“Barbara Epstein was not only one of the founders of The New York Review and co-editor for forty-three years, she was a guiding spirit of the paper. She brought to bear on all the work of the Review a superb intelligence, an exquisite sense of language, and a strong moral and political concern to expose and remedy injustice.
Tag: 06.16.06
DC Shakespeare Theatre Building New Home
Washington DC’s Shakespeare Theatre Company is hoping to open a second home in October 2007. The new home will feature a repertory style of presentation twice a year. “Shakespeare Theatre officials said they are still raising money for the new complex, the price tag for which has increased from $77 million to $85 million.The company has $55 million and needs about $30 million more.”
Phone Company To Carry PBS
“Under the agreement with the Public Broadcasting Service and the Association of Public Television Stations, Verizon will carry up to three digital public television stations in a market, as well their multicast stations.”
The Great Garrison Gulf
More than three decades after A Prairie Home Companion first hit the air, host/writer/self-appointed Midwestern everyman Garrison Keillor has become one of the most beloved and reviled figures in American culture. “Keillor is the shock jock of wholesomeness… The mere sound of [his] voice—a breathy baritone that seems precision-engineered to narrate a documentary about glaciers—is enough to set off warfare between the generations.”
Barnes Neighbors Protest Plans To Move
residents of Merion, Pennsylvania, are organizing to try to block the Barnes Collection’s move to Philadelphia. The activists say that the barnes’ neighbors had proposed way to increase the number of visitors to the museum and generate more income. “We are here because the move is not a done deal. We refuse to except the theft and ruin of a treasure.”
Classical Music’s Future Online…
Whatb are the prospects for classical recordings on the internet? A recent panel at the American Symphony Orchestra League conference in Los Angeles discussed the opportunities and challenges…
John Updike At 74
“There is that sense of wonder when you get up in the morning and look in the mirror and realize this old guy with thinning hair and rumpled skin is you. It wasn’t so long ago, it seems to me, that I looked in the mirror and saw this smooth and quite freckled face.”
Contemplating A Baltimore Symphony Under Alsop
“Right now, if I were asked whether I’d rather hear Temirkanov or Alsop in Mozart, Beethoven, Brahms, Mahler, Sibelius, Shostakovich — in virtually any of the masterpieces in the standard repertory — I’d go for Temirkanov in a hummingbird’s heartbeat. But if I were asked who was more likely, over time, to bring in new audiences and board members, to win over Baltimoreans who may never have attended a classical concert, to help revitalize both the orchestra and the city in which it is rooted, Alsop might get the nod.”
Kimmel’s $100 Million/Year Impact
Philadelphia’s Kimmel center has had an economic impact of $321 million in three years, the center says. “About $177 million of that was attributed to direct-and-induced expenditures, $127 million to salaries and wages and almost $17 million to state and local tax revenue. The analysis showed that the Kimmel Center generated $3 for every $1 that it spent.”
Arizona Orchestra Cancels Performances
The Mesa [Arizona] Symphony has canceled four upcoming concerts, including its popular July Fourth concert. “Officials from the symphony, which comprises 65 part-time employees who perform about a dozen concerts a year, blamed the failure of a Mesa property tax initiative in May for the loss of funding. The $50,000 grant represents about a quarter of the symphony’s annual budget.”