This year’s Berlin Biennale has apparently outgrown any single venue, and organizers are using the city itself as the staging area for the 8-year-old event. “Visitors were not simply making their way to and from a museum or some smartly retrofitted warehouse, the usual location for a big contemporary art survey. They were waiting in the cold spring air to enter private apartments, an office, a ballroom, a shuttered school, a former horse stable, the church, the cemetery and the white-walled galleries of the Berlin Biennial’s organizer, the KW Institute for Contemporary Art.”
Tag: 04.11.06
Oregon Symphony Prez To Head Florida Opera Company
For the second time in three years, the Oregon Symphony is losing its president to another ensemble. William A. Ryberg, who is credited with reducing Oregon’s annual deficits and increasing donated income during his short time in Portland, will take over as head of Florida’s Palm Beach Opera this fall. It was three seasons ago that then-Oregon Symphony president Tony Woodcock resigned to accept the same position with the Minnesota Orchestra.
Big Week For KC PAC
Kansas City’s long-planned (and long-delayed) $326 million performing arts center faces a major turning point this week, when the center’s board will have to decide whether to break ground this year, despite having less money in the bank than they would like. Kevin Collision says that successful cities are those that recognize and leverage their civic assets, and that the center could be the centerpiece of a rebirth for Kansas City’s urban core.
What Do You Do When The Ride Ends?
We tend to think of rock stars as having it made, rolling in dough, and assured of lifelong comfort and wealth. But the truth is that popular music is a fickle business, and even artists with long-standing track records can quickly fall out of favor. Chart-topping artists go broke every day, and why? Well, just try getting a 22-year-old phenom with a $10 million record deal interested in long-term financial planning.
Another UK Theatre Chooses A Woman To Lead
“The Birmingham Rep Theatre has appointed a female artistic director for the first time in its 93-year history. Rachel Kavanaugh, an associate director at the venue, will replace Jonathan Church, who left Birmingham this month to run the Chichester Festival Theatre. Kavanaugh’s appointment is a significant addition to the small but rapidly growing list of UK theatres steered by women.”
Psycho Inspiration’s Farm Banned From eBay
“Land that was once home to a murderer whose story inspired the movie Psycho was pulled from an online auction” after eBay officials decided that it violated the site’s policy banning “murder memorabilia.” The land, which was purchased at auction in 1958 after being seized by the state of Wisconsin, remains up for sale.
Britain’s Forgotten Innovator
“He ushered in contemporary drama, drew up the blueprint for a national UK company, and wrote gripping, complex plays, yet Harley Granville-Barker is little known today… Granville-Barker demanded that the text must come first, and that the director, designer and actors must serve it with clarity, lucidity, realism and grace. He established the premise of modern theatre design by showing that scenery had to be expressive and avoid being decorative or literal.”
Getting Inside Kandinsky’s Head
A new exhibition of work by the Russian abstractionist Wassily Kandinsky will include a collection of letters and poems written by the painter, none of which have ever before been published in English. Curators say that the written materials will “shine a light on the painter’s path to abstraction.”
Whatever Happened To Letting The Music Speak For Itself?
Charlotte Higgins has had about enough of the hyperbole and exaggeration being employed by London’s opera companies in an effort to sell tickets. “It’s a sad sign of an artform that’s on its uppers when you have to resort to desperate measures to attract the crowds… [and] often enough promoters don’t even need to make absurd claims for shows, since they tend to have carefully filleted press quotes to do it for them.”
Classical Brit Noms Announced
“Singer Bryn Terfel and composer Karl Jenkins have both been nominated for two Classical Brit Awards alongside Scottish teenager Nicola Benedetti… US soprano Renee Fleming and German counter-tenor Andreas Scholl are nominated alongside bass-baritone Terfel [for singer of the year.]” The Classical Brits are a major event in the UK, with listeners to the country’s popular ClassicFM service picking the winners.