Orchestras and cost disease
AJBlog: For What it’s Worth Published 2014-11-04

Burgeoning Florida Arts Corridor Gets Another Museum
AJBlog: Real Clear Arts Published 2014-11-04

Spinning the Big Fall Auctions: How Fresh is “Fresh to the Market”? (with video)
AJBlog: CultureGrrl Published 2014-11-04

Audiencing
AJBlog: We The Audience Published 2014-11-04

Get in on the ground floor of this exciting effort to make the arts work better for all of us! We are looking for a few sharp thinkers with the time, energy, and smarts to join our editorial team. You’ll become a (modestly) paid member of the Createquity brain trust, taking part in all of our research discussions, debates, and major decisions. Applications due November 7.

Createquity is a research-backed investigation of the most important issues in the arts and what we, collectively and individually, can do about them. Founded in October 2007 by Ian David Moss, Createquity rapidly gained acclaim from readers across the web and has been called “the strongest, most provocative, well-connected arts [blog] that exists today” and “so amazingly good it’s almost in its own category of resource.”

Once a one-person shop, Createquity now boasts an editorial team of five and has published work by nearly 50 writers. In summer 2014, anticipating the evolving needs of its readership, Createquity overhauled its editorial structure, priorities, and online presence to place a new emphasis on translating ideas to action to impact. We are committed to helping make the arts ecosystem work better for artists and audiences by making high-value information and analysis about critical issues in our field available to current and emerging decision-makers across the sector.

We are looking for a few sharp thinkers with the time, energy, and smarts to join our editorial team. You’ll become a (modestly) paid member of the Createquity brain trust, taking part in all of our research discussions, debates, and major decisions. We’re not just a great blog, but a virtual organization with communications, business development, graphic design, and human resources needs. Therefore, we’re looking for candidates who are passionate about research and writing as well as people who have the capacity and skill to participate in other areas — all in support of our core mission to make the arts ecosystem work better for artists and audiences.

This is a rare opportunity to be at the center of a broad and ambitious effort to improve outcomes for everyone involved in or affected by the arts. Our standard recruitment process has three phases. The first step involves submitting an application (details at the link) that will help us determine whether your skills and interests align with our current needs. From there, a small number of finalists will receive an assignment designed to simulate a typical week as a Createquity editorial team member.

Once that hurdle is passed, new editorial recruits will join the team provisionally for an approximately three-month trial or “dating period” that gives both you and us an opportunity to find out if we work well together. During these months, you will collaborate with the rest of the Createquity team on projects that range from research and writing to social media and business development. If all goes well, you’ll officially join the team in early 2015 and we’ll publicly announce your participation then.

First-round applications are due Friday, November 7. We hope to see your name in the mix!

The John F. Kennedy Center is seeking an experienced professional to lead its public relations team. As a senior management team member reporting to the President, the Vice President, Public Relations (VP, PR) will provide leadership and direction in the areas of long-term public relations strategy, and institutional communications and oversee media outreach for more than 2,000 performances and events held at the Center each year.

The VP, PR will be a dynamic, articulate spokesperson for the Center providing critical leadership in the development and communication of the Center’s brand as a local, national and international performing arts institution. Working with the senior management team, this individual will guide the positioning, messaging and public image of the Kennedy Center.

Supervising a team of eight, the VP, PR will develop and execute campaigns for the Kennedy Center’s extensive programming, including theater, dance, and music performances, and the Center’s award-winning nationally televised events such as the Kennedy Center Honors and the Mark Twain Prize for American Humor.

Additionally, the team provides public relations strategy and support for the extensive education programs locally and nationally, as well as to the artistic affiliates of the Kennedy Center: the National Symphony Orchestra, Washington National Opera and VSA, the international organization on arts and disability. The Kennedy Center is engaged in a significant capital expansion project that will dramatically change its face, image, and overall programming profile. The VP, PR will develop and implement communications related to this project and its impact on existing and future work of the Kennedy Center.

The VP, PR will oversee the office’s creation and editing of Playbill for the more than 2,000 Kennedy Center-produced and presented performances each year. The VP PR will work closely and proactively with the Kennedy Center’s social media team to guide the voice, messaging, and branding of all Kennedy Center social media activities. The VP PR will manage the Center’s near 50-year-old photographic archive and will oversee the creation and ongoing management of a new archives program for the Kennedy Center.

Minimum of ten years of public relations experience with demonstrated success at managing complex issues in a fast-paced environment. College degree required. Demonstrated, established and constructive relationships with key journalists and media outlets mandatory for this position. Excellent interpersonal skills; outstanding writing and editing skills. Personal characteristics of poise, calm, and composure in stressful, crisis communications situations. Expansive knowledge and a love of the performing arts. Demonstrated supervisory and budget skills. Foreign language knowledge and understanding is valuable.

“The royalty arrangements went on for 35 pages. What if the film is distributed overseas? Pages of possible countries, rights and proceeds. What if the film becomes a TV show? More possibilities. What if the TV show goes into syndication? On cable? Network? Overseas syndication? And what if there are action figures?”

