Why? Because the RSC accepts sponsorship money from BP, which funds the company’s program offering £5 tickets to young adults. Says an open letter just sent to the theatre, “If we, as young people, wish to see an affordable play at your theatre we have to help to promote a company that is actively destroying our futures by wrecking the climate.” – The Guardian
Tag: 09.26.19
Are Ticket Prices Really The Main Barrier To Attracting Audiences?
“The popular misconception that price is the chief barrier to access to the arts has taken hold in the sector, while in reality, price is only one of a complex set of factors affecting engagement with ‘hard to reach’ groups. Tim Baker concludes it’s time to start a debate about the true meaning of affordability.” – Arts Professional
Music Composition Professor At Univ. Of Texas Accused Of Years Of Sexual Harassment — And Administrators Knew
Writer Sammy Sussman reports on allegations of inappropriate comments and touching, aimed at both male and female graduate students, by a composition professor at UT-Austin’s Butler School of Music dating from 2001 to at least 2014. These include alleged incidents that were reported to the University at the time — but nothing happened beyond a single investigation. – Van
Pianist Paul Badura-Skoda, 91
Until his death, Badura-Skoda had been among the last pupils of Edwin Fischer still performing. He was much respected, having played under the baton of Fischer’s friend and colleague Wilhelm Furtwängler, as well as under Herbert von Karajan, Hans Knappertsbusch, Hermann Scherchen (who conducts Beethoven’s five concertos included in the ‘Edition’) and George Szell. – Gramophone
Brazilian Whistle-Blower: Conservationist Roberto Burle Marx at the New York Botanical Garden
This show turned out to be more timely than the NYBG could have known when it began to organize what it billed as its “largest botanical exhibition ever.” – Lee Rosenbaum
Goodbye, Tula’s
It’s been a busy month at Tula’s, a jazz fixture in the US Pacific Northwest for more than two decades, as most of the top jazz musicians in Seattle are playing their last gigs at the club and it’s been a full house every night. – Doug Ramsey
Staff Versus Board: Seattle’s Intiman Theatre On Verge Of Closing?
At a contentious meeting Wednesday night, Intiman’s board of directors laid out a stark vision for the nearly 50-year-old arts organization, saying it was out of money and would probably have to close in October. Intiman’s staff, led by artistic director Jen Zeyl, and a collection of roughly 10 arts leaders and philanthropists from around the city, seemed to think otherwise. – Seattle Times
Walter Gropius, The Great Survivor/Modernist
“It was a balancing act of extraordinary deftness that only someone with strong self-discipline and steely ambition could pull off. Yet history has not dealt kindly with Gropius, especially after Tom Wolfe’s ignorant anti-Modernist diatribe From Bauhaus to Our House (1981), which mercilessly lampooned him as the chief perpetrator of a hopelessly inhumane mode of architecture and an insufferable prig to boot.” – New York Review of Books
How “Ulysses” Became A Scandal And Changed The Definition Of Obscenity In America
“The conspirators were Bennett Cerf, publisher and cofounder of Random House, and Morris Ernst, a cofounder of the ACLU and its chief legal counsel. The target was United States anti-obscenity law. The bait was a single copy of an English-language novel, printed in Dijon by Frenchmen who could not understand a word of it, bound in bright blue boards, and sold mail-order by the celebrated Paris bookshop Shakespeare and Company.” – New York Review of Books