Philadelphia is a huge city with a relatively understated skyline, so any new incursion into the downtown airspace is likely to be quite noticeable. Recently, a new building was added to the skyline just down the street from the city’s architecturally stunning City Hall, and Philadelphians are aghast. “The 32-story mixed-use tower flounces onto venerable South Broad Street like a sequined and over-rouged strumpet. Sheathed in a sickly shade of pink concrete, the building resembles, as one blogger wittily observed, a giant Pepto-Bismol bottle.”
Tag: 10.27.07
Will Young Frankenstein Open Without Its Lead?
Critics’ previews for the new Mel Brooks musical, Young Frankenstein, start running on Broadway this week. But the show’s star, Roger Bart, has been out of rehearsals with serious back problems. “One scenario has his doctor pumping him with cortisone so he can play the critics’ performances and opening night, then take time off to heal. But that, as any dancer will tell you, is extremely risky.”
Gehry Branches Out
Frank Gehry is known for revolutionary buildings made to stand for centuries, so what is he doing designing a stage set for a Portugese fado singer? “The challenge is to envelop the audience in the taberna atmosphere, where singers perform in close quarters, often mingling with the audience.”
Changing Ethics And Stolen Art
The debate over looted art and ownership is hardly as cut and dry as some would like to believe. “Even when museums draw up codes of ethics to help ensure that they won’t abet the plunder of another nation’s cultural heritage, the measures are not legally binding.” Worse, “national laws adopted to combat the illicit export of valuable cultural property sometimes actually encouraged smuggling.”
A Chinese Experiment Fights For Recognition
China’s avant-garde music scene is a small one, encompassing “only a few dozen musicians around the country,” but its impact is beginning to be felt internationally. Still, “though China may be in the beginnings of a new love affair with consumerism, rigid cultural controls are still in place, and discovery and transgression are values not widely held by the Communist government.”
Princeton To Return Looted Art To Italy
“Princeton University announced on Friday that its art museum had reached an agreement to return eight ancient works to Italy that the Italian government says were looted and illicitly exported. The pact calls for the Princeton University Art Museum to send back four of the objects immediately and to keep four on loan for the next four years… Princeton will keep seven other pieces that had been part of negotiations.”
When Artists And Dancers Still Knew Each Other
“To hear the choreographer Deborah Hay talk, there is no overstating the connection between visual art and dance in New York in the 1960s, when the Judson Dance Theater movement was radically questioning the nature of performance… Today’s New York scene, in which the various art worlds and their audiences have largely retreated to their own corners, makes Ms. Hay’s experience — which was just as powerful for many visual artists — sound like an impossible utopia.” But some are working to reacquaint the genres…
Nothing But Good News In Chicago
“The Chicago Symphony Orchestra Association not only balanced its books for the first time in four years, as it had projected, but also ended the 2007 fiscal year with a surplus of $113,000 on a $58 million operating budget. [The CSO] also reported a 4 percent increase in donations to its annual fund for a total of $18.6 million, and an increase in ticket sales as well, exceeding 85 percent paid capacity in Orchestra Hall for the second consecutive season.”
Davis Leaving Pittsburgh Early
“Andrew Davis is cutting out early. The Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra has agreed to let its artistic adviser out of the final season of his three-year contract, leaving five weekends of the current season on the table… Davis said in a statement that he has enjoyed his time here and hopes to find other dates to return as a guest conductor.”
Gustavo & The System
“Gustavo Dudamel, now 26, is the most-talked-about young musician in the world. Sir Simon Rattle, the principal conductor of the Berlin Philharmonic, has called him ‘the most astonishingly gifted conductor I have ever come across.'” His upbringing in Venezuela’s El Sistema music education program and rapid rise through the ranks of the conducting world are already legend within the music business. “As an international celebrity whose career was incubated by the sistema, Dudamel is uniquely able to champion its expansion at home and promote its adoption abroad.”