In case you hadn’t heard, 2006 is the 250th anniversary of Mozart’s birth, and classical music organizations the world over are falling all over themselves to pay tribute. So you might expect New York’s newly rejuvenated Mostly Mozart festival to be throwing the biggest party of them all, and you’d be right, but organizers are taking the unusual path of viewing Mozart through the lens of contemporary society. As part of its tribute, Mostly Mozart has commissioned four new works, “three of them ‘inspired’ by Mozart.” Throw in a Peter Sellars staging of a Mozart opera, a dance interpretation of the master’s piano works, and “a digital art installation tied to the Jupiter Symphony,” and it should be anything but a dull summer in New York.
Tag: 01.05.06
Canada’s National Arts Centre Hangs Onto Its Leader
Peter Herrndorf, who is credited with bringing the Ottawa-based National Arts Centre back to national prominence in Canada, has had his contract as NAC president extended by two years, his second such extension. In Herrndorf’s six years on the job, the NAC has not run a deficit, and has nicely balanced the Centre’s double mission – to serve both a local and national audience – even while continuing to live in and commute from Toronto, some 430km from the NAC.
New Art Center Planned In Boston
“In 1988, with just $1,800, volunteers founded the Zullo Gallery in [Medfield, Massachusetts, outside of Boston.] The nonprofit space has remained on a shoestring budget ever since. But nearly 18 years and over 75 exhibitions later, Zullo is ready to take its biggest step yet. Plans are underway to create the Zullo Gallery Center for the Arts. In the works are expanded hours, year-round art classes for adults and children, more live music, special events ranging from film screenings to artist demonstrations, and an in-gallery cafe that will spill out onto a rooftop deck.”
Seattle Art Museum Fires Guards
Two Seattle Art Museum guards were fired Wednesday for threatening to walk out, which the museum perceived as a security breach.
Postcard From A Soviet Life
“Until his downfall, Anatoly Sukhanov, at 56, was one of the officially privileged and powerful. He had a spacious apartment, a chauffeured limousine and two children with assured futures in diplomacy and journalism, respectively. In charge of Moscow’s principal art magazine, he has enforced the shining-face uplift of Socialist Realism, and dealt out turgidly reasoned warnings about the decadence of Western modernism and postmodernism.”
Met Opera Gets Record Gift
It’s $25 million. “The gift – not the more usual pledge, but money that is available now – is mostly unrestricted and will go immediately toward plugging any deficit this season, a figure that at the moment is expected to be several million dollars, Joseph Volpe, the Met’s general manager, said.”
Wigmore Hall Gets A New Lease
The lease on London’s Wigmore Hall has been renewed for 300 years. “The previous lease was to expire in 2012 and there were fears that rising rents could reduce the hall’s activities. Of the £3.1m cost of the lease, £500,000 has already been raised.”
BBC Bach A Hit
In the ten days before Christmas BBC Radio 3 broadcast the complete works of JS Bach. It was a hit. The BBC “website received a record number of hits in December, with 3.1m page impressions during the season itself and 2.4m in the runup to it. Precise listener figures will not surface, however, because Rajar, which measures radio audiences, does not monitor the period around Christmas.”
Whither TV?
It’s been fifty years since television came to Australia, and with the internet age in full swing, some are suggesting that the medium will likely have lost much of its allure (and its power over the public consciousness) fifty years from now. But as cultural forces go, none in recent memory can match TV for sheer reach across all swaths of public and private life. “It seems to survive despite its own vagaries and its speciousness on occasions… It’s a completely voracious medium, but it suits people that, one, don’t sleep and, two, are fairly quick with ideas.”