In what is being widely viewed as a major coup for a second-tier American orchestra, the New Jersey Symphony Orchestra has announced that Neeme Järvi will be its next music director, officially beginning in 2005. Järvi will take over immediately as the orchestra’s principal conductor, ending a 2-1/2 year search to replace the departed Zdenek Macal in Newark. Järvi has been the music director of the Detroit Symphony Orchestra for 14 years, and has been credited with transforming the DSO into one of the top ensembles in the U.S. The announcement is seen as a badly needed shot in the arm for the NJSO, which has been running severe deficits and which recently lost its well-regarded executive director to Pittsburgh.
Tag: 10.28.03
Is Vienna Stalking Cleveland’s MD?
Seiji Ozawa is under contract as music director of the Vienna State Opera through 2007, so it isn’t surprising that VSO officials are being coy about rumors that they are actively pursuing Franz Welser-Möst to replace him. Welser-Möst, the young music director of the Cleveland Orchestra, was first mentioned as an object of Viennese desire more than a year ago, but the talk of his wooing has revved up since he stepped in for an ailing Christian Thielemann last month, and led a well-received production of Wagner’s Tristan & Isolde. Complicating the rumors is the fact that Welser-Möst’s contract in Cleveland was recently extended through 2012.
Disposable DVDs Ready For The Landfill?
Call it ecological consciousness, consumer disinterest, or lousy marketing: whatever the reason, the “disposable DVD” phenomenon is withering on the vine. The discs, which can be rented and viewed like a normal DVD for two days before they become unusable, are billed as an item of convenience for the movie renting public. But apparently, even American couch potatoes aren’t quite that lazy, because almost no one is renting the self-destructing discs.
Excepting The Oscars Isn’t Enough
“Britain’s top film awards could be heading for catastrophe next year if Hollywood does not resolve a row over voting, says organiser Bafta. No preview DVDs of new films can be sent to voters of any awards except the Oscars, the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) has ruled. They say there is too much chance that the advance copies could be pirated. But others say it will harm the award chances of small independent films, and Bafta wants the ban overturned.”
Art Saved From The Damned Yanks (So?)
An exhibition of “saved” art in London is a tedious self-congratulatory affair, writes Jonathan Jones. “Quite what art needs to be saved from is not made clear but, as this exhibition documents a century of the National Art Collections Fund, whose mission is to purchase for British galleries “treasures” that would otherwise be sold abroad, I think we all know that the villain of the piece smokes a big cigar, wears a Stetson and waves a bunch of dollars about. Thank God, we are supposed to say, that Titian’s Venus Anadyomene never ended up in the Brooklyn Museum of Art. Te argument is plain enough.”
Turner Prize: Going For Gruesome (And A Health Dept. Warning)
This year’s Turner finalists (surprise, surprise) are out to shock again. The Chapman Brothers’ entry depicts oral sex and incorporates decaying bodies. “The controversy threatens to dwarf even the rows that have engulfed the Turner Prize over its past 20 years when Death goes on display on Tuesday. Grayson Perry, one of the other nominees for the award, said the Chapman brothers ‘are going for the shock horror jugular’.”
In It For The Shock Value (And This Is A Surprise?)
The Turner Prize always seems to find new ways of being controversial. “It ought to be impossible, in this, the 19th year of its art world stranglehold, to create controversy by any means at all, short of eating a human baby. Whereas in fact, the Chapman brothers, shortlisted this year for their piece Death, are already at the centre of a storm over some garden-variety oral sex. The Turner prize does feel gimmicky and hollow – and there is a reason for this.”
Yerba Accident: Don’t Call 911!
An overturned truck on the steps of San Francisco’s Yerba Buena Center looks like an accident has just happened, and has prompted passersby to call 911. “Open at the back, the truck holds about two dozen video and computer monitors, some of which flicker with chopped-up animation, scrambled convenience-store surveillance tapes and footage of a man rolling paint over graffiti on an outdoor wall. The man has a Sisyphean counterpart in real space: a mechanized wood cutout figure who brandishes a spray can up and down, up and down, reminiscent of Jonathan Borofsky’s famous Hammering Man.”
London Needs Theatre Aid
London’s West End theatres are in dismal shape, many of them shabby and run-down. A new survey declares that the historic theatres need an urgent £255m facelift.
Art: Not Fade Away (And Yet…)
Much contemporary art is made of materials that are deteriorating. “The technical term is inherent vice, insurance jargon meaning the certainty of future decay because of the materials used. Inherent vice is the timebomb ticking away inside private and museum collections of contemporary art all over the world. The first conference held to consider the problem is bringing together conservators, collectors, lawyers and, above all, art insurance experts, in London.”