Category: today’s top story

“Louisville Orchestra Inc. will begin hiring musicians this month to replace those who have been enmeshed in contentious negotiations with the organization for nearly a year, orchestra CEO Robert Birman said Thursday.” On Tuesday, the orchestra’s board rejected the musicians’ proposal for binding arbitration.

“Federal agents in New York on Wednesday moved to seize a thousand-year-old Cambodian statue from Sotheby’s, alleging in a civil complaint that Sotheby’s had put the 10th-century figure of a mythological warrior up for auction despite knowing that it had been stolen from a temple.”

“The St. Paul Chamber Orchestra is raising the bar for lowering ticket prices through an innovative membership program. For $5 a month, members can get a ticket to each of the SPCO’s 100 concerts during the 2012-13 season.”

“Lourdes Lopez, a Cuban-born, Miami-raised former principal dancer at New York City Ballet who is currently director of the Morphoses Dance Company in New York, will succeed founding artistic director Edward Villella.”

“A teenage ballet dancer who feared he would never walk again after sustaining a serious neck injury in an alleged street attack is not only back on his feet but has resumed his training. Jack Widdowson, one of the youngest apprentices to be taken on by the Swiss company Bern:Ballett, spent a week in intensive care and six weeks in a spinal unit after the incident in Cardiff.”

Now it’s not just Beethoven’s famous nine symphonies – there’s a 10th! See, there was this folder in the Masonic Temple, and a transcribing piano … or something like that. Even the New York Phil’s Alan Gilbert can’t wait to schedule this one for performance.

[Remember, It’s April 1st]

“An Indiana Jones-style expedition has been launched in Germany to recover £500million worth of missing artworks looted by the Nazis in World War Two. Monets, Manets, Cézannes and masterpieces by other artists, along with sculptures, carpets and tapestries, are believed to be buried in an old silver mine near the Czech-German border, 90 minutes’ drive from the city of Dresden.”

“It is impossible to overstate the importance of Earl Scruggs to American music. A pioneering banjo player who helped create modern country music, his sound is instantly recognizable and as intrinsically wrapped in the tapestry of the genre as Johnny Cash’s baritone or Hank Williams’ heartbreak.”

“Admired for his intellectual range and feared for his imperious judgments, Mr. Kramer emerged as a critic in the early 1950s and joined The Times in 1965, a time when the tenets of high modernism were being questioned and increasingly attacked. He was a passionate defender of high art against the claims of popular culture and saw himself not simply as a critic offering informed opinion on this or that artist, but also as a warrior upholding the values that made civilized life worthwhile.”

The Kimmel says it can’t announce its upcoming season because of tough lease negotiations with its leading tenant. Says Orchestra president Allison Vulgamore, “We can either have a world-class orchestra and a regional performing arts center, or a regional orchestra and a national performing arts center. There isn’t enough money for both. And I didn’t come here to run a regional orchestra.” (Her board chairman begs to differ.)