in the region.”
Charo? Your Second Act Is Calling
“Madison Avenue is taking a cue from the adage that history repeats itself first as tragedy and then as farce. In a trend perhaps also inspired by the popular 1980 movie ‘Airplane!,’ agencies are hiring venerable actors, once known for serious straight roles, to display cleverly self-mocking sides of their personalities in campaigns aimed at younger as well as older consumers.”
Unsafe On NYC Streets: The Art
“Someone out there has a problem with art. … The evidence is the bright green and purple splashes of paint that began appearing on walls in Brooklyn and Manhattan more than a month ago. The carefully aimed blobs obscured or disfigured dozens of pieces of street art created by people who may not be household names, but who have achieved the esteem of peers and some recognition from the mainstream art world.”
Charles Isherwood Was Bored. Why? Discuss.
The New York Times’ Charles Isherwood proclaimed his boredom with Tom Stoppard’s “Coast of Utopia” trilogy in a Sunday essay published mere days into previews of Part 3. With the play having opened, Michael Feingold asks, “What causes Charles’s boredom? Having now seen Salvage, The Coast of Utopia’s closing chapter, and having been less actively bored than Charles, but less enthralled than many others, I think I can offer some tentative explanations.”