With the media gasping in awe every time a Stradivarius or Guarneri del Gesu sells at auction for some ridiculously inflated price, it can be easy to forget that there are modern luthiers crafting string instruments today that sound every bit as good as the old Italian masters. They may not be household names, but to musicians who could never hope to afford a Strad, they are an essential part of the music world.
Author: sbergman
Does Opera Ever Really “Just Get On With” Anything?
Robert Everett-Green was looking forward to John Adams’s operatic take on the Manhattan Project, Doctor Atomic. But he came away from the experience confused. “Why, I wondered (as [Tom] Wolfe did a decade ago about American fiction), is there so much free-floating introspection and soul-searching in this thing? With such a big story at hand – the first successful atomic detonation and the start of the nuclear age – why not just get on with telling it?”
Another Orchestra In Trouble?
Two years ago, Ontario’s Kitchener-Waterloo Symphony was on the verge of bankruptcy when public and private entities stepped in to put it on the path to recovery. Now, things are better for the ensemble fiscally, but “it is impossible to look at the symphony’s dwindling audiences and decreased ticket sales over the past year and not come away with serious questions about its future.”
Rosella Hightower, 88
“Rosella Hightower, an Oklahoma-born ballerina who became a leading figure in the European dance world and founded a major ballet school in France, has died. She was 88… Hightower, of Choctaw descent, was one of five American Indian ballerinas from Oklahoma who have received special honors in the state.”
de Waart Takes Santa Fe Off His Schedule
Conductor Edo de Waart is stepping down from the directorship of Santa Fe Opera after only two seasons, citing health problems stemming from the city’s extreme altitude, and a desire to see more of his family, who are based in Wisconsin. De Waart takes over the Milwaukee Symphony next season, and joins the St. Paul Chamber Orchestra as an “artistic partner” in 2010.
Changes In Minnesota
“Kim Motes has resigned as executive director of the Minnesota Shubert Center after seven years. Motes, who became personally identified with the effort, will become the first full-time managing director of Theater Latté Da, the fastest-growing midsized theater company in the Twin Cities.”
Fall Auctions Off To A Worrying Start
“On Day 2 of the fall auction season, a Russian masterpiece expected to sell for up to $3 million did not find a buyer yesterday, further underscoring the impact of the global financial crisis on the art market… Many other works sold at or below their presale estimates; others did not sell at all.”
The Value Of Midwestern Humor
American TV shows seem always to be based in either New York, Chicago, or LA, and they tend to be full of implications that only an idiot or a redneck would live anywhere else. But in Canada, the top-rated comedies of the moment all seem to take place on the wide-open prairie. “When things are not pushed and rushed as they can be in the city, just as a lifestyle, funnier stuff can percolate.”
Thinking Between Words And Pictures
Celebrated cartoonist Art Spiegelman has a new book out, “and what Spiegelman the cartoonist wants to show us — in this installment of a lifelong self-examination on the page — is what it’s like ‘to think between words and pictures, and have the feelings come out someplace between the two.'”
US Election As The Ultimate TV Event
“The election wasn’t just a historic milestone, it turned out to be a television event as thrilling and uncharted as the first lunar landing: For many long, nerve-racking hours, attention was focused on the clock and a tangle of numbers and technological details, then suddenly, and almost shockingly, a feat long awaited, but never fully expected, came to be.”