Fort Worth Opera Extends Darren Woods' Contract
Mark Lowry
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TheaterJones
Fort Worth Opera has announced that the contract for General Manager Darren Woods have been extended for two years, meaning he'll be there at least through June 2018. And that's a good thing, because Woods has brought some positive changes to the organization, notably proving that you can get crowds for new and less often-produced opera.
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Tips, Tricks, and Strategy for Using Google Adwords: a Non-Technical Guide
Zac Alfson
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National Arts Marketing Project
There has been a lot of controversy over the past couple of weeks concerning Google's new privacy policies. No matter how they change, Google is the largest, most powerful advertising system in the world. Have you ever wondered how ads show up next to your search results? How do they choose what ads you'll see? Most importantly, how can you get your organization in front of potential audience members' based on their search results?
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Build a Killer Website: 19 Dos and Don'ts
Ilya Pozin
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Inc.
At bottom your website is a marketing tool. For many businesses, it’s the only source of business. If done right, it can be a major part of yours.
Here’s my quick-hit list of the top dos and don’ts before you get started.
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Can Asians Save Classical Music?
Michael Ahn Paarlberg
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Slate.com
What do symphony orchestras and cigarette companies have in common?
It’s the age problem. How do you stay in business when your customers
keep dying?
For orchestras, at least it’s not their product that’s lethal, though
it might as well be. With the median age of concertgoers rising, fewer
than one in 10 adults reported attending a classical concert in 2008,
according to a periodic survey conducted by the National Endowment for
the Arts, a 28 percent drop since 1982. The financial state of
orchestras today is roughly comparable to that of Blockbuster Video
post-Netflix. Ticket sales are dropping; layoffs and bankruptcies
abound. In the past two years, the Honolulu, Syracuse, and New Mexico
orchestras closed up shop entirely; the Philadelphia Orchestra, long
revered as one of the five best in the country, filed for Chapter 11
protection in April.
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Spain crisis hits Barcelona opera house
Ciaran Giles
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Associated Press
Barcelona's renowned Liceu opera house says it must cancel shows and
close its doors for two months because of the economic crisis hitting
Spain.
The theater says in a statement it is running a deficit of
euro3.7 million ($4.87 million) following cutbacks in government
subsidies and a drop in sponsorship.
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What the music industry needs to do with the classical renaissance
Max Hole
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The Guardian
We're currently seeing a melding of genres and a breaking of boundaries across the music world. This recent trend – listeners moving to the avant garde after they start demanding more from the mainstream– has long been acknowledged within pop. In recent years, mainstream pop artists have even started adopting aspects of the avant garde in their search for fresh output: it's a dialogue that has benefited artists, labels and listeners alike. Up until now the implications for former "niche" genres – classical, jazz, world – have been largely overlooked. In a world where listeners no longer define themselves along firm genre lines, music is increasingly just that – music. As a result, we are now witnessing a musician-led movement gleefully adopted by listeners, in which classical is being rebranded from the ground up. Even the term "classical" itself seems obsolete in the face of what's being produced and consumed.
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Growing Pains
Dan Visconti
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NewMusicBox
There is such a thing as reaching for the next rung of the career ladder too early, as in the case of the over-eager self-promoting student, or buying a lot of expensive printing equipment when you print out only a few scores each year. Yet there comes a time for every composer when one must either expand or else stifle development: when works are receiving some performances but there’s nowhere online for someone to listen to or purchase the composer’s music, or when it’s time to create a separate checking account just for composing travel and expenses. It seems to me that there are paths that overemphasize each extreme—pushing to expand too rapidly when it is not helpful, or failing to make the necessary changes and investments when old ways are holding us back. Composers would do well to stay attentive to their own needs right now, and not what their peers, friends, and competitors are doing.
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Four Music Entrepreneurs: How do they do it?
Astrid Baumgardner
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Music at Yale
This wonderful group of artists showed that it is indeed possible to make one’s way in the world as a musician, and that there are many different paths to creating career success. Here are some of the top lessons that I gleaned from their remarks, which center on the themes of knowing your mission and purpose, proactively creating your own opportunities and making your luck happen, nurturing relationships, taking risks, maintaining high standards and working hard at your career development.
