“Black and Latino musicians account for about 3 percent of the musicians in American orchestras nationwide but about 30 percent of the Chicago Sinfonietta. Most orchestras have practically all-white boards of directors and audiences, but about a third of the Sinfonietta’s board is non-white and about 40 percent of its audience is minority. Most orchestras rarely play music by minority composers, but the Sinfonietta integrates these works throughout its entire season.”
Tag: 01.23.05
Dallas Symphony: Looking For A Leader To Love
It’s been 13 months since Andrew Litton said he was stepping down as music director of the Dallas Symphony. Is the orchestra close to naming a new leader? “We look for someone who’s steeped in the European tradition and American music, who’s beautiful and a great fund-raiser and can cure cancer at the same time. Nobody can do all that.”
Living With The Writer
What’s it like to be the partner of a writer? A new book explores the handholding and psychological propping-up required. “What makes the arrangement work, or not work, and why? How does life at home contribute to the creative process? What is the cost of a masterpiece on a caring relationship? All this mollycoddling of someone who, after all, could just as easily be playing solitaire behind that closed door as writing, might sound excessive, but it’s by no means an exception.”
Rome’s Fabulous Maaxi Crippled By Money Issues
Maxxi is Rome’s new museum of 21st century art, and meant to be revolutionary in a city of art that hasn’t invested much in its architecture in the past century. “Maxxi is intended to put Rome on the map as a city that takes modern art seriously. Choosing Zaha Hadid, who last year won the Pritzker Prize, underlined the importance of the project.” Maxxi is “as revolutionary as anything that has emerged from her pen. It is not so much a building as some glass-and-steel worms slithering over each other.” But now the construction is being handicapped by money issues…
No Matter Grammar (If You Want To Write Well)
It’s long been a given that one of the keys to writing well is to drill good grammar. But a large new study refutes that idea. It was “the largest systematic review yet of research on this topic; and the conclusion the authors came to was that there was no evidence at all that the teaching of grammar had any beneficial effect on the quality of writing done by pupils.”
Road To Musical Success
What makes a good musical? There’s no set formula, as a look at musicals set to debut soon shows. “Every idea is improbable until it succeeds. People thought ‘Pygmalion,’ you couldn’t possibly turn that into a musical. ‘Cats’ when it opened in London was considered a big joke.”
Crisis Of Confidence – Why Peter Lewis Left The Guggenheim
What caused the final split between the Guggenheim’s Tom Krens and Peter Lewis that led to Lewis leaving the museum board? “In the months before his departure, Lewis had taken to asking: ‘If franchising all these international museums is such a good idea, then why isn’t Moma doing it? Why isn’t the Whitney doing it?’ The spin coming from the Guggenheim is that the outcome of the confrontation represents the triumph of culture, in the shape of Krens, a 6ft 5in former artist with a fondness for Harley-Davidsons, over commerce in the person of Lewis, chairman of a Cleveland insurance company. But the truth is that Lewis was becoming increasingly alarmed, not just about the financial position of a museum into which he had poured so much of his own money, but also its reputation.”
Houston Symphony Declares Video-Free Sundays
The Houston Symphony performs onstage with giant video screens. But the orchestra has announced “video-free sunday” performances. “All the pops people love (the system). Most of the classical people love it. A small minority don’t,”
Building A Better Piano?
Paolo Fazioli thinks he’s made a better piano. He “insists that he never wants to make more than 150 instruments annually (so far he hasn’t topped 100), because of the personal attention given each one. ‘The Steinway is a very good piano, but it is not the only way to make a piano, just as there is not only one way to make a car. There used to be many piano makers but after World War II, one piano came to dominate the market and I thought that was ridiculous. I wanted to make a piano in which there is an evenness through all the sections, with a very clean sound, a long sound. Not every pianist will prefer it, but they should have a choice’.”
How Old Man Won Hemingway A Nobel
The Nobel committe considered Ernest Hemingway for seven years before finally awarding him its literature prize. So what finally won him the honor? Hemingway’s 1952 novel “The Old Man and the Sea” convinced members of the Academy he had earned his place alongside other laureates for “his mastery of the art of narrative.”