Ominous signs are looming over the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra these days, with accumulated debt mounting (expected to reach a whopping $8 million by 2005), controversy in the front office, and dissension in the boardroom. “Seven top administrators and other staff members have resigned [in recent weeks], including the chief financial officer, an executive board member and a member of the fund-raising department.” And the BSO’s decision to appoint a marketing specialist with no orchestral management experience to be the organization’s new president is being met with skepticism in some quarters, particularly after a widely-reported comment about broadening the audience beyond “wealthy old white people” hit the papers.
Tag: 06.07.04
In Search Of Book Buzz
How do you generate buzz for your book among the crowd of 100,000 books that are produced each year? “At the meeting that ended Sunday in Chicago, the talk turned often to what it takes to snag media attention and, therefore, new readers in a market shaped by politics and the aftermath of the Sept. 11 attacks. In short, political books have been gold for more than a year, and more are on the way.”
Morris: Live Music Matters
“With dance companies often scrounging just to meet the electric bill or pay their staff, why opt for the expense and trouble of live music? To Mark Morris, the proof is in the performance. “That’s my own experience, dancing for other people. If the music is taped, your heart sinks when you’re doing the dance for the 150th time, and it doesn’t vary’.”
BookExpo: Publishing By The Numbers
How is the publishing industry doing? Take a look at the numbers: “During Expo, the Association of American Publishers announced that sales of consumer books were up 6.3 percent. Religious publishing rose a stunning 37 percent. E-books grew 45 percent, though, the Association noted, that was from a tiny beginning base. E-books are never returned, while mass-market books were returned at a rate of 41 percent of sales.”
Rashad Makes Tony History
“One year after Hollywood broke its colour barrier in the leading actress Oscar category, the Broadway theatre made its own history last night, giving three of four female acting Tony awards to black actresses in two plays set during the U.S. civil-rights movement.”
Are Record Stores About To Slip Into History?
A new report says that with the increasing popularity of music downloading and the availability of CDs in supermarkets, record stores in the UK are in danger of disappearing. “The pressure of new players competing for the record buyer’s pound could make music stores ‘irrelevant’, it stated.”
WTC Culture Groups To Be Named This Week?
“The field of arts organizations vying for space has also been narrowed to six from a group of 15 named in February, a source familiar with the decision told The Associated Press, speaking on condition of anonymity. They are the New York City Opera, the Joyce Theater, the Signature Theatre Company, the New York Hall of Science, the Freedom Center and the Drawing Center, the source said.”
Regretting The Pulitzer Changes
Josh Kosman doesn’t like the decision to open the Pulitzers to different genres of music. “In truth, the prize has now been thrown open to all musical comers — pop, classical, jazz, bluegrass, salsa, hip-hop, written and improvised, recorded and live and everything in between. Any musical utterance heard within the 50 states is now, in theory, eligible for a Pulitzer. Does that amount to inclusiveness, eclecticism, a postmodern abolition of restrictive conceptual categories, or any other warm and fuzzy gesture of goodwill? Not at all. It’s an attempt to be all things to all people, something that you and I know never works. The result will inevitably be to drive an already marginal accolade further down the path to insignificance.”
UK’s Most-Loved Contemporary Books
At the Hay Literary Festival, “the women-only Orange prize for fiction set out to discover the British public’s most cherished contemporary novels – and found that 58% were by men. But organisers said this margin was smaller than it would have been before the prize was founded to promote writing by women eight years ago.”
Gagosian’s New Digs
There’s been much hype about Larry Gagosian’s new gallery space in London. “The Gagosian Gallery proves to be a modest creation, housed in a former garage in Britannia Street, a rats’ alley smelling of diesel and urine, scuttling across the Metropolitan and Circle underground lines as they rattle between Farringdon and King’s Cross-St Pancras. Behind the gaunt facade, Larry Gagosian’s architects, Caruso St John, best known for their New Art Gallery, in Walsall, which opened in 2000, have opened up bright, cavernous, concrete-floored, top-lit white spaces. These are particularly refined white spaces; they have something of a religious air about them…”