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Patricia Neway, Operatic Soprano Who Won a Tony, Dies at 92
Margalit Fox
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The New York Times
Patricia Neway, an opera singer who won a Tony in 1960
for her role as the Mother Abbess in the original Broadway production
of “The Sound of Music,” died on Jan. 24 at her home in East Corinth,
Vt. She was 92. A dramatic soprano praised for the intensity of both her voice and her
acting, Ms. Neway was known as an interpreter of new work by
20th-century composers. She was also one of relatively few singers of
her era to move seamlessly back and forth between the opera house and
the Broadway stage.
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Camilla Williams dies at 92; opera singer broke racial barriers
Associated Press
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Los Angeles Times
Williams' debut with the New York City Opera on May 15, 1946, was
thought to make her the first African American woman to appear with a
major U.S. opera company and came nearly nine years before Marian Anderson became the first African American singer to appear at New York's more prestigious Metropolitan Opera.
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Philip Glass At 75: Listening With Heart, Not Intellect
Tom Vitale
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NPR
Composer Philip Glass
changed the landscape of American music. As a founder of Minimalism,
Glass came up with a new way to make music, and with it, brought a new
audience to the concert halls. Tuesday is Glass' 75th birthday, and the
music world is celebrating in a big way with performances and festivals
around the globe — including the premiere of Glass' latest work at
Carnegie Hall.
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Grant Gershon named resident conductor of L.A. Opera
David Ng
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Culture Monster (Los Angeles Times)
Grant Gershon will be expanding his duties at Los Angeles Opera when he
takes on the position of resident conductor starting July 1, the company
announced on Monday. Gershon, who has served as L.A. Opera's associate
conductor and chorus master since 2007, will hold the resident-conductor
title through the end of the 2013-14 season.
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Special tax credits offered for those who donate to arts groups
Angela Brauer
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KMTR TV
Oregon residents may be eligible for a unique tax credit if they have donated to an arts and culture group.
If a resident donates to an arts and culture group by December 31st and matches that donation to Oregon Cultural Trust, they qualify for a dollar for dollar tax deduction by April 15th.
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The Fundamentals of a Strong Social Media Plan
Mary Manzo
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Social Media Today
Nothing is worse than playing catch-up. The key to an effective campaign is creative ideas facilitated by preparation and execution. Similar to any marketing or public relations effort, a social media plan should include all the essential components of an equipped strategic foundation.
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Utah Opera Announces 2012-2013 Season
Contirbutor
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Operagasm
In October of 2012, the season will open with Verdi’s fiery and adventurous Il Trovatore (The Troubador), the gypsy tale of forbidden love that became a smash-hit opera at its premiere in 1853. The Utah Opera premiere of Daniel Catán’s Florencia en el Amazonas (Florencia in the Amazon) will come next in January of 2013 as a continuation of Utah Opera’s American Opera Initiative, bringing with it a touching discovery of the transformative power of love set to a luxurious score. In March of 2013, Mozart’s beloved fantasy, The Magic Flute, will take Utah Opera audiences on a fantastic journey of myth and enchantment, and Rossini’s outrageous comedy, The Barber of Seville, will close the season in May of 2013.
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Alice Goodman: The furore that finished me
Stuart Jeffries
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The Guardian (U.K.)
When Alice Goodman was writing the libretto for The Death of Klinghoffer,
she sensed she was creating something extraordinary. "I was thinking,
'I have never done anything as good as this! By God, I can write! It's
great! I'm going to be famous! I'll write another opera! And another! And another!' That's what it felt like." When she was done, she was proud of her achievement. "That's what's so
hilarious. You always know when you've done something good and — this is
what I now find so funny — I assumed everyone else would." But they
didn't. When John Adams's
opera received its US premiere in New York in 1991, it was charged with
being antisemitic and sympathetic to terrorists. Klinghoffer's
daughters, Lisa and Ilsa, attended the production at the Brooklyn
Academy of Music and issued a statement: "The juxtaposition of the
plight of the Palestinian people with the cold-blooded murder of an
innocent disabled American Jew is both historically naive and
appalling."
