It was nearly a year ago that the musicians of the Montreal Symphony Orchestra went to their union chief, Emile Subirana, and asked him to take action against music director Charles Dutoit, who was attempting to remove two tenured musicians from the ensemble. Subirana subsequently wrote an open letter which referred to Dutoit as a ‘tyrant,’ leading directly to the conductor’s abrupt resignation from the orchestra he had led for nearly a quarter century. Months of public and private finger-pointing and bitter argument followed, and this week, the members of the Quebec Musicians Guild voted overwhelmingly to replace Subirana with a reformer who promised a more responsive and responsible union.
Tag: 03.03.03
In NJ: Arts Funding As Your Own Personal Slush Fund
How did New Jersey (whose governor is proposing to cut state arts funding completely) distribute a $3 million supplemental fund for the arts this year? The state’s Secretary of State – with “bare-bones application forms and no written evaluation process” – unilaterally decided how it would be spent. Regena Thomas “conceded the applications were not measured against one another or ranked in any formal way. Rather, the winners – 33 out of 195 applicants – were chosen based on input from legislators and her own personal interests. All but $217,000 of the $3 million announced in January went to organizations located in Democratic districts.” A month after the grants were awarded, Governor McGreevey “called for the elimination of all cultural funding and the dismantling of the agencies that distribute that money.”
Bay Area Arts Groups Downsizing
Bay Area arts groups are scaling back and cutting budgets and programs as they struggle to balance their budgets. “Call it the year of ‘rightsizing’ for arts groups, as many realize funding won’t rebound any time soon and they must scale back operating expenses in order to survive. “We’re pulling in tight. It’s as dark a chapter in the contemporary arts as I’ve lived in.”
Screen Actors Guild Issues Statement Against Blacklisting
The Screen Actors Guild has issued a strong statement warning against an industry blacklist of those who oppose war with Iraq. “While passionate disagreement is to be expected in such a debate, a disturbing trend has arisen in the dialogue. Some have recently suggested that well-known individuals who express ‘unacceptable’ views should be punished by losing their right to work. This shocking development suggests that the lessons of history have, for some, fallen on deaf ears. We deplore the idea that those in the public eye should suffer professionally for having the courage to give voice to their views. Even a hint of the blacklist must never again be tolerated in this nation.”
Will The Big Five Recording Companies Become The Big Three?
The recording industry is talking merger again. In this shrinking market, the savings that might be squeezed from a merger offer a lifeline. In the past, European regulators have been an obstacle, repeatedly blocking mergers among the big five record companies—Vivendi’s Universal Music, Sony Music, EMI, AOL Time Warner’s Warner Music, and Bertelsmann’s BMG—which between them control 70% of the global recorded-music market. In 2000, they blocked a merger of Warner and EMI by imposing heavy divestment conditions. They stopped EMI marrying BMG even before a formal proposal was tabled.” But with the industry’s current woes, the merger proposition might get a more sympathetic hearing.
Houston Symphony To Musicians: Take Pay Cut Or We’ll make You Take It
The Houston Symphony said Monday that “the organization is dealing with a ‘flat-out crisis’ in its finances and the 97 musicians need to accept an average 7.4 percent pay cut. The players have until Saturday to decide or risk having the society impose the cut, which it has authority to do under U.S. labor law. Musicians still would have the right to strike.”
Broadway-In-A-Can?
The consequences of a musicians strike on Broadway could be big. “There are about 325 musicans working in the 19 musicals running on Broadway, but overall the shows are responsible for most of the 6,000 people employed by the industry each season. The theatre scene is responsible for $4.4 billion (US) pouring into N.Y.’s economy.” So the shows are practicing using canned music in case musicians walk later this week. Reports are that “aasts of shows such as ‘Chicago’ and ‘Thoroughly Modern Millie’ had no trouble in performing to the canned music. Over at ‘La Boheme’, however, it was a different story, with the rehearsal coming to a disastrous halt. Whereas it’s one thing to perform a tap routine to pre-recorded sound, singing Puccini is obviously another matter.”
CBC Funding – Down? Up? Who Knows?
When the Canadian government announced this year’s budget for the CBC last week, it looked as though the national broadcaster was in line for a $50 million cut. Then Heritage minister Sheila Copps indicated that with supplemental funding, the CBC would be funded at an all-time high. Then a couple more budget figures came out, and clarifications failed to make things less cloudy. So will the CBC be getting more or less money? Unclear – even the CBC itself seems bewildered…
Keith Haring, The Musical
“Radiant Baby” the new musical about the life of artist Keith Haring, opens on Broadway. Nice try, but “the show never brings either Haring or his world into crisp focus, relying instead on a blurry shorthand of artist-bio clichés (the agony, the ecstasy, the egomania, the triumph of the creative spirit) and composite social archetypes. Haring’s insistently vital art is so spectacularly in evidence — thanks to the splendid projection designs of Batwin and Robin Productions — which only underscores the musical’s limitations.”
Can Menaker Rescue Random House?
Newly-hired Random House chief Daniel Menaker is “charged with preserving the glow of literary prestige around the imprint, which published William Faulkner, Robert Penn Warren, Truman Capote and a long shelf of 20th-century American classics. But to do it he also needs to revive its editors’ flagging morale while proving that he can work well reporting to Ms. Centrello and that he can keep important authors.” Is he really up for the job?