The San Antonio Symphony has paid its back-owed payroll, but then failed to make payroll this week. “The symphony office has begun calling early subscribers to let them know the money they’ve paid for next season will be needed now.”
Tag: 04.02.03
Where Is Mark Morris Heading?
A series of Mark Morris performances leaves Robert Gottlieb wondering which direction the choreographer is headed. Morris “seems to have reached a difficult moment in his creative life. It’s clear now that he hopes to absorb everything in the universe, but his response to his latest interests is less full and resonating than his response in his early years to the work of Handel, Bach, Vivaldi, Purcell, Monteverdi. Their music, you feel, is where he really lives. Morris is now at the age Balanchine was when New York City Ballet came into existence, with Apollo, Serenade, Concerto Barocco, Symphony in C behind him and 35 years of masterpieces to go.” Morris “throws himself at new enthusiasms, digests them, and moves on. This season suggests, at least to me, that he doesn’t yet know what he’s moving on to. He’s as fecund as ever, and as fluent, but not as focused.”
Broadway Box Office Down
Broadway box office was down in the second week of the war (is there really a connection between how many tickets Broadway sells and the war on Iraq?). Anyway…”Total box-office receipts for the 27 shows on Broadway skidded to $12.5 million, down from nearly $12.9 million the previous week.”
Okay, They’re Back. Now Show Them You Love Them
In the wake of the Houston Symphony strike, a lot of bruised egos and hard feelings are going to be inevitable. But if Houstonians really want to live in a serious, cultured city, says the Chronicle’s editorial board, they need to step up their support of what is clearly a vital institution. “Increasing attendance and ticket sales will require a clever marketing campaign and enticing concert programs. More than that, it will require from Houstonians a new and lively appreciation of the symphony and the realization that no important city can be without one. “
That Shipping & Handling Charge Will Get You Every Time
“In the past 18 months, museums’ insurance rates have shot up as much as 50 percent, and in New York, where museums borrowing works from abroad have had to buy costly terrorism coverage, they’ve doubled. At the same time, the price of shipping art is rising, in part because of higher air freight costs and the increased demands of lenders reluctant to let their art travel at a time of global unrest… Those higher costs, coming at a time of budget cuts and drops in revenue, are causing some museums to scale back the number of big touring exhibitions they present and the shows they create with borrowed works.”
Gioia’s NEA: Looking For A New Image
Dana Gioia is the new head man at the National Endowment for the Arts. It’s been a fairly thankless job for the last decade or so, ever since the agency came under congressional fire for funding a few controversial artists in the early 1990s. Gioia admits that his toughest task may be to somehow craft a new image for the NEA, while also working to reestablish it as the preeminent funding institution in the American arts world, something it hasn’t been in quite some time. This objective is further complicated by the strange nature of current events: state governments nationwide are slashing their arts budgets and artists are coming under public fire for their opposition to the war in Iraq.
In Memoriam: Piecing Together The World Trade Center
“Though New Yorkers have publicly, sometimes acrimoniously, debated how to build memorials to 9/11, people in communities from Fawnskin, Calif., to Franklin, N.J., quietly have been getting to work. Across the nation, they have incorporated World Trade Center steel into more than 250 tributes to the dead. Girders carefully stacked like Lincoln Logs have become the centerpieces of municipal gardens. Church bell towers display an incongruous mix of battered metal and smooth stone. Civic reflecting pools shimmer with wavy images of cold, hard steel.”
Material Girl Decides To Stay Out of The War Debate
On the eve of its official debut, pop superstar Madonna has decided to recall her latest video, which is reportedly a vicious indictment of the U.S. invasion of Iraq. The video had been much talked about in light of the unfavorable publicity which has befallen other musicians who dared to question U.S. policy in recent days. But Madonna’s video is said to be much more overt than a simple statement against the war: in its closing moments, the singer “pulls the pin on a hand grenade and angrily tosses it into the crowd – where it is handily caught by a smug George W. Bush lookalike. The pseudo-Bush smiles and reveals the grenade to actually be a cigarette lighter, which he uses to light a big cigar.”
Toronto FilmFest’s New Home Unveiled
“The new, year-round home of the Toronto International Film Festival, scheduled to open by September 2006, will be a four to six-storey ‘podium’ at the base of a condominium tower that could be as high as 38 storeys. [But] details of the festival’s home and the tower it will anchor were sketchy at a well-attended media conference yesterday announcing the start of a $120-million capital/endowment campaign for the TIFF facility, currently being called Festival Centre.”
Courting Diversity in Dallas
There are so few African-Americans and Hispanics in the classical music world that almost no one is willing to even talk seriously about the problem, let alone make any real effort to change it. But in Dallas, the Young Strings program, founded by members of the Dallas Symphony Orchestra with the aim of providing mentoring and professional training to young minority musicians, is starting to pay dividends. Young Strings alumni are pursuing degrees at Juilliard, Oberlin, and other top conservatories, and the program is still going strong in Texas.