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People’s Diva Sets Her Course
Anthony Tommasini
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The New York Times
It has been a little hard to figure out what Ms. Fleming is up to and
where she is heading, particularly in opera. It has been a while since
she introduced a major new role. At 52, she understands that time is
limited, though she considers herself in “the prime of my career,” she
said in an interview at her sunny Upper West Side penthouse. That was
one reason she hesitated when the offer from the Lyric Opera came “out
the blue,” she continued.
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A book about music that strikes a chord
Jonathan Bliss
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The Telegraph
In 1923, Leos Janacek wrote his first string quartet and gave it the subtitle Kreutzer Sonata. The immediate inspiration was not Beethoven’s work of that name, but Tolstoy’s novella about the piece’s transformative and terrible power. Thus: music about words about music.
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Camilla Williams
Contirbutor
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Operagasm
The Indiana University Jacobs School of Music says Williams died Sunday. The cause of her death was not immediately released.
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Beverly Sills Artist Award Announced
Daniel J. Wakin
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ArtsBeat (The New York Times)
The soprano Angela Meade won the Beverly Sills Artist Award, a $50,000 prize for singers from ages 25 to 40 who have already appeared in featured roles at the Metropolitan Opera, the company said on Monday.
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Are You Ready for Some Opera?
Gregory Sullivan Isaacs
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TheaterJones
It may be the oddest pairing since Arnold Schwarzenegger and Danny DeVito played twins in the 1988 movie of the same name or since Harold met Maude in the 1971 spring-December romance film. A surprising announcement was made at a celebratory press conference at Cowboys Stadium on Thursday afternoon: The Dallas Opera and the Dallas Cowboys, together at last!
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Last Curtain, but No End of Stories, for a Veteran Met Singer
James Barron
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Arts Beat (The New York Times)
His name never was Baseball Plishka. But some opera fan out there in radioland once thought it was.
How
nice that your parents named you after the national pastime, the fan
wrote. Then it dawned on her: On the Metropolitan Opera’s Saturday
afternoon radio broadcasts, the announcer always referred to him as
“bass Paul Plishka.” From across the room with the volume a little too
low, it must have sounded like “Baseball Plishka.”
That will not
happen again after Saturday (except when the broadcast is a repeat). Mr.
Plishka, 70, is retiring after 1,600 performances and almost 45 years
at the Met.
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A 2nd act in Clifton for acclaimed New Jersey State Opera
Hannan Adely
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The Record
The New Jersey State Opera, a grand-opera company that endured several years of financial turmoil, has regrouped and relocated to the Aprea Theater in the former YM-YWHA of Greater Clifton-Passaic. The company, which holds its season-opening concert on Sunday, said the move will lower costs and allow the 47-year-old opera company to stay viable.
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Stars queue up to participate in new online plays on demand service
Matthew Hemley
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The Stage (U.K.)
Richard Eyre, Simon Callow and Tilda Swinton are among the names lined up to curate work for a new online video on demand service screening plays, dance productions and concerts alongside backstage and interview footage.
Hibrow is the brainchild of film-maker Don Boyd, and allows members of the public to watch entire productions and performances from a variety of arts organisations - including the Traverse Theatre in Edinburgh - whose productions have been captured by a specially assembled production team.
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Leading From Behind – We Need a Better Definition
Douglas McLennan
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Lead or Follow: An ArtsJournal Discussion
The theory has long been that more exposure to art created more people interested in art. If that’s true, than we’re in a budding Golden Age. But if more and more activity is happening outside of our institutions (arts, education etc), then what does that mean for the institutions? For the most part, it seems like most institutions currently view engagement as a call-and-response relationship (tell us what you think about us), with the benefits of that relationship accruing first for the institution (read: sell more tickets, get more people through the doors) before the audience.
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Report says think about this: state spends $1 on arts and culture, which spends $51 on economy
Sherri Welch
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Crain's Detroit Business
The intrinsic value of arts and cultural organizations has long been
recognized, but a new report reinforces what the sector has long
trumpeted: They have significant economic impact, as well.
For every $1 the state invested in nonprofit arts and cultural groups
in 2009, those organizations pumped more than $51 into Michigan's
economy through spending on rent, programs, travel and salaries.
