ArtsWatch

A dozen local arts and cultural organizations have received management grants awarded by a unit of the Pew Charitable Trusts. The $1.1 million in grants are aimed at operational and management practices such as staff development, technological and management improvement and upgraded financial management systems, said officials of Pew's Philadelphia Cultural Management Initiative.
Those receiving grants for 2008 included:
Art-Reach -- $120,000 to develop a program evaluation system to measure the effectiveness of its prorgamming. Art-Reach is a Philadelphia-based service organzation focused on underserved audiences; Chamber Orchestra of Philadelphia -- $83,745 to support a full-time marketing and box office assistant; Conservation Center for Arts & Historic Artifacts, $102,500 to support a manager of digital photography who will oversee a new digital documentation studio at the Philadelphia center; Painted Bride Arts Center -- $85,000 to support a two-year project to refine and expand membership and individual giving programs at the Old City institition; University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology -- $120,000 to help implement a collections management database conversion project over the next three years; Philadelphia Theatre Company -- $120,000 to support a full-time corporate membership manager/special events coordinator to focus on contributions to operating revenues and to "extend the reach and services that the company provides to the region's corporate community," according to the announcement from the cultural managent initiative;.
Pig Iron Theatre Company -- $81,500 to support a full-time business manager for the Philadelphia troupe; Please Touch Museum -- $ 76,439 for employee and volunteer training in advance of the organization's move to new quarters in Memorial Hall in Fairmount Park; Preservation Alliance of Greater Philadelphia -- $85,000 to fund a full-time chief operating officer; Rosenbach Museum & Library -- $120,000 to support a traveling-exhibitions coordinator and provide funds for developing marketing materials, web pages and advertising; Walnut Street Theatre -- $85,000 for a full-time annual-fund manager; Wood Turning Center -- $85,000 for a full-time director of development for the Philadelphia art organization.
- Stephan Salisbury

Vladimir Jurowski has canceled his dates next week leading the Philadelphia Orchestra. The Russian conductor is ill - an ear and sinus infection that puts air travel out of the question. He's grounded for three weeks, his manager says.
It's a terrible shame. Jurowski, 36, has visited twice before, drawing spectacular performances from the orchestra. His April 10, 11 and 12 repertoire looked simply like a tip of the hat to 2001: A Space Odyssey, with Strauss' Also sprach Zarathustra, Ligeti's Atmosphères, the Brahms Violin Concerto, and that other Strauss' Blue Danube Waltz.
But if you think about it, four such stylistically opposed works on a single program would have settled the question about who this personality is - not to mention indicated whether it was time to have some more formal relationship with Jurowski (whatever title that might have entailed).
Now, instead, we'll be learning more about Roberto Minczuk, who makes his first subscription appearance with these concerts. Minczuk made his debut with the orchestra at the Mann Center in 2003. He is in his second season as music director of the Calgary Philharmonic, and is artistic director of the Orquestra Sinfônica Brasileira in Rio de Janeiro. The program, with violinist Nikolaj Znaider, stays the same.
Jurowski is slated to conduct the orchestra again next season.

I can't recall a more fervently anticipated guest conducting appearance than Vladimir Jurowski's long-planned dates this week with the Philadelphia Orchestra. (Maybe Riccardo Muti's return a few years after leaving town in a snit came close.) Here are a few comments that have come in from readers since Jurowski's announcement that illness will keep him from materializing this week:
- "This is shattering news to me. Jurowski is at once the most musical and fascinating conductor extant."
- "I'm devastated. Does that mean he doesn't love us?"
- "Very big bummer. I actually re-arranged several different parts of my life to make sure I had a ticket for this week!"
Orchestra president Jim Undercofler says he's working to see if it's possible to add a Jurowski appearance to the dates already on the books for March 2009 in which he'll lead Mahler’s Das klagende Lied and Berg’s Three Pieces for Orchestra.
In the meantime, I can't recommend enough the Jurowski recording of Prokofiev 5. Alas, it's not with the Philadelphians, but with the Russian National Orchestra.
The marvelous photo, by the way, is by Richard Termine, from a New York Times review of a concert last year at Avery Fisher.

A review of Tuesday night's Richard A. Doran memorial concert appears in The Inquirer Thursday. More than 600 listeners turned out to hear Gary Graffman, Yuja Wang, Roberto Diaz and actor Henry Gibson. Lang Lang brought the house down at the end.
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(Here the pianist is pictured with his latest corporate conquest. Or maybe it's the other way around.)

