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FEATURE
By Every Measure, COVID-19 Continues Its Devastation of the Arts
ArtsBlog: Randy Cohen
A recent Brookings Institution report shows America’s arts and creative industries lost $150 billion in sales and 2.7 million jobs through July. The “fine and performing arts” alone (commercial and nonprofit) incurred losses of $42.5 billion and a whopping 50% of its workforce (-1.4 million jobs).
The culture is ailing. It’s time for a Dr. Fauci for the arts.
The Washington Post: Peter Marks
In this crisis moment, when a pandemic threatens ruination for museums, theaters, concert halls, opera houses, dance studios, cineplexes and amusement parks — and the 5.1 million arts workers who staff them — the time has come to have an appointed government representative in the Cabinet.
RESEARCH AND OPINION
Transformed by crisis, arts criticism may never be the same. And that’s a good thing.
The Washington Post: Philip Kennicott
The pandemic, and the social fissures it has exacerbated, including stark divides along class and racial lines, has scrambled the usual categories of American life, including those that once governed the arts.
‘Cold, hard numbers’ capture opera’s staggering gender inequities
Boston Globe: Zoë Madonna
How do you get to Carnegie Hall? Practice, or so the old joke goes. But according to a new analysis of systemic gender discrimination in the opera industry, if you’re a classical singer, you’ll have a much easier time getting there if you’re a man. At every stage of training and career, female singers are “excluded or marginalized.”
Context Over Cancel Culture: What Companies Can Do With Problematic Nutcracker Footage
Dance Magazine: Phil Chan
How can companies still provide digital access for their communities to the beloved ballet—the one that attracts the most audience members all year—while not offending folks during the holiday season?
Aaron Dworkin – With Michigan Opera Theatre President Wayne Brown
The Violin Channel
Aaron Dworkin sits down with Michigan Opera Theatre President Wayne Brown to discuss the core issues facing arts institutions today.
Netflix’s “Tiny Pretty Things” Faces Ballet Stereotypes Head-On
Dance Spirit: Abigail Raminsky
To ensure the show would feel authentic, the creators set out to cast dancers who could act, not actors who’d require dance doubles. The process spanned three months and many continents.
Found Eloquence: 4’33” Of A Thing In Overabundance
Classical Voice America: David Patrick Stearns
This time, John Cage’s famous 4’33” really is about silence – the silence that comes with confronting such an unknown global future that even conspiracy theories are no comfort. Europe is locked down, and with it the symphonic and operatic institutions that were giving American music lovers so much hope for the future.
Without Ethel Smyth and classical music’s forgotten women, we only tell half the story
The Guardian: Leah Broad
Expanding the classical canon brings us incredible music and extraordinary stories, not least that of Ethel Smyth, whose compositions and pioneering energy filled England in the interwar years.
Music streaming makes major labels rich, while musicians like me go broke
The Guardian: Nadine Shah
I urge the UK government inquiry to recommend that all musicians are given a fair slice of the vast streaming cake.
Best Jazz Albums of 2020
NY Times: Giovanni Russonello
The Covid-19 pandemic halted live performance, the lifeblood of the genre, but a run of powerful albums — and standout debuts — provided respite, and hope.
NATIONAL
Bob Dylan Sells His Songwriting Catalog in Blockbuster Deal
NY Times: Ben Sisario
Universal Music purchased his entire songwriting catalog of more than 600 songs in what may be the biggest acquisition ever of a single act’s publishing rights.
HITS Act, Providing Financial Assistance to Musicians and Producers, Introduced in Senate
Variety: Jem Aswad
A small tax incentive that would alter the current tax policy that requires individual recording artists and record producers to amortize production expenses for tax purposes over the economic life of a sound recording.
John Holiday on ‘The Voice’: An opera singer turns pandemic job loss into TV gold
Los Angeles Times: Catherine Womack
Holiday, a 35-year-old countertenor from Texas, began this year on the Los Angeles Opera stage lending his soaring voice to the role of Orpheus’ Double in the world premiere of composer Matthew Aucoin’s “Eurydice.”
