The sudden death of conductor Richard Hickox is causing Opera Australia, the organization he led, to reassess its overall position. “The company’s artistic leadership has not always rested with a music director. [Some have] recently advocated the appointment of an artistic director to work alongside a music director.”
Author: sbergman
Charleston City Gov’t Stepping In To Help Arts Groups
“The Charleston City Council voted Tuesday to contribute $50,000 from the city’s hospitality fee fund to partially match an expected $250,000 grant from a private foundation that would aid the cash-strapped Charleston Stage, Charleston Symphony Orchestra and Charleston Ballet Theatre.”
Why Are Pop Songs So Short?
“Most pop and rock songs are based on structural repetition of various units: verses, choruses and the like.” That very structure nearly precludes the possibility of songs that go on longer than a few minutes.”But it is when musical themes and motifs are used to bind the music together that we really start cooking up a rock symphony.”
Detroit Symphony In The Red, And It Could Get Worse
“Fighting Michigan’s slumping economy, the Detroit Symphony Orchestra ended 2008 with a shortfall of $512,000, a relatively modest deficit on a $31.5-million budget. But the financial storm clouds are more ominous than they might appear at first.”
Ottawa Arts Spending Could Be Halved
“Ottawa’s municipal arts funding could soon be cut in half as city councillors prepare to debate a staff proposal for much-needed budget cuts. Should it be approved, the new budget would see a 54-per-cent reduction in arts, culture and heritage dollars and would mark the second cultural blow to Ottawa in recent weeks. On Nov. 7, the federal government scrapped plans to build the Portrait Gallery of Canada a permanent home.”
You Break It, You Buy It
Christopher Knight says that the trustees who stood by and watched as LA’s Museum of Contemporary Art swayed towards the abyss should now be responsible for writing the checks that can bring it back from the brink. “Don’t you dare blame MOCA’s plight on a recent economic downturn beyond your control. The meltdown in the markets is not the cause of the crisis, only of your panic.”
Remembering A Critic’s Critic
Tributes are pouring in for Clive Barnes, the British-born New York critic who died yesterday after a quiet battle with cancer. “He knew his Shakespeare backward and forward, as well as his Sophocles, Ibsen, Chekhov and Congreve. He read the great novels, saw all of the great operas, loved classical music, was an expert on dance and knew one or two things about painting… At his best, Clive was a witty and vivid writer, never pompous and often downright impish.”
Crash? What Crash? Canada’s Doing Fine.
“Yesterday in a downtown Toronto hotel ballroom, Heffel Fine Art held a two-part auction… and by the end of the last session, it had hammered down almost 175 lots valued at almost $18-million. This was the third-biggest sale by dollar in Canadian art auction history and a refutation to those who had been expecting the market here to slide as precipitously as has been happening in London, New York and Hong Kong.”
National Book Awards Handed Out
“Annette Gordon-Reed won the National Book Award for nonfiction Wednesday night for The Hemingses of Monticello, her multigenerational portrait of a family once lost to American history… Peter Matthiessen won the fiction award for perhaps the most unusual of the evening’s nominated books, Shadow Country.”
American Culture Museum Back And Better Organized
“The National Museum of American History — home to a broad mix of historical and pop-culture treasures from the Star-Spangled Banner to Julia Child’s kitchen — reopens tomorrow after an $85 million overhaul… A vigorous rethinking of how to tell the American story and display a selection of its more than 3 million objects, as well as renovation of the physical structure, required the museum to close for two years.”