Can the Kmart Symphony Orchestra be far behind? If only.
It's heart-stirring news that the Sony Philharmonic Orchestra, an amateur orchestra of Sony employees and their families, will make its Carnegie Hall debut in October. Yo-Yo Ma is soloist, and Daniel Harding will conduct.
No irony is intended here. The fact that there are enough competent instrumentalists in any corporation to make up an orchestra is a wonderful thing. Amateur musicians are a critical part of the arts pyramid. For one thing, they make the best listeners at professional orchestra concerts.
And bravo to Sony chairman Howard Stringer (pictured) for this statement: ``Bringing the Sony Orchestra to New York to perform on the main stage at Carnegie Hall has been a 10-year dream of mine,'' he said. ``When I first heard them play, I was tremendously impressed by the level of performance they have been able to achieve.''
How many CEOs do you know are harboring 10-year dreams involving symphonic music?
The concert will benefit the Harlem School of the Arts, Midori & Friends and the arts education program of the Orchestra of St. Luke's.
And now, we're eager to hear what Target can do with a Schubert Mass, and whether Whole Foods is all talk on that Mahler cycle they've been hinting at for years.

We call it Cirque du So-loud in our family, because the music blasts you out of your seat. But it's more commonly known as Cirque du Soleil, and it returns to Philadelphia's most under-utilized patch of free land at Broad and Washington in a few weeks. Kooza opens May 8 and runs more than a month.

Mysterious chalk lines have appeared on the grass and sidewalks around Independence National Historical Park from Third to Fifth Streets, between Walnut and Chestnut. The markings would appear to suggest the location of now-dry Dock Creek. ArtsWatch is investigating. Local artist Winifred Lutz has been identified as a person of interest.

DG is making a big deal about the fact that given-up-for-too-modern composer Arnold Schoenberg has topped the Billboard classical chart for the first time. Seems Hilary Hahn’s April 8th release of the violin concerto with Esa-Pekka Salonen and the Swedish Radio Symphony Orchestra on Deutsche Grammophon debuted this week at No. 1 on the Billboard classical traditional chart. Note to DG: It might have something to do with the CD's pairing. Along with Schoenberg comes the Sibelius concerto. The news still does not have Schoenberg smiling.

Pennsylvania Ballet principal dancer James Ady is retiring. After his Franz in the upcoming production of Coppélia, Ady will perform Siegfried in New Jersey Ballet's production of Swan Lake, and then return home to Boise, Idaho, where he will attend Boise State University with an eye toward business, journalism (he must like careers with risk) and psychology. Ady has had a variety of titles with Pennsylvania Ballet since 1997.

American artist Edna Andrade has died, the Locks Gallery has announced. She was 91, and lived in Philadelphia. A representative of the Optical art movement of the 1960s, Andrade was productive well into old age. Her work has been shown at Locks, the ICA and the Philadelphia Museum of Art, which owns her Night Sea.
She once wrote: "With the new art, paintings are no longer to be looked at - or into. They possess positive action."
(Pictured: "Finale," from 1979.

Janice Price (pictured), the former Kimmel Center CEO who is now the "visionary and energetic" CEO of Toronto's Luminato Festival, has been signed to a three-year extension of her contract. "And it's clearly great news for Toronto," wrote Martin Knelman in The Star...Philadelphia Citizens for Children and Youth has released a study detailing how other cities are putting the arts back in classrooms...Lincoln Financial Group's philanthropic arm, Lincoln Financial Foundation, has awarded about $670,000 in grants to arts and culture groups around Philadelphia...Work will begin shortly on renovations to the Academy of Music's ballroom, which will be closed for the 15-month project...Look for an announcement soon of a Philadelphia Orchestra concert at Macy's with the Wanamaker Organ...Philadelphia soprano Angela Meade was one of 16 winners in 37th annual George London Foundation Awards Competition for young North American opera singers.

An upcoming Curtis Institute of Music orchestra concert will be recorded for commercial release. Ondine Records will distribute Hindemith’s Klaviermusik mit Orchester and Dvořák’s Symphony No. 9 (“From the New World”), to be recorded April 27 in a concert with Christoph Eschenbach at the Kimmel Center. "Curtis will record, edit, and produce, while Ondine will manufacture and distribute the final product to an international market," a Curtis release says.
Eschenbach pal Kevin Kleinmann will be executive producer.
The soloist in the Hindemith is Leon Fleisher (pictured) in what Curtis says is the first-ever commercial release of the work (though we tend to be wary of such emphatic statements).
Curtis last worked with a label in 1995. With EMI Classics, they recorded a Vaughan Williams release conducted by André Previn. Pop and commercial father-figure Phil Ramone (Frank Sinatra, Barbra Streisand, Stan Getz, Quincy Jones) was the producer.
The Ondine recording is scheduled for release in Spring 2009.

Philadelphia Brass is headed to Bolivia. The group will perform in the International Festival of Renaissance and Baroque Music, Misiones de Chiquitos, set in the historic Jesuit Missions of Bolivia.
"We will be performing and teaching mostly baroque music, but if you ever saw the film The Mission with Robert De Niro then you might be interested in where we are going and what we're doing," says Tony Cecere, the Philadelphia Brass hornist.
They'll blog the trip.