Plans to build ‘the Black version of Lincoln Center’ on Chicago’s South Side
Chicago Tribune: Chris Jones
The project is centered around an old warehouse building on Chicago’s South Side, where the idea is to build a two-theater complex to house and a new, nationally focused museum dedicated to Black contributions to the performing arts. Everything from dance to film to music to theater.
Land of the Bittersweet: COVID’s Effect on Nutcracker
Dance Magazine: Cory Steig
Dark stages and broken budgets – but also new traditions.
Jazz Standard, One Of New York’s Top Clubs, Closes Due To Pandemic
NPR News: Anastasia Tsioulcas
Jazz Standard, a perennial favorite New York City venue for musicians and fans alike, has shut its doors. It is the first major jazz club in the city to close permanently due to the coronavirus pandemic.
The Jazz Standard Is Silenced by the Pandemic. More Clubs May Follow.
NY Times: Ben Sisario
The coronavirus has claimed its first major jazz club in New York City, and other venues are in danger of going under as well.
No ‘Nutcracker’? Or ‘Messiah’? How Theaters Are Facing A COVID Christmas
NPR News: Jeff Lunden
COVID-19 has been a significant hit for theaters that predicts a loss in the millions this holiday season.
Winners Announced at New York’s Barbash Bach String Competition
The Violin Channel
Cellist Maxime Quennesson has been awarded 1st prize at the 2020 Lillian and Maurice Barbash J.S. Bach Competition.
Music Masters announces composer Daniel Kidane as its latest Ambassador
The Strad
Kidane has already worked extensively with the music education charity.
INTERNATIONAL
‘A grand experiment’: Adelaide festival launches 2021 program after major overhaul
The Guardian: Kelly Burke
A number of international acts will now be livestreaming their performances into Her Majesty’s Theatre from their home bases in Europe and the US, on a scale believed to be most ambitious yet embarked on by an international festival.
Violinist Lara St. John Named to the Order of Canada
The Violin Channel
The 49-year-old Canadian violinist received the honor for “pushing the boundaries of classical interpretation as a solo violinist and for supporting diversity in the arts”.
The Orchestre de la Suisse Romande Appoints Conductor in Residence
The Violin Channel
The French ensemble announced the appointment of Daniel Harding as Conductor in Residence for the 2021-22 and 2022-23 seasons.
St. Paul Chamber Orchestra Cancels 2020/21 Season
The Violin Channel
The Minnesota-based chamber ensemble canceled its remainder performances through to June 2021 due to the ongoing Coronavirus pandemic.
City of Linz Art Appreciation Prize Announced
The Violin Channel
Baroque, Austrian violinist and conductor Michi Gaigg receives the honor which is given every four years to artists and/or organizations for their outstanding work.
Wigmore Hall to reopen to the public
The Strad
Among the performers at the London venue in the lead up to Christmas are the Doric String Quartet and violinist Jack Liebeck.
ENTREPRENEURSHIP
Black Voguers Populate Billboards in a Times Square ‘Midnight Moment’
New York Times: Hilarie M. Sheets and Julia Carmel
Just before midnight every evening in December, some 70 digital billboards encircling the gaudy canyon of Times Square will be co-opted for three minutes by slow-motion images of Black voguers, performing dances of resistance, resilience and liberation.
What Does It Mean to “Reimagine” an Orchestra Season?
The New Yorker: Alex Ross
With live performances constrained by the pandemic, musical ensembles are streaming productions for listeners curious enough to seek them out.
OFF THE BEATEN TRAIL
Art installation features 70 guitar-playing birds
Classical MPR: Daniel Nass
A new exhibit at the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts features 70 zebra finches — and 14 guitars. French artist Céleste Boursier-Mougenot developed the concept which he calls ‘living music’. “Looking through the window, my feeling was that I want to make music from these birds on the wire, and 30 years later I did this,” the artist stated in a recent interview.
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