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Evans exits opera house and heads for the bridge
Michaela Boland
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The Australian
After four years, four state premiers and four different arts ministers, Sydney Opera House chief executive Richard Evans has called curtains and accepted a job on the other side of Sydney Harbour running Paul Cave's BridgeClimb. Evans, 44, says he had been considering a corporate career outside the arts when Cave approached him late last year.
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Bill would bar jobless benefits for orchestras
Wesley P. Hester
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Richmond Times Dispatch
Del. G. Manoli Loupassi, R-Richmond, is sponsoring legislation that
would deny active symphony orchestra performers unemployment benefits
between orchestra seasons.
House Bill 1254 would make symphony
performers between orchestra seasons ineligible for unemployment between
orchestra seasons if they performed during the last season and plan to
perform in the upcoming season.
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What Does Audience Engagement Really Mean?
Kelly Tweeddale
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ArtsJournal.com
I think arts organizations and the arts sector at large throw around the term “audience engagement” quite irresponsibly, using it as the new buzz word that makes us feel like we are doing something. It is no longer apropos to just focus on putting “butts in seats” or the more delicate euphemism “derrieres in chairs” or having educational programs that focus on the K-12 space with the hope it will pay off in developing audiences twenty years into the future. In this day of fast moving innovation, major cultural shifts, and more competition and information available than ever before, no one has the faith or time to see if the transactional or educational gambit will pay off. #
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Center City Opera Theater World Opera Premiere
Contributor
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Operagasm
Center City Opera Theater is proud to present the first staged workshops previewing an emotionally moving and musically eclectic new opera. Slaying the Dragon, a powerful new piece by composer Michael Ching and librettist Ellen Frankel which confronts contemporary themes such as ethnic tolerance and stereotyping, is set for its world premiere this June in Philadelphia [with performances during Opera Conference 2012]. The Winter Workshops for Slaying the Dragon are February 18th in Wilmington and February 19th in Philadelphia.
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OPERA America Announces Recipients of 2012 National Opera Trustee Recognition Award
Contributor
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Operagasm
In its fifth year, this award honors outstanding trustees of U.S. opera companies for exemplary leadership, generosity and audience-building efforts on behalf of their respective opera companies.
The recipients of the 2012 National Opera Trustee Recognition Award are Joseph and Judy Liff-Barker of Nashville Opera, Elizabeth Eveillard of The Glimmerglass Festival (Cooperstown, NY), Susan F. Morris of The Santa Fe Opera, William C. Morris of The Metropolitan Opera and Dr. George R. White of Opera Theater of Pittsburgh.
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‘SundayArts’ Show on City Culture Moves to Prime Time
Elizabeth Jensen
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ArtsBeat (The New York Times)
New York City’s arts and culture scene will get a high-profile spotlight and a more vibrant digital presence when WNET’s afternoon “SundayArts” show takes over a prime-time slot, Thursdays at 8 p.m.
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Opera Lafayette uncovers Monsigny work once sung by Marie-Antionette
Tim Smith
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Clef Notes (The Baltimore Sun)
The early music scene in our region — the early music scene, period — is particularly fortunate to have Opera Lafayette as a major player. The D.C.-based company has been reviving neglected repertoire since 1995, and doing so with remarkable style. Several Naxos recordings document the quality. The latest discovery, in a production presented at the Kennedy Center's Terrace Theater Saturday night and heading next to New York on the way to Versailles, is Pierre-Alexandre Monsigny's Le Roi at le fermier.
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Voice or Schtick?
David Smooke
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New Music Box
Certainly, we can cite examples of composers who appear similarly obsessed with a singular sound or philosophical approach to music-making. While the music of Steve Reich has evolved over time, we know what to expect from a concert featuring his music. Similarly, the mere sight of the name Jacob Ter Veldhuis on a program gives us a very clear picture of what we are about to hear. From piece to piece, these composers focus on ensembles of similar size (within a range) with favorite instruments appearing throughout their works, their perceived tempos and harmonic rhythms tend to stay within a prescribed range, and the surface musical details derive from a clear aesthetic bent. In the case of Reich, I find the style characteristics that I associate with his music to be quite comforting—I can predict with great confidence that I personally will enjoy any new piece of his that I encounter.