Curtis Institute of Music pianist Yuja Wang is getting a pretty terrific response on the road with the Academy of St. Martin in the Fields. She stepped in for Murray Perahia, last minute. Here are reviews from San Francisco, Los Angeles and San Jose. And here she is in Philadelphia, which knew her when.

--------------------The view looking East between 4th and 5th Streets, north of Walnut.

The City, that is. These mysterious chalk markings, to which we referred in an earlier posting, were left by local artist Winifred Lutz, whose earthwork recalls the path of Dock Creek as it once flowed through this part of what is now Independence National Historical Park.
Dock Creek disappeared 150 years ago, ending life as a polluted sewer. But in the tradition of Robert Smithson (Spiral Jetty), Lutz is creating this temporary installation showing the creek's path between Walnut and Chestnut, Third and Fifth Streets.
The work is not completed. Lutz will be adding to the installtion through September. Soon (but not yet) visitors will be able to pick up a map at the museum of the American Philosophical Society, 104 S. 5th Street, and follow Dock Creek's devolution from what Lutz describes as "a pristine waterway when William Penn founded Philadelphia," to a dumping place for tanneries and slaughterhouses, "eventually turning into a sewer and then a subsurface waterway, now long forgotten."
ArtsWatch will be following the project as it falls into place.

Lemony Snicket and composer Nathaniel Stookey are a bit cagey on details, but say they are at work on an opera. The first act takes place in a castle, and the second act in a diner. "If you know any wealthy Philadelphians who want to underwrite such an endeavor, please tell them to be in touch," Snicket, pictured here with a fish, said to me recently.
Look for an article on a symphonic Snicket-Stookey collaboration in the Inquirer in the next couple of weeks.

At the Metropolitan Opera, Juan Diego Flórez, the Curtis-trained Peruvian tenor, "brought the crowd to its feet late in Act 1 on Monday night by sailing with ease through the nine high Cs in the aria, "Pour mon ame" — and then singing it a second time," according to AP, "provoking joyous pandemonium and a standing ovation," according to Bloomberg.
Sounds like The New York Times was also impressed:
"Mr. Flórez offers a splendid metaphor for something that cannot be historically reproduced. His tone is slender but athletic. It has a ring and a resonance easily heard in a space the size of which Donizetti certainly did not plan on. Mr. Flórez is fluent in the ways of rapid-fire bel canto delivery, and he delivers simpler tunes winningly."
Bernard Holland's review also comes with audio clips captured Monday night.

In case you missed it on the front page of The Inquirer today, here's a link to some very big news for the Kimmel Center. In short, they've wiped out $30 million in debt and boosted their endowment to an adequate level.
And now, Kimmel president Anne Ewers says, attention can be paid to improving the acoustic of Verizon Hall. But the question is: Who should do the work? Artec, the hall's original acoustician, very much wants the job, arguing that budget constraints prevented them from fully realizing plans. Or should another firm take a fresh listen for a solution?
Let me just pose this basic question:
Do we want a hall with an adjustable acoustic after all? Discuss.

The main impediment to Simon Rattle becoming music director in Philadelphia, we've been told, is that he already has a job in Berlin with the orchestra world's plum.
But London's Telegraph is quoting a Berlin Philharmonic spokesman as saying Rattle's future relationship with that orchestra is up in the air.
"The orchestra and Sir Simon are in the process of negotiating," said Stefan Stahnke, a spokesman for the Philharmonic.
The musicians are slated to take a vote on the question of whether to keep Rattle in the next few days, the Telegraph reports.
The Telegraph headline says Berlin may be getting ready to oust Rattle. But what I heard a few weeks ago is that it was Rattle who asked to open talks early regarding his future in Berlin. You have to wonder whether Berlin would go music-director-less, like Vienna, since no successor is apparent.
Rattle's contract currently calls for him to stay in Berlin through 2012 - the exact time the Philadelphia Orchestra's Charles Dutoit would be leaving his post.
Philadelphia's search committee is just at the start of its process to replace Christoph Eschenbach. You can be confident, though, that if this British maestro goes on the open market, Philadelphia will pounce.
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Addendum: Pamela Rosenberg, the Philharmonic's administrative chief, is resigning, Bloomberg reports today.

