Musicians of the Houston Symphony are planning a one-day strike Saturday, canceling a performance with guest soloist Midori. “The musicians said they scheduled the strike for Saturday because it’s the day management intends to impose a 14 percent salary cut, raise health-insurance premiums and begin reducing the orchestra by five players through attrition.”
Tag: 01.29.03
Comparing Rubens’ Models
For the first time in a century, in London’s National Gallery Rubens’ “Massacre of the Innocents” will be on a wall beside another Rubens, ‘Samson and Delilah”, dated by scholars as being from the same time, 1609-1610. “The juxtaposition enables visitors to play a ‘spot the same models’ game.” Rubens saved money by reusing models from one painting for the other.
An Encyclopedia Where Readers Are Editors
“Last week, the English-language version of Wikipedia, a free multilingual encyclopedia created entirely by volunteers on the Internet, published its 100,000th article. More than 37,000 articles populate the non-English editions. Unlike traditional encyclopedias, which are written and edited by professionals, Wikipedia is the result of work by thousands of volunteers. Anyone can contribute an article – or edit an existing one – at any time.”
Is Salvatore Licitra The Next Big Thing?
Last year Salvatore Licitra was hailed as the world’s next great tenor when he substituted for Pavarotti at the Metropolitan Opera. Was it all just hype? No, writes Charles Michener – he’s the real thing. “Listening to Mr. Licitra, I thought of something that one of Renée Fleming’s teachers, Arleen Auger, said to the soprano when she was just starting out: ‘Imagine the different registers of your voice as a series of hotel floors, each with its own character.’ Mr. Licitra navigated the ascent to each floor with seamless ease, finding new colors in each room and demonstrating the peculiarly Italian gift of expansiveness that gives a sense of vistas opening up.
Broadway Feeling The Chill
Last week’s grosses for several high-profile Broadway shows weren’t just disappointing, they were abysmal. The extended cold snap blanketing the Northeast isn’t helping what was already shaping up as a dismal season on the Great White Way, and buzz around the industry now has several big-money productions ready to fold in the coming weeks and months.
The People’s Choice
California-born conductor Kent Nagano is rumored to be the choice of the Montreal Symphony Orchestra to be its next music director, and, conveniently enough, Nagano is in town to conduct the MSO this week. And while the orchestra may have a long way to go to rebuild its damaged relationship with its audiences following the stormy departure of Charles Dutoit last year, early indications are that Nagano is an overwhelming favorite with public and press alike.
Interdisciplinary Inspiration
Canada’s National Research Council, a decidedly scientific institution, has appointed two artists-in-residence, in what is being billed as a serious experiment in the connection between creativity and cold logic. “Partly inspired by the now disbanded effort by the Xerox Corporation to incorporate artists into its California research laboratory, the project aims to invigorate two sides of what is frequently seen as opposing halves of the human brain. The linking notion is that inspiration doesn’t know whether it is going to express itself through science or art.”
Bad Trade-Off In Detroit
For years, the Detroit Symphony Orchestra has produced large-scale choral works with the assistance of a polished adult choir based in nearby Ann Arbor, Michigan. This year, however, that choir is absent from the DSO’s schedule, and, in an apparent cost-cutting move, the orchestra is putting on performances of Mozart’s Requiem with a 60-voice student chorus from a state university. The result, says critic Lawrence Johnson, is embarrassingly bad, and an insult to the DSO’s audiences, which pay good money to hear professional-caliber performances.
Perlman To Go Under The Knife
Acclaimed violinist and part-time conductor Itzhak Perlman will be undergoing rotator cuff surgery at a New York hospital in mid-February. Perlman sustained a torn rotator cuff as a result of years of wear and tear from playing the violin, an injury familiar to many musicians. The procedure is a routine one, but the popular soloist will be out of action for at least three months.
Kickin’ ‘Em When They’re Down
Calgary’s city council is not doing much to dispel the popular notion that the city is an uncultured cowboy town. Less than a week after trying to renege on a $250,000 contribution to the bankrupt Calgary Philharmonic Orchestra because of a technicality, aldermen opposed to the bailout are pushing a plan that would force the CPO to repay the entire amount to the city if the ensemble eventually makes it back out of bankruptcy. One alderman called the proposal “a win-win-win situation.” Orchestra officials presumably call it something else.