This Week’s Highlights:
The most revealing arts story this week was a hire that, by the old rules, wouldn’t have happened. The San Francisco Symphony passed over the marquee conductors and handed its podium to Elim Chan — the first woman to lead one of America’s “Big 7” orchestras and, by critic Joshua Kosman’s own count, the most unproven music director the institution has chosen in four decades. His verdict: the choice “could not have been wiser” (San Francisco Chronicle). Potential.
Chicago arts groups are locking patrons’ phones in pouches to sell something a screen can’t (WBEZ). And a Philadelphia orchestra that programs Rainbow Road and the Sonic theme is growing like a weed. What’s the secret? (Philadelphia Inquirer).
The field’s top honors kept landing in unexpected places, too. The Regional Theatre Tony went to American Players Theatre, in a Wisconsin town of 1,500 (Wisconsin Public Radio). And the International Booker, for the first time in its history, went to a novel written in Mandarin Chinese (AP).
None of these are the same story, but they pose the same question: the map of what counts — who leads, who belongs in the room, what’s allowed on the program — is being redrawn from the edges in.
Which is the bigger question I take up in this week’s AJ Chronicles: Hollywood has completely reinvented its core business model six times in a century. The nonprofit arts have managed it once. Is the second time finally being forced?
All this week’s stories below, organized by topic.
