Scottish Opera is planning to lay off 80 staff members in a desperate effort to avoid fiscal collapse, according to a union representing Scottish actors. The crisis managemant plan the union claims to have seen would cut across the entire organization, with dozens of musicians, crew members, and administrators losing their jobs, and “the entire 34-strong chorus [would be made] redundant.” Scottish Opera has already taken a £4 million advance on next year’s £7.5 million grant from the Scottish Arts Council, and general consensus has been that the company is severely underfunded. The company isn’t commenting on the layoff report.
Tag: 04.11.04
Arts Make A Comeback In The Heartland
The post-9/11 focus on national security and the weakened U.S. economy has famously cost arts groups millions of dollars in local, state, and federal funding over the last few years, but in some cities, the arts are starting to rise again. In Indianapolis, where funding cuts hit hard, the city’s Arts Council will see its budget rise this year, despite flat levels of government funding. Contributions from foundations and the private sector are up, and there is reason to believe that local officials are beginning to buy into the notion that money pumped into the arts is returned to the local economy in measurable ways.
Whither The American Sound?
Nationalism can be a dangerous thing, but a love of country and all that it stands for is the only thing that can lead to the development of a serious “national sound” among composers, says Robert Jones. Individuals like Copland and Bernstein aside, America has never really had its own tradition of classical music, and even works identified as distinctly “American” are often written by European composers like Dvorak. “America always seemed nervous about nationalism in music,” and Jones says that will have to change if anyone expects the U.S. to develop a compositional tradition as easily recognized as those of countries like France, Finland, and the Czech Republic.
Prado Gets New Autonomy
Madrid’s Prado Museum is getting more independence and flexibility in the management of its affairs. “These Spanish moves follow similar initatives in France designed to give greater autonomy to State museums: since January the Louvre has kept all revenues from ticket sales—previously 45% went to the State—and it is now entirely responsible for its exhibition policies and budgets. Previously, both of these had been managed by the government.”
Doing The Homework To Listen
Should the music critic look at a score or listen to a recording before attending a performance of a new work? Tim Mangan says yes: “Virtually any piece of serious classical music that a listener is not familiar with is ‘just an overwhelming event’ the first time he hears it. There’s so much going on that our ears can’t comprehend it in one gulp. And who knows whether, that first time we hear a piece, be it Brahms’ Third Symphony or Adams’ ‘Transmigration,’ it’s a good performance or bad?”
Considering Jack Valenti
Motion Picatura Association of America president Jack Valenti — the “5-foot, 7-inch titan who invented movie ratings, reigned as Washington’s highest-paid lobbyist and earned the unlikely nickname Boom-Boom from Robin Williams on one Oscar telecast — has finally announced his decision to step down from the job he has held for 38 years. ‘I think there won’t ever be another like him because one of the reasons why he is so credible in his advocacy for the entertainment industry is because he is so personally theatrical’.”
Depicting Scotland Through Some Miserable Books
The books chosen for Scotland’s premiere tourist attraction are a scandal. “As a literary representation of Scotland, it is woeful, made worse by the far more imaginative range of books offered in the children’s section. On the evidence of Historic Scotland’s collection, Scots spend most of their time drinking and eating.”
A Body Story…One Word At A Time
Shelley Jackson is writing a story by tattooing one word at a time on a person. The story is a “sequence of words tattooed on the bodies of some 2,093 volunteers, several of whom are reported to have teamed up to form whole sentences. Jackson’s ‘story’, by the way, is called Skin. Who said the avant-garde was dead? At 2,093 words, her ‘story’ might possibly persuade the subeditors among us to institute a search for cuts. It certainly does invite us to ask another basic question, viz: how short can a story be, and still be considered a story?”
Daniel Barenboim On Why He’s Leaving The Chicago Symphony:
“It’s impossible for me in America. It’s very difficult to be a musician in America because the system has become one where people expect you to do all sorts of other things that take a tremendous amount of time. When they talked to me about renewing my contract, they said `We would like more time from you not necessarily to conduct, but to do community activities.’ They basically expect you to go and spend half your time explaining to people why it is important to have culture, to have music. Here in Berlin when you fight, you fight in order to have enough for projects you want to do.”
Beethoven’s Ninth In 24 Hours
There are many recorded versions of Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony. But a radical new interpretation by the Norwegian conceptual artist Leif Inge, which he calls “9 Beet Stretch,” “digitally elongates a recording of the symphony to make it last 24 hours. The piece slows symphonic time so that movement is barely perceptible. What you hear in normal time as a happy Viennese melody lasting 5 or 10 seconds becomes minutes of slowly cascading overtones; a drumroll becomes a nightmarish avalanche. Yet the symphony remains somehow recognizable in spirit if not in form, its frozen strings fraught with tense, frowning Beethoven-ness.”