Reports coming out of Europe Friday have only added to the confusion over what sort of future Simon Rattle and the Berlin Philharmonic have together.
AFP quotes the Philharmonic's spokesman as saying that members "have spoken out in favour of extending the contract of its chief conductor Sir Simon Rattle which expires in 2012."
Rattle and the orchestra "will now discuss what their joint future might look like after 2012," the AFP story says.
Lukewarm affirmation, that. And it could mean almost anything - even phasing into a guest-conducting slot.
An AP story, though, paints a very different picture. A short piece with a Berlin dateline says the orchestra has only agreed to keep Rattle through 2012 - the end-date of his current contract.
Was there ever any question about that?
Bloomberg says Rattle will stay beyond 2012, but how far beyond has not been determined.
Strange that all these stories seem to be describing the future from the musicians' perspective, without questioning whether Rattle would agree to stay if asked.
The relevance of all this to Philadelphia could not be greater. The Philadelphia Orchestra's various search agents and committees have not indicated an official choice - official choices are not made until it's clear who is available - but there's no question that musicians and board members would love to see Rattle here in some capacity.
If he reduces his dates in Berlin after 2012, would he be free to become music director here - or maybe principal guest conductor?
If Rattle is tied up in Berlin, would Philadelphia turn to Vladimir Jurowski? Maybe while Charles Dutoit is in charge for the next four seasons, the orchestra could cultivate its relationship with Jurowski while signaling its seriousness with him via a principal guest conductor title. That's the way Muti became music director - after a period as principal guest.
Or does the Philadelphia Orchestra have the nerve to extend a music-director offer to Jurowski now? What a bad bit of timing it was that Jurowski had to cancel his dates here a few weeks ago. The orchestra would be in a much better position to act if it had that third program with Jurowski under its belt.
Is the orchestra developing a Plan A, B, C and D? Let's hope so. After Rattle and Jurowski, there's a big drop-off in terms of viable options.
President James Undercofler will only say that that the orchestra is "alert" to events unfolding in Berlin.
Possibly significant side note: Among the guest conductors in Berlin next season is Riccardo Muti, who hasn't conducted the Philharmonic in 17 years. Of course, for Muti, having his name on the schedule and actually showing up to conduct are independent concepts.

Every day all over the world, millions of schoolchildren manage to sit down in their seats, turn off their cell phones and concentrate on the material before them.
And yet grown-ups can't seem to muster the same strength. Sunday night's concert of the Curtis Institute of Music orchestra was a new low in audience behavior.
Couples chatted in barely soft voices during the concert. No fewer than six cell phones sounded, despite a wonderfully direct but polite announcement reminding the audience to turn phones off.
Curtis was recording part of the Verizon Hall concert for commercial-label release, so silence was especially important.
Still, in the first piece on the program, the following drama could be heard:
Ringing of cell phone.
Couple speaking angrily to each other.
Cell phone ring crescendos as cell phone is retrieved from purse or other hiding place.
Cell phone stops ringing.
Person on other end of call is heard to say, "Hello? Hello? Hello Hello?"
Husband says to wife in loud, angry whisper, "Give it to me! Give it to me!"
With audiences like this, who needs enemies?

Wolfgang Sawallisch used to say he could write a book called "Always Trouble With Singers," and this week at the Philadelphia Orchestra he would have had another citation. Tenor Anthony Dean Griffey (pictured) will replace Vinson Cole in this week's Mahler 8 performances by the orchestra. Cole withdrew due to illness, the orchestra announced.

The Academy of Music Tuesday afternoon as workers remove one of five windows fronting onto Broad Street.

Work began this week on a major restoration of the Academy of Music ballroom that will strip off renovations made in the 1920s and 1957, returning to the room the major features of its original 1857 appearance.
The project includes: replicating the original 10 crystal and two bronze chandeliers; reproducing decorative painting on ceilings and walls; and, in the biggest change to the room, restoring natural light by removing the mirrored structures covering five windows facing onto Broad Street and replacing them with clear glass.
The window structures had been filled in to help seal off the room from outside sounds. Academy interior designer John Trosino thought the original wood structures with stained-glass fanlight transom windows might still be encased within the walls - and they were.
Workers removed one of the windows this week, revealing wood casings inside, and, at the top, the original stained glass. Trosino hopes the woodwork can be saved. The stained-glass fanlights - the one I saw had a design of two instruments, perhaps clarinets - are to be restored.
When the project is finished in July 2009, those tall five windows on the east side of the 40- x 80-foot room will let natural light in - the current pea-soup fluorescent lighting will be gone - and the five corresponding now-mirrored doors on the west side of the room will have been replaced with wooden doors.
The entire scheme of the project - for which Leonore Annenberg has given $5.3 million - is taking its cue from an 1860 photograph of the room found in the Academy's archive.
The project includes less glamorous work. The original timber frames over the ballroom will be reinforced, and the front third of the Academy roof will be replaced.
After this week's work, the ballroom will be operational for a couple of more months before closing for the 12-month project in July.
While the new Broad Street windows will replicate the original glass-panel doors at the bottom, and will constructed so they can open, Trosino thinks allowing people out onto the balconies might be impractical. The balustrade is quite low.
"It wouldn't take more than a little slip to fall over," he said.