The dearth of African-Americans in the classical music business is well-documented, and role models for young black musicians are few and far between. That makes the success of composer Adolphus Hailstork all the more impressive. Not only is Hailstork one of America’s preeminent academic composers, he has made his mark on the industry by basing many of his works on music with great significance to the African-American experience. “When conductors and performers see a well-crafted piece, they not only come back to me but to other black composers as well. When a piece works and I walk onstage in front of a predominantly white audience, I know I’ve changed their world in many ways.”
Tag: 02.20.03
Standing Up For The Little Guy
“Among Boston’s arts groups, the rich get richer and the poor get poorer. Now there’s a new effort to balance the scales. Local arts leaders hope a 40-member task force set to be announced today by the Boston Foundation will generate fresh momentum on a problem the city has failed for decades to address. The task force will work from a study to be released today by the foundation that shows that while big bucks continue to flow into a handful of the city’s largest cultural institutions, donations have been declining for more than 500 Boston-area arts organizations.”
Gregerson Wins Kingsley Tufts
Poet Linda Gregerson has taken home a $100,000 prize from the Kingsley Tufts Poetry Award for her collection “Waterborne.” The award is the largest of its kind in the US. Gregerson is a profesor at the University of Michigan, and the former poetry editor of The Atlantic Monthly.
Saving The Culture
A government agency is warning that Great Britain “faces a cultural crisis if the government does not set up tax breaks to prevent important art going overseas.” The government has been scrambling recently to prevent several important works of art from winding up in the hands of US museums and collectors. So far, the only thing preventing the art export is a set of temporary bans, but officials say that the only permanent solution is to provide financial inducements for the art to stay in the UK. The US already has such a system.
A Reprieve For Seattle ACT Theatre…
Seattle’s ACT Theatre gives itself a reprieve from oblivion. The theatre had said it needed to raise $1.5 million by this Friday to avoid closing. But “at a meeting yesterday afternoon, the 25-member board elected to pay ACT’s skeleton staff of nine employees and the company’s other essential expenses out of their own pockets for a month, while trying to raise the $1.5 million they say is needed to keep the theater from closing permanently.”
Venice’s New Logo – License It And Pay
The city of Venice has a new logo, a “rather severe-looking winged lion superimposed over a V. Winged lions, dating to Assyrian times, have been a symbol of Venice for hundreds of years.” But the city wants merchants to pay for the logo. “We don’t want to raise money just by selling T-shirts. Anyone who now uses Venice for private reasons to make private money, we’re asking them to add our logo and pay a fee. This way they will state that they are participating in a worldwide campaign to save Venice — and to preserve its heritage.”
Seattle’s ACT Theatre Breathing Its Final Gasps?
How do you sell 120,000 tickets and still run up a $500,000 deficit? Seattle’s A Contemporary Theatre did it last year, and last week said if it wasn’t able to raise $1.5 million toward an accumulated deficit of $1.7 million, it would have to close its doors by this Friday. So far, no white knight has come forward…
Big Ambitions For New Culture Mag
A new magazine on culture out of Los Angeles has attracted some high profile writers – among them Douglas Rushkoff, Kristine McKenna, Spike Jonze – despite not being able to pay high-profile fees. The magazine is called Arthur, and it’s distributed free with a print run of 40,000 “Arthur’s success in gathering talent comes in part from a promise that writers will be lightly edited, and that underground artists and controversial subjects will be championed. ‘I know all this stuff sounds pompous. But there is no money here. This is an activist magazine. I have a clear idea of what’s wrong with this culture and this world. This is the stuff I’m interested in, this is the work that’s gratifying to me’.”
Danielpour, Morrison Team Up For Opera
Poet Toni Morrison and composer Richard Danielpour have been commissioned to write a new opera by the Opera Company of Philadelphia, Detroit’s Michigan Opera Theater and the Cincinnati Opera. Working title for the piece is “Margaret Garner”, “the name of a pre-Civil War Kentucky slave. Forced to be the mistress of a plantation owner, Garner escaped with her children, but, when captured, attempted to murder them and herself rather than return to slavery.” The premiere will be February 2006.
“Brilliant” Art Collection To Be Split Up
The Potamkin collection of American art, “one of the best of its kind in private hands,” is being split up after the death of Vivian and Meyer “Pat” Potamkin’s collection. The collection includes an “estimated several hundred paintings, sculptures, and works on paper” and most will be sold at auction by the couple’s heirs. “The Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, which was widely expected to be the major recipient, gets just a small portion, but it is the choicest and most valuable – eight paintings, one pastel drawing and a sculpture, which are estimated to be worth from $18 million to $22 million.”