A group of fans and supporters of the beleagured Columbus Symphony are launching a web site designed to call attention to the CSO’s struggles and connect more music lovers to the orchestra. “Though the management’s call to cut both the symphony’s size and the length of its season has caused angry divisions between it and the musicians, the website’s founders plan to promote the orchestra without favoring one side over the other.”
Tag: 04.03.08
LA Losing Its Last Dance Critic
Laura Bleiberg, dance critic at the Orange County Register for more than 18 years, is leaving her position for a job in the nonprofit world. Her departure leaves the Los Angeles area without a single full-time dance critic.
Dance Evolving Slowly But Surely In China
“Money’s tight, crowds are small and everything has to get past the censor. Yet modern dance is catching on in China… Modern dance was banned in China until 1980, and it has only grown through the efforts of a few exceptional individuals, and the importing of western ideas.”
Depends On Your Definition Of “Enough,” Apparently
Laura Cumming says that the UK’s Culture Minister is off base complaining that there aren’t enough women in top arts jobs in Britain. “We’ve heard it all before – glass ceilings, obstacle races, no room for women at the top… Leaving aside these gross stereotypes, what about the actual truth of Hodge’s claims?”
MySpace To Join Online Music Market
“Networking site MySpace is to launch an online music service in partnership with three major music companies… Users of the new service will be able to listen to music and watch music videos free of charge, while paying a fee to download music.”
Is Vancouver Thinking Small Again?
A controversial sculpture depicting an upside-down cathedral, which has held a prominent place in a Vancouver park for the last 2-1/2 years, is to be dismantled after complaints from neighbors. The decision “has rekindled debate on the role of public art in a city that yearns for world-class status but often succumbs, in the eyes of critics, to small-town thinking.”
Tony Showdown Throws Spotlight On An Old Argument
“The coming showdown between [Broadway revivals of] Gypsy and South Pacific is going to rip open a long-simmering dispute between commercial producers and nonprofit theater companies. The commercial producers, who take big risks with their investors’ money, bitterly resent competing for Tonys against subsidized theaters. Some producers privately say they’d like to ban the nonprofits from the Tony Awards.”
France Moves To Prop Up Struggling Art Market
France’s culture minister “unveiled a plan yesterday that includes zero-interest loans for art buyers, more tax breaks for corporate art buyers, and measures to free up strict regulations on the auction business. While France’s museums pull in millions of art viewers, French auctioneers and gallery owners have long struggled to attract art buyers.”
The Mysterious Power Of Norma
“No glare is more searing in the operatic world than that which beats down on the opera Norma… The title character’s music is early 19th-century bel canto – great stuff – with vocal lines as intricately woven as lace. The soprano/mezzo-soprano duets can be especially thrilling. None of this, however, quite explains why the opera’s infrequent productions are greeted with such profound reverence and reality-defying expectation.”
A Poet Showcases His Art, Even If His Mind Won’t Go Along
Poet Reed Whittemore recently published an illuminating memoir, and has been conducting readings at bookstores to promote it. But Whittemore “is also 88 years old, with a memory that has betrayed him. Vascular dementia is the culprit, and it sometimes leaves him confused as well. Friends and family stand by to read in case he can’t.”