Category: today’s top story

Vadym Kholodenko, “who had wowed the audience Sunday with his last performance, Mozart’s Piano Concerto No. 21 in C Major, also won awards for best performance of a new work and best performance of chamber music.”

“The cold became so extreme — dropping into single digits — that she bought a used, professional-grade snowsuit on eBay; it made her look like an extra from ‘The Eiger Sanction,’ but it kept her from becoming so cold that she could no longer paint.”

“Foreclosure proceedings have been initiated against the Nashville Symphony Orchestra, and an auction of its landmark Schermerhorn Symphony Center has been scheduled for June 28. Formal notice of the foreclosure was issued by Bank of America, the lead lender on the $82.3 million still owed on the concert hall.”

“Business is obsessed with innovation, with change, with finding the Next Big Thing. Most of the books I listed above are about encouraging creative disruption in your organization, trying new business models to sell your products. Theatre? Not so much.”

“As the British economist John Kay has said, Venice would be a great deal better run if it were being managed by the Walt Disney Company; unfortunately, the Italian media failed to get the irony.”

“The Handel Festival in Halle has been cancelled due to severe flooding, with some areas of the city under seven metres of water. The festival has been held in the city – where Handel was born – since 1922. Of the composer’s 42 operas, 40 have been performed as part of the festival.

“The mural Slave Labour was taken from Wood Green in February. It later appeared at a Miami auction, but was withdrawn after protests. The graffiti art has been offered for sale in London by the Sincura Group. The minimum bid is £900,000″ ($1.38 million).

“David E. Talbert, who wrote and directed ‘Baggage Claim,’ a romance … compared the support system among black filmmakers to the time when black musicians and writers buoyed one another in the early 20th century.”

“Five actors have won an employment tribunal that ruled they should be paid the national minimum wage for a fringe theatre show, despite the engagement having been advertised as profit share.”

“It was 7 o’clock on a hot night in August, and Hassine Traore was nervous. Behind him were 10 donkeys, each strapped with two large rice bags filled with ancient manuscripts. The bags were covered in plastic to shield them from a light rain. Radical Islamists had entered Timbuktu four months earlier, and they had set about destroying everything they deemed a sin.”