“San Francisco Symphony patrons who watch the stage of Davies Symphony Hall carefully are seeing a welcome sight this month. William Bennett, the orchestra’s principal oboist, is back in action after a bout of tonsil cancer. Bennett was diagnosed in September, just before Music Director Michael Tilson Thomas and the orchestra made their live recording of Mahler’s Ninth Symphony. He kept mum until the recording sessions were over, not wanting to distract anyone from the task at hand, then went in for surgery followed by a punishing course of radiation and chemotherapy. Today, the tumors are gone, and Bennett, 49, is back where he belongs.”
Tag: 07.20.05
Inside The Lines
The tourists who pack Broadway shows seem, unaccountably, to have developed a new habit of standing in line outside the theatre they’re waiting to enter, when they could just as easily walk right up to the door and walk to their $100 reserved seat anytime they please. No one seems to know why they do it, and no native New Yorkers seem especially eager to point out that the big line o’ tourists isn’t strictly necessary. “There was no rational reason to stand in line. Had security lines at airports inured people to standing around, waiting to shed their shoes? Or had Americans since 9/11 come to see lining up as a sign of good citizenry, and a rejection of unseemly anarchy?”
A Backlash Against Hip?
“Just what is hip has become nebulous in a digital age of microtrends, when a cultural blip goes from underground to overexposed in one season. Likewise, the original concept of hip as something outside the purview of the mainstream has been replaced by the hipstream: mainstream cool packaged by corporate marketing departments. The inevitable backlash — not against the bohemian veritas but the sycophantic consumer of cool — is well underway.”
Royal Opera House To Vilar: Pay Up! (Or Else)
London’s Royal Opera House has given troubled philanthropist Alberto Vilar 60 days to pay up on his £10 million pledge, or else. Or else what? The ROH isn’t saying if they’ll take Vilar’s name off its building. “The 1999 agreement allows the Royal Opera House to give Mr Vilar notice in writing that, by not making the payments he has committed a material breach of that contract. If he does not resume making payments by the end of a 60-day period specified in the agreement, the ROH will then be entitled to notify Mr Vilar that the agreement is terminated.”
Kennedy Center Goal: Bring Arts To The Country
Washington’s Kennedy Center has big aspirations beyond the beltway. “With its new $125 million education initiative, the Kennedy Center aims to give the performing arts bug to more than 11 million people across the country. The center’s expanded programming targets not only young, would-be art lovers but also art managers, aspiring dancers and musicians, and even board members at other cultural institutions.”
The Enduring Appeal Of Vintage Musicals?
“Popular culture has turned divisive and pop-based musicals are unlikely to be outings that the whole family can enjoy. What gives the musical form its growing heritage status is an appeal that carries across the generations, from war vets to under-tens, and that is such a precious rarity in our fissured society that it demands conservation and participation. Poised at the midpoint of high and mass culture, musical theatre reaches the parts that more formal arts cannot begin to touch.”
The Most Popular Music Online? Beethoven
Free downloads of BBC Beethoven symphonies have blown off the lid of the download charts, beating all popular music. “Final figures from the BBC show that the complete Beethoven symphonies on its website were downloaded 1.4m times, with individual works downloaded between 89,000 and 220,000 times. The works were each available for a week, in two tranches, in June. It would take a commercial CD recording of the complete Beethoven symphonies ‘upwards of five years’ to sell as many downloads as were shifted from the BBC website in two weeks.”
Are Libraries Without Books A Good Idea?
“Where will the library ghosts go when all the books have been made immaterial and antiseptic through digitization? What is the message of this new medium? What does it mean when the University of Texas at Austin removes nearly all of the books from its undergraduate library to make room for coffee bars, computer terminals, and lounge chairs? What are students in those “learning commons” being taught that is qualitatively better than what they learned in traditional libraries?”
Prison Inmates Raise Money To Keep Public Library Open
When the town of Salinas, California threatened to close its public libraries to save money, residents rallied. So did inmates at a local prison. “Prisoners in San Quentin’s inmate-to-inmate tutoring program sponsored something of a bake sale for literacy, selling doughnuts, pizza and fried chicken to other prisoners. Today, they will present a $1,000 check to the ailing Salinas Free Library, plus another $500 for literacy services in Marin County. Those sums are nothing to sniff at, given that an inmate with a high- paying prison job makes $56 a month.”
Flushing Bush – Protests Over Political Artwork
Supporters of President George Bush are protesting the display of a painting on display in California’s Department of Justice building in Sacramento depicting “a star-spangled map of United States being flushed down a toilet. The piece, titled “T’anks to Mr. Bush,” is part of an exhibit sponsored by California Lawyers for the Arts. The California Arts Council presented the show in conjunction with the attorney general’s office, and the paintings hang in the building’s cafeteria.”