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L.A. Opera-Colburn partnership opens doors for young musicians
David Mermelstein
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Los Angeles Times
"It's a completely new experience," said Matthew Zuber, a 21-year-old bassoonist studying at the Colburn School. "I've never done an opera before." He was referring to his participation — along with 21 other young musicians at the downtown conservatory — in a new collaboration between Colburn and Los Angeles Opera's Domingo-Thornton Young Artist Program. That union gets its first showcase this weekend, when the combined forces present two one-act operas: Ernst Krenek's The Secret Kingdom and Viktor Ullmann's The Emperor of Atlantis. L.A. Opera music director James Conlon conducts both works, at Colburn's Zipper Hall.
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Lead we Must
Michael Kaiser
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ArtsJournal
Not-for-profit arts must lead audience taste rather than follow it. Just
read the mission statements of not-for-profit arts organizations. Their
missions are proactive and reflect a desire to bring a specific
aesthetic, or a range of aesthetics, to their audiences. I know of no
arts organization with a mission to do simply what the audience wants it
to do. (Of course the mission of for-profit arts organizations is to
make a profit and pandering to audience tastes is not only acceptable,
it is considered a mark of success.)
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Conductor Anne Manson talks about life on the podium and Portland Opera’s Madame Butterfly
James Bash
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Opergon Music News
Just a couple of years ago, Anne Manson conducted the Portland Opera
production of Philip Glass’s Orphée, which led to the world premiere
recording of that opera and also became the first-ever commercial
recording for Portland Opera. Now Manson is back in town to conduct
Puccini’s Madame Butterfly, starting on February 3. Then she will
return again to direct the Portland Opera production of Galileo
Galilei.
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The Case for Making Recordings
Danielle de Niese
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The Huffington Post
With the evolution of the marketplace, the ever-changing template of
how we make, spread and share our music with the public, not to mention
the ever-present jaded skeptics who project total doom over the
recording industry as a whole (how many times have we heard that the
record business is dying?), is there still a relevant case to be made
for artists making recordings?
As I release my third album, Beauty of the Baroque, on Decca Records, I would like to answer this question with my own personal experiences.
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Musical therapy is making breakthroughs
Mark Swed
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The Los Angeles Times
There is a great deal of music in the world, and no one knows exactly
why. But it does have its ready uses. The music business can make you
rich and famous. The pianist Christopher O'Riley
admitted in The Times last week what a lot of classical musicians
won't: He learned the piano, at least in part, to attract the attention
of girls.
As I write this, a sparkling new recording of Tod
Machover's "Sparkler," an infectious overture for orchestra and live
electronics, is playing on my stereo and making itself useful. The CD,
"but not simpler…," is drowning out trucks on a nearby home construction
site whose backup beeps are loud enough to wake the dead a mile away.
"Sparkler" is more effectively fueling my fingers as I type than was my
morning double cappuccino. The music is lifting my spirits and making
writing almost fun. Even so, I'm not getting the greatest, if least
explicable, pleasure "Sparkler" can provide. That's obtained by giving
the score undivided attention.
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Variations on an Explosive Theme
Joe Nocera
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The New York Times
Porgy and Bess has always struck me as something of a miracle. A powerful, empathetic portrayal of poor black city dwellers in the South, it was written by three white men, two of whom had spent little time in the South.
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Who Owns My Ticket?
Albet A. Foer
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The New York Times
AT this moment, all over the United States, consumers are buying tickets to games, concerts and other live events under the impression that they have the right to give away, donate or resell the tickets they purchase. They assume that they can do so whenever and with whomever they wish and (as long as they don’t violate the few remaining laws against scalping) at whatever price they choose.
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U R What U Tweet: 5 Steps To A Better Personal Brand
Amber Mac
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Fast Company
If you take a look at the top 10 Twitter users you'll see a list of famous men and women, from Justin Bieber to Selena Gomez, who have used the popular platform to further expand their personal brands. Perhaps more interesting, however, is how everyday people are investing more time and energy into social networking for professional purposes.
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