This month, the Cleveland Orchestra will head to Miami for a two-week residency that the ensemble will repeat every season for the next decade. While in Florida, the musicians will work with young musicians at the New World Symphony and the University of Miami and work to build lasting ties with the city itself (which has had no professional orchestra of its own since the Florida Philharmonic was shut down by its board several years ago,) all while performing a full schedule of concerts.
Author: sbergman
Progress In Rochester
It was a good year for upstate New York’s Rochester Philharmonic, where attendance for the 2005-06 season rose 6.5% and the orchestra ended the year with an $18,000 surplus on a $9 million budget. The ensemble has also committed to a strategic plan which calls for raising the salaries of its musicians to stay competitive with other orchestras its size.
Little Mosque Wows ‘Em On The Prairie
The highly touted but potentially controversial new Canadian sitcom, Little Mosque on the Prairie, finally debuted this week on CBC television, and it pulled in a whopping 2 million viewers (the ratings equivalent of 20 million in the U.S.,) beating out even a new episode of a popular U.S.-produced drama on a rival network. Little Mosque has been touted as a major step forward for Muslim visibility, but no one knew whether Canadian viewers would embrace it.
Black Ink Becoming A Habit In San Jose
Symphony Silicon Valley, which was created out of the ashes of the defunct San Jose Symphony in 2002, has balanced its books for the second year in a row. “The symphony showed a small decline in contributions, partially due to the bankruptcy of Calpine, previously its largest corporate sponsor. But the combination of low overhead and a marked increase in ticket sales had the effect of stabilizing finances. The orchestra’s endowment also showed modest growth.”
Those 2% Raises Will Cripple You Every Time
The Cincinnati Symphony is projecting a $2 million-plus deficit for the current fiscal year. “The short-term culprit for the deficit is a reduced contribution from the orchestra’s $73.1 million endowment… Two years ago, the CSO raised ticket prices but saw a bigger drop in its subscription sales than it anticipated, Reynolds said. And it negotiated a three-year musicians’ contract that froze salaries the first two years. But wages are scheduled to increase 2.4 percent this year.”
Directors’ Guild Nominees Announced
“Little Miss Sunshine, an offbeat comedy about an unlikely young beauty queen, emerged as a serious Oscar contender Tuesday as its first-time filmmakers were nominated for the top award of the Directors Guild of America. Iconic director Martin Scorsese also clinched his seventh DGA nomination… while Bill Condon earned a nod for his lavish musical Dreamgirls.”
Salary Demands Putting A Strain On Moon
When Kevin Spacey brings his production of A Moon for the Misbegotten from London’s Old Vic to Broadway this spring, it could quickly become the hottest show in town. And it had better, because Spacey is apparently demanding a salary of $25,000 a week plus a hefty chunk of the box office take for his services, which is causing some nervous investors to wonder whether, on a limited 10-week run, they have any chance of seeing any profit.
TV’s Bizarre Notion Of Decency
The basic cable network A&E paid $195 million for the rights to show old episodes of HBO’s acclaimed mob drama, The Sopranos. But before the episodes could be shown, of course, A&E had to edit out much of the foul language that peppers the show’s dialogue. But did they actually have to? The whole process “reiterates the culture’s lingering hypocrisies (it’s OK to show assassinations, but the F-word is verboten and strippers must be in bikinis.)”
ACTRA Strike Overshadows Genies
The nominations are out for this year’s Genie Awards, Canada’s answer to the Oscars. But an ongoing actors’ strike is casting a considerable pall over the proceedings.”It is ironic. This is all happening after a year in which box-office successes were as much a part of the story as the usual critical acclaim.”
A Better Year Than Anyone Expected
2006 was supposed to be a rough year for Denver’s main performing arts center. But the center bucked expectations, posting significant attendance gains and an increase in subscriptions. Still, “the fiscal year ending June 30 also included 18 layoffs, $1.4 million in administrative cuts and deferrals to badly needed facility improvements. So wary company officials were talking Tuesday more in terms of stabilization than full recovery.”