I always enjoy it when an orchestra website includes some worthwhile info about their history at their website. Case in point, the New York Philharmonic recently released a fascinating searchable database of their performances going all the back to 1842 (BTW, they performed Beethoven’s fifth but it was only 35 years old at that time). Another recent entry is the Grant Park Music Festival’s (GPMF) interactive timeline that coincides with the release of the 75th Anniversary book…
Month: July 2009
A Race To The Bottom
The 6/29/09 edition of huffingtonpost.com published a piece by Kennedy Center for the Arts CEO, Michael Kaiser, that warns of the folly associated with reactive turtling strategies. It is gratifying to see someone else in the business stepping up and pointing out the need to stop panic driven decision making processes responsible for producing a wide variety of long term crippling strategic plans. We’ve been examining these very same issues since the …
James Russell Gets It
The 6/28/09 edition of the Atlanta Journal-Constitution (AJC) published a guest column by James Russell, the architecture critic for Bloomberg. For my money, Russell is one of the rare visionary writers in this country. His onetime blog, Sticks and Stones, was a beacon of insight and reason that not only predicted the 2008 housing fiasco years in advance, but it regularly covered issues related to architecture and concert hall design. Russell’s AJC piece examines the pros and cons related to the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra’s (ASO) decision to shelve plans for the Santiago Calatrava designed concert hall…