“For 75 years, Community Concerts has brought the arts and such luminaries as Beverly Sills and Isaac Stern to small-town America… But now the whole enterprise is in jeopardy, with Community Concerts dismissing employees and leaving a trail of bounced checks, unpaid performers and dissatisfied presenters in its wake.” Fingers are pointing, and most of them are aiming squarely at the company’s owner and chief executive, Brenda Trawick.
Tag: 02.02.03
Bloomsbury? What Did They Ever Do For Us?
“Bloomsbury, the fragile but oddly resilient cargo of intellectuals, art theorists, novelists and wife-swappers who between them exerted such a sinewy grasp on early to mid-century English culture, represents perhaps the most desperate example yet of the reading public’s tendency to admire literary people for non-literary reasons, for personality and peculiarity rather than what exists on the page. Look at what Bloomsbury achieved, in terms of books written and ideas entertained, and with a few marked exceptions (Woolf’s The Common Reader, Strachey’s Queen Victoria) the trophy cabinet is conspicuously bare.”
Fogel To Become American Symphony Orchestra Leagure CEO
Henry Fogel will take over as CEO of the American Symphony Orchestra League when he retires as manager of the Chicago Symphony later this year. As manager of the Chicago orchestra since 1985, Fogel became one of the most influential arts administrators in the United States.
La Scala Renovation Passes One-Year, Picks Up More Protests
Restoration of the La Scala opera house has now been going on a year. The anniversary has been marked with court challenges, filed by preservationists arguing that “the new designs were ugly and the contracting for the work was flawed.” The city briefly opened the building to allay fears, and city officials defended the project against court challenges.
LA Opera – Pulling Into The Passing Lane
It’s been a rough year for the Los Angeles Opera. But the company has announced a bold next season, and seems to be moving into the passing lane. Mark Swed suggests the company is on the road to becoming a major force in American opera. “Five years ago, no operaphile would think to mention Los Angeles in the same breath as San Francisco and Chicago, American’s second and third opera cities, after New York. But compared with San Francisco Opera’s upcoming 81st season and Lyric Opera’s 49th season, our 17-year-old company looks to become not only their artistic equal next season, but perhaps even a leader.”
Did HG Wells Plagiarize From Toronto Woman?
Did HG Wells plagiarize his “The Outline of History,” published in 1920, from a 50-year-old Toronto woman named Florence Deeks? Deeks spent a good part of the the middle and later part of her life trying to prove that Wells had based his work on a manuscript she had sent to Macmillan publishers in 1914. A new book takes up her case in an attempt to win justice…
Philosophy Through Story?
A documentary on philosopher Jacques Derrida poses more questions than it answers. Can you learn about a philosopher’s ideas by telling his life story? “How much can be learned of the life of the mind from the life of a great mind? What can a narrative approach, whether in film or in writing, tell us about the seemingly timeless world of concepts and constructs? Derrida notes that he is constitutionally incapable of telling stories, and so he tells none.”
Missouri To Discontinue Arts Funding?
Missouri Gov. Bob Holden’s proposes to eliminate funding for the state arts council, which “distributed as much as $5 million in the flush year 2001 to organizations as varied as the St. Louis Symphony Orchestra to the family folk festival in St. Joseph, Mo. Holden proposes that the council pay for arts programs by dipping into the Missouri Cultural Trust, a state savings account that matches private donations with public money.”
Is Indie Film Dead?
A question from the frontlines at the Sundance Film Festival: “Is independent cinema dead in the United States – or, is it just playing possum?”
Starving Scotland’s Culture
There’s a cultural crisis in Scotland. Funding for culture is down, and there seems to be little commitment on the part of the government to make culture a priority. “The Executive responds by arguing that it needs to concentrate on health and education. The urge to fund anything cultural has been sapped by the overspend on the parliament building, heralding in an almost Covenanter-like distrust of frivolity.” Scottish arts are healthy now. But does the Scottish Executive plan to “starve Scotland back into the cultural night that preceded the Act of Union – and what an irony that would be.”