“Tensions continue to rise between the Shreveport Symphony Orchestra board and musicians as the musicians’ strike looms over the group’s 61st season.” The orchestra’s board insists that the strike is illegal, while the musicians say that the supposed “master agreement” under which the orchestra is operating was never agreed to by them.
Author: sbergman
Chicago Symphony To Expand Educational Mission
“The Chicago Symphony Orchestra has announced an ambitious music-education initiative that aims to involve the orchestra in the musical life of Chicagoans from the kindergarten level through young adulthood. Under its new Institute for Learning, Access and Training, the CSO has bundled 19 separate programs — three of them newly established –to reach more than 200,000 young people, regardless of whether they have a special interest in music.”
Lebrecht: Gergiev Should Do More For London
“It is… easy to forget that [Valery] Gergiev is supposed to be principal conductor of the London Symphony Orchestra. The LSO used to be London’s top draw. No longer… The orchestra’s brand is being damaged by attachment to Gergiev Global.”
Did The National Symphony Miss An Opportunity?
“Tonight, Iván Fischer officially begins his two-year stint as principal conductor of the National Symphony Orchestra,” and Anne Midgette wonders what could have been had Fischer and the NSO reached an agreement to make him the orchestra’s music director. Instead, the orchestra will spend the next two years awaiting the arrival of Chrstoph Eschenbach, who “will be 70 when he takes over.”
Iraq Regains Some Treasures
“Violence has fallen across Iraq in recent months and artifacts to the country’s National Museum are trickling back — about 6,000 have been returned of the 15,000 or so that went missing in the chaos that erupted following the U.S. invasion in 2003. But Iraqi authorities are taking no chances, and will not re-open the museum until security is assured.”
Rebirthing A Theater, Part XXXVI
It’s been ten years since Minneapolis’s decrepit Shubert Theatre was moved to a new location and slated for renovation as a major regional dance hub. But the project has repeatedly fallen short of funding targets and the renovation has never begun. Now, a new $1.5m challenge grant offers new hope, but the Shubert must raise an additional $6.5m to get the money.
Taymor’s Spider-Man Budget Could Hit $40m
The new Broadway production of Spider-Man, directed by Julie Taymor, is set to become the most expensive show in history, at $35m to $40m. “If – and it’s a big “if” where Julie The Lion Taymor is concerned – they do bring it in for $35 million, Spider-Man, with a weekly running cost of $1 million, will have to run about 8,000 years in a Broadway theater just to break even.”
Canada’s Leaders On The Arts, Line By Line
Canada’s federal election is coming up next week, and one of Toronto’s dailies is running a special series assessing each party on its commitment to arts and culture. Not surprisingly, the ruling Conservatives, who have slashed $45m from arts budgets over the last two years, come off looking none too good. The Liberals, meanwhile, talk a good game, but would they deliver on their promises?
Confronting Wall Street With Art
Everyone’s angry about the Wall Street collapse and bailout, but what can someone in the arts do about it, really? “A full-time artist based in New York, [Laura] Gilbert used a computer and her drawing skills to create the ‘The Zero Dollar,’ a slightly shrunken version of the greenback. Yesterday, she headed to Wall Street, hoping to find the masters of finance who have just body-slammed our economy and, as she put it, ‘confront them with my art.'”
Giving History Some Pop Flavor
She’s hardly a traditional historian, but author Sarah Vowell has connected with a wide variety of readers with her snarky, sweet books on American history. She “has never seen any reason why an interest in history should preclude an interest in popular culture… In a way, she makes you wonder about the rest of them, the historians who would never dream of making a pop-culture analogy.”