The company, Playwrights Horizons, announced on Tuesday that it has started covering roughly 50 percent of the health care premiums for its writers during the season in which their works are produced. The theater is also paying the writers for “preproduction activities,” like rehearsals and meetings with the directors, designers and producers.

“Ms. Monte made her professional debut dancing with Agnes DeMille in the 1957 revival of “Carousel” and has been a principal dancer with the Martha Graham Dance Company, among others. Her company has more than 40 repertory works and is known for its physical vigor and a style that defies categorization.”

“Dejan Lazic calls Midgette’s column “slightly defamatory” and argues that such criticism can have damaging effects beyond his own career. Midgette counters that she does not write reviews for musicians but for the benefit of her readers, and she hopes that her criticism will spark enlightened discussion.”

“Gary Hanson, executive director of the orchestra since 2004, announced Tuesday, Nov. 4, that he will retire from the post in October 2015. When he retires next fall, Hanson will have worked with the orchestra for nearly 28 years.”

“In all, markets outside the United States accounted for roughly $25 billion of $35.9 billion in worldwide box-office sales last year, according to the Motion Picture Association of America. Precisely what share of international sales was captured by American-based companies is unclear, but they remained dominant.”

“There will be consequences for the entertainment industry, not just on issues that activate progressives, like climate change and immigration, but on industry-centric concerns over net neutrality and media consolidation.”

“Sellars is best known for his work in opera, first coming into focus in the early 1990s with his then-revolutionary updates of the Mozart/Da Ponte trilogy, continuing through his collaborations with John Adams on Nixon in China and Dr. Atomic, among others, and on through his singular interpretation of Bach’s St. Matthew Passion, recently staged with the Berlin Philharmonic and soloists at the Park Avenue Armory.”

“This work, a mural that stretches 12 feet high and 22 feet long, is free to whoever can extract it from the East Village loft where it was created.”

“Music-evoked sadness can be appreciated not only as an aesthetic, abstract reward, but (it) also plays a role in well-being, by providing consolation as well as regulating negative moods and emotions.”

“The Ulster Orchestra is hanging in the balance because of cuts in the arts sector over the past three years. The orchestra, which costs around £4.6 million a year to run, has appealed for £500,000 from Belfast City Council to help keep it afloat.”

“From the standpoint of teachers, parents and the world at large, the problem with people with A.D.H.D. looks like a lack of focus and attention and impulsive behavior. But if you have the “illness,” the real problem is that, to your brain, the world that you live in essentially feels not very interesting.”

Muti: “To take another position as music director of an opera house means that your life is finished. You have to deal with problems with singers, the chorus, the theater in another part of the world.”

“Once again we may have to respond by organizing a vocal and vociferous campaign to minimally keep the Endowments alive and their funding at the current level. The chances of our succeeding in that effort are, if history is any example, fairly decent. Of course, the effort will take time and energy we could better put to other endeavors, but we may have no choice.”

“On Oct. 30, [Dejan Lazic] sent The Washington Post a request to remove a 2010 review by Post classical music critic Anne Midgette that – he claims – has marred the first page of his Google results for years. It’s the first request The Post has received under the E.U. ruling. It’s also a truly fascinating, troubling demonstration of how the ruling could work.”

Called the Warner Music Prize and funded by industrialist Len Blavatnik, who purchased Warner Music Group in 2011, the award “is expected to be given out annually to an instrumentalist or singer between 18- and 35-years-old who shows strong career potential.”

After looking at the arguments and evidence, Ross writes, “No one is well served by wild speculation that distorts the historical record – or, for that matter, ascribes a piece of music to a woman on the grounds that it lacks maturity.”

Built in 1085, the distinctive domed mausoleum of Imam al-Daur was destroyed on October 23. According to the extremist ideology of ISIS and similar groups, veneration of any shrine is a form of idolatry.

“Sometimes one can recapture that fleeting sensation with names – place-names. If I am hiking up a familiar path near my house in Turin and I think, ‘I am climbing a hill in Italy,’ there is a brief whiff of foreign glamour. And, when I arrived in Uzbekistan and was disappointed to find that city people took buses and trams as they do everywhere else, I could revive a touch of fantasy by silently repeating, ‘Streetcars in Samarkand’.”

Producer Doug Berman: “He and his brother changed public broadcasting forever. Before Car Talk, NPR was formal, polite, cautious … even stiff. By being entirely themselves, without pretense, Tom and Ray single-handedly changed that, and showed that real people are far more interesting than canned radio announcers. And every interesting show that has come after them owes them a debt of gratitude.”

Tim Page profiles 91-year-old Chou Wen-Chung, who recalls his reaction, at age 14, on learning of Ravel’s death: “I thought composers were a gift from nature and that music was written by dead people, because every composer I had heard of, Chinese or Western, was dead. And I thought, ‘Could I become a composer? How wonderful!'”

In a Q&A, the fake-news superstar talks about writing and directing his first feature film (“I’m pretty sure that’s a Guild rule, that as the director, they have to listen to you. As long as your beret is on at 45 degrees.”), the rumors about hosting Meet the Press, and what The Daily Show can and can’t accomplish.