“A stealthy proposal to privatize a popular public museum as a solution to San Francisco’s short-term budget shortfalls has raised the hackles of museum users, who are demanding a full public airing of the agreement. The Randall Museum, home to children’s art and science programs in the city since 1951, would have its operations turned over to the Randall Museum Friends, a private, nonprofit organization with about 20 members whose stated mission is to ‘support the Randall Museum by providing strategic private-sector leadership, raising funds, and advocating for the museum.'”
Tag: 04.21.04
What Happened To The Philadelphia Orchestra?
Norman Lebrecht checks in on Philadelphia and finds an historic orchestra in disrepair. Could it be music director Christophe Eschenbach? “While it only takes one conductor to make a great orchestra, one misjudged transfer is enough to secure relegation. Philadelphia, like many football teams at this time of year, finds itself facing a very long drop. The testimony of my CD shelves suggests that there is no return from orchestral oblivion.”
Getting Older? So What!
You hear it everywhere – we’re getting older, and society will be the worse for it. “Even as we reap the benefits of longevity and vitality, we are becoming more anxious about the social and economic effects of ageing upon society. Demographics has turned from a peripheral issue into a major source of concern. We are told we need to confront some pretty big questions. Can society cope with having so many more old people? Can we really afford our future? But just because the mood of social pessimism is so ubiquitous does not mean we should simply accept it.”
NJ Symphony Benefactor Flees Country On Tax Charges
“A philanthropist best known for selling millions of dollars worth of musical instruments at a discount to the New Jersey Symphony Orchestra has fled to Cuba to avoid tax fraud charges, authorities said Wednesday.”
Breaking Free of the Jazz Police
For the last couple of decades, the ultraconservatove jazz movement known to some as neoclassicism and to others as “The Cult of Wynton Marsalis” has had a profound influence on rising young musicians. But Marsalis’s influence seems to be slipping, as a new generation of jazzers raised on hip-hop and R&B comes of age. Some of the new breed feel that the neoclassicisists confuse history with tradition, and are eager to branch out into new realms of musical exploration.
Arts Programming Ranks Last With BBC Viewers
What programs do BBC viewers most value? “High quality news topped the list of ‘public service’ programming – 70 percent of respondents said it was important for society and to them personally. Then came sport, drama and, perhaps surprisingly, soaps. Viewers said they valued them because they dealt with current social and health issues in an engaging way. Right at the bottom came arts and religious programmes – fewer than 10 percent thought these were of particular value to society.”
The Top-Grossing Canadian Movie Of All Time? (You Won’t Believe It)
There’s talk of a remake of the 1980’s teen gross-out comedy “Porky’s. But that isn’t the news. The real news is that “Porky’s” is the Canadian movie box-office champ of all-time. “The hard things to remake are the ones that were good. But this one was terrible.”
The Uneven Martha Graham
Robert Gottlieb writes that one of the most interesting things about the rejuvenated Martha Graham Company is that it shows the unevenness of her work. “Since this reconstituted company emerged two years ago, after the resolution of the legal struggles that had bedeviled Graham loyalists for so long, emphasis has been placed on disinterring Graham relics from the 30’s. This has proved a mixed blessing. Although these pieces all have historical interest, without her animating presence they tend to remain curiosities—foreshadowings of the greatness to come rather than great in themselves.”
The $3.6 billion Traveler Holding Pen
Is there any structure more depressingly predictable than an airport? How much would a truly envigorating airline terminal be worth to travelers? Would it be worth, say, CAN$3.6 billion? The city of Toronto is hoping so, since that’s what its new Terminal 1 cost to build. Lisa Rochon is impressed, if not overwhelmed: “So laborious has become the experience of travel that we no longer expect to find in it moments of pleasure. But at the new Toronto terminal there are delights to be had… Many who have lost faith in the power of public art will find themselves happily restored at the new terminal.” And really, isn’t a bit of post-travel restoration worth a few billion?
Taking The Measure of a Prodigy
“Whatever Platonic fascinations they might hold, supremely gifted young musicians also live in a bruising real world of managers, agents, recording contracts, talented and carefully cultivated rivals, standard-bearing critics and a listening public fine-tuned by CDs, pirated downloads and the world-wide whir of Internet music sites and chat rooms.” In other words, do not envy the prodigy: all the talent in the world can’t spare him from the inevitable backlash of a world obsessed with the rapid rise and fall of celebrities. Case in point: the omnipresent Lang Lang…