The City of London Sinfonia has tapped an executive with the St. Paul Chamber Orchestra to be its next CEO. Barry Kempton, a UK native, had been with the SPCO as a vice president since 1995, before which he worked for the Scottish Chamber Orchestra.
Tag: 04.16.07
Art Chicago Relaunches
Last year Chicago’s Merchandise Mart bought the Chicago Art Fair. Now the fair is being relaunched. “According to Chris Kennedy, the president of MMP, the Mart decided to rebuild Art Chicago as a public-private partnership similar to Art Basel. He said that since the best galleries won’t come to an art fair unless great collectors attend, the Mart has created a host committee of cultural leaders and a VIP programme to entice top buyers.”
How The Art Market Is Changing
“What is changing is the nature of the market. It is now global, and dealers and auction houses need to source inventory and service customers from all over the world, particularly the new rich economies such as Russia, China and India. This, as well as the soaring price of art, means that much larger investment is necessary: all the players need solid financial muscle to be able to buy inventory, compete in obtaining consignments and look after their artists.”
Pulitzer Board Bypassed Jury For Lindsay-Abaire
“David Lindsay-Abaire’s Rabbit Hole, which opened in February 2006 at Manhattan Theatre Club’s Biltmore Theatre on Broadway, has won the 2007 Pulitzer Prize for Drama. The Pulitzer jury had nominated three plays — Orpheus X by Rinde Eckert; Bulrusher by Eisa Davis; and Elliot, a Soldier’s Fugue by Quiara Alegria Hudes — however, the board decided to bypass the nominations and chose a play that hadn’t been nominated by the jury.”
New Prize For Women In Publishing
“This year’s shortlist is made up of Rebecca Carter, who is an editor at large at Random House, Susanna Lob, the head of marketing, reference and online publishing at Oxford University Press, and Annette Thomas, the managing director of Nature Publishing Group.”
Opera: A Bigger Role For Dance
“In the 18th and 19th centuries, composers included music for dance interludes in their scores, but the dances were not intended to do much more than add to the spectacle and possibly give the singers a chance to catch their breaths. Today that tradition of separate and unequal is changing, largely because of innovative directors like Peter Sellars, and choreographer-directors like Mark Morris and Trisha Brown.”
BBC Music Magazine Awards
“Perhaps the most interesting development is that all 18 winners were issued on independent labels, which tend to allow more artistic freedom than the majors, often because they are at least partly artist-funded.”
Ornette Coleman’s Pulitzer A First
“This is the first time in the history of the Pulitzer Prize for Music that the prize was awarded to a recording. Sound Grammar, a collection of live performances recorded in Germany in late 2005 which was released commercially on September 12, 2006 on Coleman’s own label, also named Sound Grammar, is the first recording of new material by Coleman in nearly a decade and his first live recording in 20 years.”
BBC Makes Its Archives Available For Free
The BBC plans to release a million hours of programming from its archives. It will be free to license-payers. “The radio and TV material, some of which has never been repeated, includes an interview with Martin Luther King filmed shortly before he was assassinated, and another with John Lennon and Yoko Ono in which the former Beatle talks candidly about the impact their relationship had on the band.”
John Tusa: UK Arts Policy Is Inept
The Barbican chief is fed up: “After more than a decade of direct involvement in the arts and the debate about them, there are many things of which I am sick to death. This is not just a spasm of impatience but represents my deep belief that if the attitudes behind the policies I describe did not exist, the arts would be better run, healthier, more effective, more varied and more enjoyable even than they are today. Does arts policymaking, in short, get in the way of creating the arts themselves?”