The recently resurrected San Antonio Symphony will be one of the orchestras to send its executives to Washington, D.C. next month for the Kennedy Center’s new program aimed at training better orchestra managers. The arts management program “will allow symphonies to share information and learn new ways to diversify funding sources. They will also consider ways to make the symphonies relevant in the communities they serve.”
Tag: 10.27.05
SPAC Back In Black
The much-maligned Saratoga Performing Arts Center in upstate New York, which presents a popular summer slate of shows featuring the Philadelphia Orchestra and New York City Ballet, has balanced its budget for fiscal 2005 several months after a large part of its board and executive team turned over in the wake of a fiscal-mismanagement scandal. Special gifts amounting to $700,000 were arranged by the new team over the past few months to put the center in the black. (For the record, that’s $700,000 more in major gifts than the previous administration managed to raise in the last three years.) However, SPAC isn’t out of the woods yet: the center says it will need to raise an additional $10 million to bring its endowment back up to healthy levels.
A Home For Poets?
“Canterbury could be home to a vibrant community of poets sharing their thoughts over a cup of coffee or glass of wine before leading a workshop or giving readings of their work to the public. The idea of a permanent building for poets and their work which would have an all-year-round programme of performances and workshops, is based on the French idea of ‘maisons de poésie’: ‘houses of poetry’ that exist throughout France and have spread across the French-speaking world, from Quebec to Morocco. The facilities within each maison vary, but generally encompass a performance space, a publishing or printing house, a library and information resource for poets and researchers and a cafe or bar. Some also boast residential accommodation to put up visiting poets or house a poet-in-residence.”
Is Terfel The Next Pavarotti?
Who’s the next Pavarotti? How about Bryn Terfel? “A baritone to succeed Pavarotti? It is not beyond reason. Terfel has more than sold half a million UK copies of his last classi-pop album. Terfel matches Pavarotti in his sincere lack of taste. Like Pavarotti, Terfel runs a summer festival, an August weekend at his Welsh estate, Faenol, where he guilelessly mingles with the likes of Van Morrison and Alison Moyet…”
da Vinci Code Lawsuit Gets Trial Date
Two writers have sued da Vinci Code author Dan Brown. “A trial will begin on 27 February in London to hear the claim that Brown stole Michael Baigent and Richard Leigh’s idea that Jesus had a child. They are suing Random House, claiming the bestseller lifts from their 1982 book The Holy Blood and the Holy Grail.”
Customs Agents Take Opera Ireland Sets In Cocaine Bust
Opera Ireland is hoping its audiences are as high on its production of La Traviata as customs officials in Dover who seized a shipment of cocaine worth £500,000 in one of three trucks delivering sets and costumes for an Opera Ireland production. “Rehearsals were due to begin in Dublin this week on the co-production with Germany’s Theatre Aachen.”
Reality TV Takes On Public Art
Britain’s Channel 4 hopes to create great public art. “The Big Art Project is seeking nominations from communities, identifying sites where a piece of significant public art could be placed. Six sites will be shortlisted by a panel of experts in January, and the series will follow the progress of the communities working with artists to commission and create the pieces. The completed works are expected to be unveiled in October 2007.”