“The musicians of the Wisconsin Chamber Orchestra agreed Friday to end a nearly seven-month strike, just before playing the fifth and final Masterworks performance of the 2008-09 season.” (That is, they were taking a break from the strike when they decided to end it.)
Tag: 04.27.09
Bookmakers Close Bets On Laureate; Duffy A Done Deal?
“Bookmakers have stopped taking bets on who will be the next poet laureate after a weekend during which there was widespread speculation that Carol Ann Duffy will be appointed to the role later this week. … If Duffy has been chosen, her appointment is certain to have been helped along by the DCMS’s decision – for the first time – to ask the public for suggestions as to who should follow Motion.”
Contemplating The Instant Book Machine
“Can we in future expect bookshops to consist of rows of ATM machines and little else, like a modern city-centre bank? Will booksellers be transformed into technicians, on hand to help with hitches in the machinery or user incompetence, like the sales assistants in any supermarket who hover by the self-service tills?”
NY’s Public Theater Contemplates A New Lobby
“The aim is to make the building more open and inviting, as well as accessible for the disabled, and to give it a greater street presence. On any given night some 1,000 people come through the Public’s lobby — a space designed to hold 250 — on their way to one of its five theaters. The redesign will expand the lobby to hold up to 690.”
Forecast: Book Sales To Drop In 2009
“Total book sales are projected to dip 0.5% in 2009, to $35.04 billion… Sales will be down or flat in all the trade segments, but will increase in the professional, higher education and standardized testing segments.”
1,300 German Authors Demand Government Rein In Google Book Search
The appeal came in the form of a letter — known as the ” Heidelberg Appeal” — sent last week to German President Horst Köhler, Chancellor Angela Merkel and the heads of Germany’s 16 federal states. It alleges that “intellectual property is being stolen from its producers to an unimagined degree and without criminalization through the illegal publication of works protected by German copyright law.”
NEA Honors Five For Opera
“The five 2009 honorees are composer John Adams; stage director Frank Corsaro; mezzo-soprano Marilyn Horne; stage director and former general manager of the San Francisco Opera Lotfi Mansouri; and conductor Julius Rudel.”
Furor: Pianist Protests American Military At Disney Hall Debut
“Poland’s Krystian Zimerman, widely regarded as one of the finest pianists in the world, created a furor Sunday night in his debut at Walt Disney Concert Hall when he announced this would be his last performance in America because of the nation’s military policies overseas.”
Our Current Model For Universities? We Need To Blow It Up
“If American higher education is to thrive in the 21st century, colleges and universities, like Wall Street and Detroit, must be rigorously regulated and completely restructured. The long process to make higher learning more agile, adaptive and imaginative can begin with six major steps.”
Bea Arthur, The Theatre, And The End Of An Era
“Television critics can pay appropriate homage to the place of these shows in small-screen history. But I can’t help thinking about the stage origins of those unerring instincts for comedy, the hours upon hours of performing in theaters large and small that taught Arthur better than any videotape what worked and what didn’t. Nor can I keep myself from mourning a death that in some respects marks the passing of an entertainment era.”