Mobile (Alabama) Symphony conductor Scott Speck was watching CNN in March when the news ticker at the bottom of the screen flashed: “Beethoven oboe concerto premieres in the Netherlands.” “I said, ‘WHAT?'” Speck recalls. “What Beethoven concerto? What are they talking about? As far as I knew, there was none. And if there had been one, surely I would known. Even if there was one, what do they mean by ‘premiered’?” So he tracked down the recently-discovered piece, and scheduled it for the orchestra’s next concert…
Tag: 04.20.03
How To Show Appreciation (But It Doesn’t Seem Enough)
Jeanne Marie Laskas goes to the ballet and is wowed. “Do I sound wowed? No, I do not. In other arenas, when people are wowed, they shout: ‘Wow!’ Sometimes they stand up, whistle and make loud ‘Woo! Woo! Woo!’ sounds. But this is not appropriate behavior for a gloriously baroque performance hall. Instead, you are expected to sit here and watch a woman move her stunningly elastic body with a motion that is pure emotion, a bend and a twirl and a leap that has you close to tears, and you are supposed to wait. You are supposed to wait until she is done with this twirl or that twirl, and then, when an audience response is permitted, you may gently put your hands together with a respectful, though reticent, clap, clap, clap. This is bothering me. This is bothering me in a way I have never quite been bothered…”
A Free Market Solution To Looting?
Many of the ancient artifacts in today’s museums were removed from their places of origin before countries declared bans on the exports of cultural heritage. But those artifacts are protected in the museums. Is there a way for the free market to give collectors incentives to find and protect artifacts and shut down looting? “Archaeologists like taking the high moral ground against selling antiquities, but it doesn’t solve the problem of looting. I would like to use market solutions. Sell very common objects, like oil lamps or little pots, and use the money to pay for professional excavations.”
Charleston Symphony Is Latest Orchestra In Financial Trouble
The Charleston Symphony is the latest to be threatened with closing. “Though it is the largest performing arts organization in South Carolina, and though ticket sales are up this year, it is in dire economic straits. Its endowment is puny, it’s considering shortening its 38-week performance season, and its board is scrambling to come up with a rescue plan.”
Why Do We Fear Experts?
Just when did we become so distrustful of people who know things? “Unfortunately, this skepticism has metamorphosed over the decades into a determination that no one with special knowledge or experience is worth listening to. If Rembrandt were alive today, he’d be reviled by art students who don’t know how to prepare a canvas. Beethoven would be booed by experimental composers who couldn’t identify the key of C major on a bet, while Duke Ellington would be denigrated by rappers who couldn’t pick out a simple melody, much less aspire to the harmonic empyrean.”
NY Critics Insist On Seeing Sondheim Out-Of-Town
“The community of theater critics is turning itself inside out over whether to storm the barricades at Chicago’s Goodman Theatre in late June and buy our own tickets to review ‘Bounce.’ This is the first collaboration between Stephen Sondheim and Harold Prince since their brilliant partnership imploded with the failure of “Merrily We Roll Along” in 1981. Sondheim and Prince don’t want national press. They claim we can review the show when a later edition plays the Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C., in the fall. But this is a big deal. It is being offered as part of the Goodman’s regular nonprofit series, which should be open to national critics. It is not an out-of-town commercial tryout.”
San Francisco Area Arts Hurting For Money, Support
A bad economy is hurting Bay Area arts groups and artists. “The big four – the San Francisco Symphony, San Francisco Opera, San Francisco Ballet and American Conservatory Theater – are straining to cope with dwindling donations, volatile endowment funds, cuts in government grants and smaller, choosier audiences. ‘The arts have become a victim of the sour economy. Everybody’s ox is being gored. No one is exempt from the red ink’.”
Jenkins – A Check On State of West Coast Dance
“The Margaret Jenkins Company’s ‘Thirty Years of Dance’ may turn out to be a West Coast reality check on where American dance has been as well as where it may be going.”
Melder Of Dance Forms
“At 28, Akram Khan is the great new hope in the dance world. A third-generation British Asian, he brings vitality to cross-cultural expression, fusing Western contemporary dance with kathak, the Indian classical genre in which he trained from the age of seven. He is also renowned for building bridges between the disciplines.”
When Theory Gets You Shut Out Of Society’s Decisions
For much of the past 25 years, academic humanists have lived in a world of theory. But theory has had less and less impact on the direction of our culture, and some academics are wondering if a new direction is called for. So recently, an intellectual “town hall” was convened in Chicago to talk things over. “Has theory forsaken ‘sociopolitical engagement’ for a ‘therapeutic turn’ to ethics and the care of the psyche? Should humanists devote themselves to securing ‘some space for the aesthetic in the face of the overwhelming forces of mass culture and entertainment’? Have the Internet and biotechnology rendered both human nature and printed dissertations obsolete?”