For most of his career, Thom Mayne has been known as the architect whose work nearly everyone admired, but with whom almost no one wanted to work, due to his fiery temper and insistence on having his way in all matters of creative and artistic decision-making. And yet, Mayne has risen in recent years to become one of architecture’s most in-demand names, and even more surprisingly, he appears to be the go-to guy when a building needs to be designed for that most inflexible and creativity-stifling of all bureaucratic institutions, the U.S. government.
Tag: 01.16.05
More Concerts Canceled
A third week of concerts has fallen to the St. Louis Symphony’s work stoppage. This time, the scheduled soloist and conductor was Itzhak Perlman, and the SLSO chose to cancel several days sooner than usual, due to the unusually large number of tickets sold, and the possibility of patrons coming great distances to see the famous fiddler.
A Phoenix Rises In Texas
The San Antonio Symphony was supposed to be dead and buried by now, the victim of endless deficits, questionable management, and meager community support. Instead, SAS officials are in a jubilant mood after meeting the requirements of a major challenge grant, and are preparing to launch a major PR initiative designed to increase ticket sales and make the orchestra more attractive to high-rolling donors.
MIA Looks To Replace A Local Legend
Evan Maurer’s impending departure from the Minneapolis Institute of Arts, the Twin Cities’ most visible mainstream museum finds itself at a crossroads. Maurer’s reaction to a city famous for its embrace of modern art was a “populism-with-panache approach to shows and collecting” for the formerly staid and decidedly unsexy MIA. “He led the nation in collecting American Indian artifacts as art, helped set up an important French-American museum collaboration, oversaw two expansions of the Minneapolis museum’s building and was, at his peak, a money-raising powerhouse.”
Israel, Palestine, And My Mother-in-Law
One of the surprise publishing successes of the year in Europe is a book comprising a stock of desperate, poignant, and occasionally bitter e-mails sent by a Palestinian architect to her friends and relatives, relating her experiences of life in the West Bank during the Palestinian intifada and subsequent Israeli crackdown. The star of the book is the author’s mother-in-law, who seems simultaneously to embody the stressese of in-laws the world over, and to symbolize the indomitable will of a people under siege.
O’Riley’s Radiohead: More Than A Tribute
By this time, it shouldn’t come as news to anyone who follows the classical music business that pianist Chris O’Riley has developed a fairly major side career as a keyboard interpreter of the works of the alt-rock band Radiohead. But to anyone who isn’t already a fan of the band, it can be difficult to put into words exactly what it is that O’Riley does with the preexisting material. “The songs are recognizable as Radiohead’s, but their materials are deconstructed, tweaked, expanded into new time frames, new structures, new expressive possibilities.”
Who Says Parks Close For The Winter?
Chicago’s Millenium Park made a big splash when it debuted in the heart of the Second City last summer. But winter has brought a whole new character to Chicago’s downtown gathering place, and “on Sunday afternoon, park organizers will add to the park’s dazzling array of attractions by kicking off a series of free concerts on the stage of the Frank Gehry-designed Pritzker Pavilion.”